A while ago I had an old Nokia N-95 plugged into a Gentoo box and I was using SMS Server Tools to send myself text message alerts. I got rid of that sim and so stopped using it. The phone has been sat in a drawer since then along with a couple of others.
I recently decided I wanted to set it all up again, this time on my Mac Mini. I was trying out different phones and settings but I couldn’t get the N95 or an old Motorola V series phone to do anything even after plugging them both in!
I suspected that the phones had been left alone for so long that the batteries had discharged to such a state that the phones could not charge them anymore. I did a bit of searching on Google and someone suggested using an old USB cable to charge the battery a bit before charging it normally.
I immediately scrounged round my room looking for an old USB cable to hack up and found a Motorolla one. Here’s what to do;
- I got some pliers and stripped the phone end off, then stripped the wires back.
- Make sure the RED and BLACK wires do not touch each other!
- Plug the USB cable in and connect the wires to the battery terminals as follows;
- Touch the BLACK wire to the NEGATIVE terminal of the battery
- Touch the RED wire to the POSITIVE terminal of the battery
- Hold the wires to the battery terminals for about 20 - 40 seconds (This step may need to be repeated to attain enough charge for the phone to take over)
- Plug the battery back into the phone and plug in the charger as normal
This worked for both my Nokia BL-5C battery and my Motorolla BC60 battery (this one took a few goes) now I’ve got them both charging. I’m going to hang on to my hacked up USB cable who knows when it may come in useful, that and I don’t like throwing computey stuffs out.
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