Poor man's lithium

[vpoppv]

Some more preliminary information:

Out of the 18 "bad" laptop battery packs:

3 packs had ALL the batteries showing above 3v.

2 packs showed ALL the batteries dead, but when the batteries were separated, they began building voltage.

38 batteries total showed zero voltage out of 131.

From the little information I have gathered, I suspect that what is killing these packs is not the batteries but the management system.

I'm too much of a newb to know how the $4 charger works, but it will only charge a battery that has decent voltage to begin with. I am able to get some batteries to hold voltage by starting to charge one battery that is "chargeable" and inserting a "non-charging" battery along with it. After a couple minutes of charging, a "dead" battery seems to hold above 2v for a while. Time will tell if they can ever be used again. So far, I have only seen 2 batteries that flat out won't take a charge, even when thrown in with a battery that WILL hold a charge. Of course, none of this really tells me the capacity of a battery. I was thinking of buying a CREE flashlight that uses these batteries and putting one in, then record the time it takes to discharge. That could take forever. Is there any form of cheap "capacity" meter out there??