Tracking power changes on a notebook

[Fudzy]

For my sins I have a Dell Latitude E6410. Not a completely bad notebook but it's got an issue. The PSU light goes off (the ring around the plug) and it switches to battery power. I then have to unplug it from the mains (or the strange 3 pin plug that goes into the PSU) wait about 10 seconds and it comes back on again.

Why don't you just get a new PSU? I hear you say. I've tried that. I've tried swapping the PSU, docking station, battery, basically everything but the notebook itself and it still does it.

What I would like is some sort of hardware monitoring tool that will trace when the power goes from AC to battery to see if there is any other hardware blips at the same time.

Any suggestions?

 

[kayvee]

There could be something dickey in the battery charge circuit on the laptop that's causing overload in the PSU such that it goes into shutdown mode.

Depends how technical you want to get....

You could measure/monitor the DC current from the PSU to the laptop with a multimemer and see what's happening.

Or add a low value shunt and measure the volt drop across with it on an oscilloscope to give you a more accurate indication to see if there are any short duration current spikes (which the multimeter may miss).

 

[Fudzy]

There could be something dickey in the battery charge circuit on the laptop that's causing overload in the PSU such that it goes into shutdown mode.

Depends how technical you want to get....

You could measure/monitor the DC current from the PSU to the laptop with a multimemer and see what's happening.

Or add a low value shunt and measure the volt drop across with it on an oscilloscope to give you a more accurate indication to see if there are any short duration current spikes (which the multimeter may miss).

Yeah actual measurement hardware was going to be my last resort, engineers get moany when I borrow their stuff Thanks all the same.

 

[kayvee]

Or....you could always just send to the Dell