Measure battery voltage with a volt meter?

[fessyfoo]

Closing this out.

the battery was dead. one cell of four drained.

yes, should be possible to read voltage on the connector.

@Charlie_6

I got the same 0 volt when I disconnected the battery in BIOS. if I remove the battery without disconnecting it in BIOS I can get both SMB reading and voltage measurement

because my battery was dead the bms wasn’t allowing any discharge. so not being able to measure voltage on the connector, and not having put the battery in disconnect mode was a pretty good clue the battery was dead.

closed cased debugger probably would have worked

using a CCD to talk with the EC, would have shown no battery connected flag. but i didn’t figure out how to try that.

examples from ectool battery run from linux

Flags                   0x0b AC_PRESENT BATT_PRESENT CHARGING

vs

Flags                   0x09 AC_PRESENT CHARGING

if you really want to physically open the battery up and check voltage it’s not too hard.

@fessyfoo

not sure how to open up the battery to get at the cells in a reversible manor.

@fessyfoo

battery is definitely dead

I was able with some hot air, a spudger, and care to peel back the bottom cover just enough to get a multimeter on the individual lipo cell tabs. (blue masking tape is now holding bottom cover back)