Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Thu, 14 Dec 2006, Samual Acorn wrote:

> it sounds counter productive but the best way to do that would be to
> use one of those tiny cheap 12 inverters for cars... most of them will
> tell you when the car (or other 12v battery) is low* and you wont have
> to find a way to bump the voltage up (or down) to the laptops odd
> voltages since youll be able to use the 'wall wart' that goes with the
> laptop...

That presumes you have a working car battery.  We have some small 12V 
battery for running a cordless Dremel tool or something.

> *using an external battery source directly with a laptop will make the
> laptop think its plugged into the wall and think it has an 'infinite'
> source of power... it wont be able to tell when the batteries get low
> which is definitly a bad thing...

Why?  Linux seems to survive crashes.

> using solar charging is up to you but you wont be able to run a laptop
> directly off of a solar cell (unless you plan on spending alot of
> cash) and charging will be very slow going (again unless you plan to
> spend $$$$)

With a small battery it would let you run a small computer while on a 
bike trip if you wanted the extra weight (which I don't).  Maybe you could 
hook up a laptop computer to an electric bike battery that can be 
recharged by pedaling?  Can you run linux on a newer PDA?

> unfortunatly, to be totally honest, the best way to run a laptop with
> a dead battery -is- the extension cord approach... (ive tried running
> my 'tops off of various sources but i cant get farther from the 'wall'
> than the network cable {or null modem cable depending on the
> machine-in-questions age} will let me so ive never made serious use of
> any of the experements)

wireless?

> > Is it possible to run a laptop computer off a generic external battery
> > such as a car battery, plus some sort of voltage regulator?
> > Solar charged?


Sindi