Modding is the right place for a scratch build laptop case
And you get thanks from me for just trying it.
Have you got any more photo's and details on how you've made that case?
I'd love to make an aluminium case for my eee pc901
Are thoes pop rivets holding the bottom on? and what are the black corner sections?
On the battery front, the cells are standard, although they tend to be made in fixed batches and you don't want to mix batches as minor variations can cause charge issues.
However I don't think the battery controllers are standard.
Before when your made battery was responding correctly how charged up was it?
I'm guessing that it could be that because it far higher capacity than the controller is set for it actually thinks that it is on mains.
When the batteries run down enough it might then be able to correctly recognise them again.
Although that's just a guess as battery controller circuits are a bit of a mistery to me, I know they are there and they regulate the power charging and level data to the loptop.