The thing is though, where do you get a replacement battery from? Well, you can either get one off of eBay or you can make your own...
To make your own you are going to need the following items:
- Sharp knife
- Soldering Iron, Solder and a De-Soldering Tool
- Side Cutters (or scissors)
- Heat Shrink
- Heat Gun
- A replacement CR2032 Battery
- Aluminium Foil Tape with Conductive Acrylic Adhesive
The first thing you need is the original flat battery from your Compaq Armada laptop. Once removed from the laptop you will need to carefully remove the plastic surround with a sharp knife.
Carefully remove the connectors from the battery and then using your soldering iron remove the leads from the connectors.
Once you have removed both of the connectors it's time to get a short length of aluminium foil tape with conductive adhesive and solder each wire to a piece. This can be quite tricky so practice first before trying on the actual connector.
Then, take some heat-shrink tubing and cut to size. Place over the two terminals you have created and then use your heat gun to shrink it nice and tight. Not only will this make it look neat and tidy but has the added benefit that if you're not very good at soldering and end up in time with a dry joint, it might just hold the wire'solder to the aluminium foil tape so there is still a proper connection!
Once you have put heat-shrink tubing on the ends of both connectors (as shown in the photo above) it's time to remove the paper-backing from the adhesive tape and stick it on your battery:
Now you could leave it like this, but the aluminium tape is very thin and therefor fragile so you can either wrap tightly in some very good quality electrical tape or (you can do what I did) and use some more heat-shrink tubing.
As you can see, using the heat-shrink tubing makes it look a bit more professional and it fits perfectly in the laptop.
