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Datavue Spark

Brian Todd

Brian Todd

Experienced Member
Joined
Nov 21, 2022
Messages
228
Location
The Netherlands
I aquired a Datavue Spark some time ago, which is in immaculate condition and still boots up perfectly. The Ni-Cd battery pack was of course dead, and I kept getting an irritiating "battery nearly dead" message on the screen accompanied by a classical XT bleep even when the unit was running off AC. I therefore decided to rebuild the battery pack, and replaced the original 1200mAh sub-D cells with 2800 mAh ones (Aliexpress, and yes I know ... guessed that even if I got 50% capacity I was still good). The battery pack charges fine, maintains 12V, and can keep the Datavue running for more than an hour ... so far so good. The really irritating thing is, however, that I still get the "battery nearly dead" message accompanied by the beep :(

Ideas please?
 
Their one of the first Laptops, nice find. The normal advertised battery run time for these was three hours so one hour seems short. Wonder if replacement batteries need to be calibrated like newer laptops to reset the warning. Maybe the original Diagnostic disk contained a utility. You probably have it but someone posted a disk image.
Datavue Diagnostics
 
Thanks Andrettigto, I gave up before the laptop did due to all the beeping! Thanks for the link the the diagnostics disk .. I do not have it yet and will certainly see whats on it ... finger crossed!
 
Just reviving this thread. I ran the Spark in a continuous loop of Ludo (all AI players), and it ran for about 2.5 hours on battery power. Of course, the battery low light was on all the time with the periodic bleep. Even if I disconnect the battery, it still alternates between "battery ok" and "battery nearly dead". Even with partial charge, the battery pack gives me 12.8V so that would seem ok?
 
Sorry for bumping but I recently acquired one of these as well and was wondering how you went about constructing the replacement battery. I don't have an original for reference as it had leaked and been removed many moons ago
 
It may be possible to modify the BIOS to ignore the battery level and suppress the message/beep.
 
Brian Todd said:
Hi Cheese, welcome! I will make some photos as soon as I can so that you can see how I constructed it. I never did find a solution to the "battery nearly dead" issue. Out of curiousity, does the low power LED on your spark glow faintly when you are on AC?
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I appreciate the help! :) And my light does not come on
 
Hi, sorry it took so long to get the pictures taken!The original battery pack comprised 10 x 1.2V SubC cells with a capacity of 1200mA, and of course they were toast.

IMG_1087.jpg


The battery construction is pretty simple, the dual positive and negative wires are simply both soldered to the top left and bottom left battery terminals respectively. I bought some 2800mA cells from Aliexpress as I figured that even if they had half the rated capacity they would be fine!

IMG_1089.jpg

Construction of the new battery was straight forward .. I removed the appropriate lugs from the cells, soldered the bottom row of 5 cells and glued them together. The 6th cell then connects to the top of the 5th (right hand side looking at first pic) and there is simply cardboard glued over the other 4 cells to avoid short circuit. Instead of connecting the tabs of the 6th to the 7th cell, there is a component which is soldered in instead ... it looks like a small square on two legs .. not sure of the function of it though as it does not seem to be a diode and I could find no markings on it (anyone???) - you can just about see the wire on the top right hand side of the first pic. The remaining cells are simply soldered on and glued as the rest are. See also back view below.

IMG_1088.jpg

As said, I seem to have an issue with mine as the low battery light stays on even when the battery pack is not connected. Hope this helps you! Cheers
 
Plasma said:
It may be possible to modify the BIOS to ignore the battery level and suppress the message/beep.
Click to expand...
Thanks Plasma .. I looked into that and there is only a basic configuration screen when the Spark starts up and this has no possibility to modify any power settings :cry:
 
I mean modify the BIOS code itself. If you can dump the ROM I will look at it for you.
 
On an early machine like the Spark you can probably just dump it with debug. See the steps for F000-FFFF here.

However, applying the changes will require an EPROM programmer, and at least partial disassembly of the laptop. If you don't want to go that far, it might be possible to patch it with a software TSR. I will have to see how it's implemented.
 
Plasma said:
On an early machine like the Spark you can probably just dump it with debug. See the steps for F000-FFFF here.

However, applying the changes will require an EPROM programmer, and at least partial disassembly of the laptop. If you don't want to go that far, it might be possible to patch it with a software TSR. I will have to see how it's implemented.
Click to expand...
Thanks Plasma, I will try to dump it following the instructions, but will be in a couple of weeks as we are going on vacation first!
 
Brian Todd said:
As said, I seem to have an issue with mine as the low battery light stays on even when the battery pack is not connected. Hope this helps you! Cheers
Click to expand...
Thank you that does help! Do you have any pics of the component in question and the wiring? My battery is long gone so I don't have any things to salvage or reference unfortunately
 
Sorry to bump, but does anyone have good internal shots of their power brick? Mine vaporized a small component (I suspect due to bad caps) and I have no way of telling what the values were
 
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