Some of the batteries I'm working with seem to have the Charge / Discharge turned off, but when I read the chip info it tells me that charging and discharging is active.  I'm able to read the battery using this equipment, but the medical device it is made for doesn't recognize the battery nor does the external charger.  The battery isn't in sleep mode, and I have been working with Texas Instruments on a deeper dive into the issues.  

I came across an interesting comment that someone made that it's possible to enable the Charge on the BQ40Z50 chip by writing 0x80 to Register 0x2D, but I have never seen any other reference to this nor can I get it to work.  Has anyone else come across this or know what it is talking about and if so can you tell me how to enter these commands? 

Here is the comment I found.

To turn off battery charging on the BQ40Z50 chip, you can use the SMBus command that controls the charging enable/disable state. The specific register responsible for enabling or disabling charging is the Charge Control register, which is register 0x2D in the BQ40Z50's register map.

Here’s the command to disable charging:

1. Write to the Charge Control (0x2D) register:
   • Value: To disable charging, you need to write 0x00 to the Charge Control register (0x2D). This will turn off the charging function of the battery.

SMBus Command:

• Register Address: 0x2D (Charge Control)
• Data Byte to Write: 0x00 (to disable charging)

Example of the SMBus command sequence:

• Write 0x2D, 0x00 to disable charging.

To enable charging again:

• You can enable charging by writing 0x80 (bit 7 set) to the Charge Control register (0x2D).
  • Data Byte to Write: 0x80 (to enable charging).