J
Josh K.
- Jan 1, 1970
- 0
Hi all,
I've searched high and low and found nothing to give me a hint about
this chip. I pulled the circuit board out of an old, dead, SMBus compliant
(that's what needs to be checked!) laptop battery. One of those Molicel
ME202BB Form Factor 202 batteries. I have to hookup the SMBUS wires
(bi-directional data and clock, so lines) to a controller for a project. I
thought I'd take the safe route and tear apart a non-working one and check
the chip numbers to get the data sheets. Looking around the net I looked
for "fuel gauge" chips. Still no clues as to how this chip implements I2C
or SMBUS. Now I COULD ASSUME that the company is correct and start wiring
up the data,clock, and ground lines of a working battery and start throwing
SMBUS reads at it seeing if I get something but I want to go into this with
my eyes open!
So I have hit a big road block.
Only marks on it are
MSB248
A31
84B2B
From top to bottom on the chip's front (left justified). the chip also has
a very small circle (looks like a kind of relief cut) with "MB" inside on
the lower left corner. This hasn't turned up any logos online of any chip
maker.
It's the largest chip on the board so I assume it's responsible for outward
communication and (I think, small traces and it's hard to see) it has the
four wires that turn the series of 4 LEDS on and off to signify percentage
of power remaining on the outer case of the battery.
Anybody know what I should pursue next to try to find out more about this
chip? Molicel's site only says "SMBUS compliant" While I could just take
that at face value and start fiddling with a known working battery I would
feel a lot better if I found the communication specs of this chip so I don't
somehow ruin a working battery.
Thanks very much for any help you can give!
-Josh K.
P.S this project is connected to an online project I'm trying to get posted
that needs to read battery stats from the Data & Clock battery terminals
because APM BIOS support has flat out failed (supportwise on the device)
with no hope of working (abandoned by the maker) so I plan to use the
parallel port I2C Linux driver to talk directly (and only) with the battery
to at least get ChargeCapacity, ChargingRate, Estimated time to
charge/Discharge to form a primitive power management of sorts. Programming
is no problem but I don't want to hurt the working batteries so I need those
data sheets. Also program will only READ values, NEVER WRITE them. I'll
let the charger fiddle with that stuff...Cheers!
I've searched high and low and found nothing to give me a hint about
this chip. I pulled the circuit board out of an old, dead, SMBus compliant
(that's what needs to be checked!) laptop battery. One of those Molicel
ME202BB Form Factor 202 batteries. I have to hookup the SMBUS wires
(bi-directional data and clock, so lines) to a controller for a project. I
thought I'd take the safe route and tear apart a non-working one and check
the chip numbers to get the data sheets. Looking around the net I looked
for "fuel gauge" chips. Still no clues as to how this chip implements I2C
or SMBUS. Now I COULD ASSUME that the company is correct and start wiring
up the data,clock, and ground lines of a working battery and start throwing
SMBUS reads at it seeing if I get something but I want to go into this with
my eyes open!
So I have hit a big road block.
Only marks on it are
MSB248
A31
84B2B
From top to bottom on the chip's front (left justified). the chip also has
a very small circle (looks like a kind of relief cut) with "MB" inside on
the lower left corner. This hasn't turned up any logos online of any chip
maker.
It's the largest chip on the board so I assume it's responsible for outward
communication and (I think, small traces and it's hard to see) it has the
four wires that turn the series of 4 LEDS on and off to signify percentage
of power remaining on the outer case of the battery.
Anybody know what I should pursue next to try to find out more about this
chip? Molicel's site only says "SMBUS compliant" While I could just take
that at face value and start fiddling with a known working battery I would
feel a lot better if I found the communication specs of this chip so I don't
somehow ruin a working battery.
Thanks very much for any help you can give!
-Josh K.
P.S this project is connected to an online project I'm trying to get posted
that needs to read battery stats from the Data & Clock battery terminals
because APM BIOS support has flat out failed (supportwise on the device)
with no hope of working (abandoned by the maker) so I plan to use the
parallel port I2C Linux driver to talk directly (and only) with the battery
to at least get ChargeCapacity, ChargingRate, Estimated time to
charge/Discharge to form a primitive power management of sorts. Programming
is no problem but I don't want to hurt the working batteries so I need those
data sheets. Also program will only READ values, NEVER WRITE them. I'll
let the charger fiddle with that stuff...Cheers!
