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laptops need a supply and it is a DC voltage isn't it? so why my lab power supply can't turn my laptop on. it is tune on the desired voltage and polarity, when i press the on button, the laptop starts, leds on, tries to boot and suddenly dead with a beep!!
the power supply can provide 3A and it shows on its front Ammeter that the laptop is consuming 1.5A.
what technologies makes my laptop adapter different?
This depends on the type of laptop and power supply, some have additional logic signals, etc.
In all likelihood, your lab power supply is not able to provide enough current to power your laptop. Laptops use a good amount of power, if you have the original power supply it came with, you would see a current rating in mA or A. This is the total amperage the power supply can provide, and my guess is that it is at the least, 2 Amps or more. You may be able to charge the battery with your lab supply though.
There are other possibilities too, but without knowing the laptop model and the specs on your lab power supply, I couldn't say. Your lab supply may very well be able to power the laptop, however when the laptop is first turned on, your power supply may not be able to quickly adapt to the load.
the power supply is able to provide 3 Amps and the Current measurement shows that consume doesn't exceed 1.5 Amps
There are a lot of possibilities here, perhaps your lab supply isn't accurate or there were power fluctuations. Maybe your adapter plug was not the correct size, so you had a poor or intermittent connection. The laptop may have had an unrelated issue, that caused this problem, I've seen some that turn off as soon as you plug in external power. Perhaps the battery was bad, problem with the motherboard, or maybe a fan wasn't working. There are just a ton of possibilities.
the laptop is an old lenovo... "the beep and dead" seemed to be a power security act... HOW can the laptop distinguish between the its adapter
Usually a beep like that is a bios problem or warning. Also, according to this, it seems that Lenovo has different power supplies and depending on what one is used, it will throttle it's performance. A power supply for a laptop doesn't just have to provide power, sometimes there is some data communication/feed back, perhaps even just a way to verify that the power supply is a real brand name one.
Many laptops have a hidden connection that digitally communicates with the power supply to make sure it's an "approved" one before charging enables. Quite likely the system sort of starts up but the communications check fails. This is often done with a 1-wire EEPROM.
If there isn't such protection with your Lenovo setup, most likely the power supply cannot handle the load imposed by the computer, or as others have suggested your laptop has suffered some sort of hardware failure.
Some devices may have a protection circuit that checks if the supply is providing a limited current. This is particularly true for Nokia cellphones. Try setting your laboratory power supply to provide both a constant voltage and current into the laptop. You can get the required constant current limit by measuring the current when the laptop is on and charging the battery from its dedicated supply. If that cannot be done, try using the indicated output current of the dedicated supply.
Some laptops such as Dell's have a third pin on the power supply that sends data (Dallas 1 wire) to validate that the correct supply is connec
Does your power supply have a current limit feature? If it does then that might explain it. When the laptop tries to draw more current than is allowed the voltage is drawn down to accommodate the increased current. This also might happen if the laptop demands a large amount of current quickly - the power supply voltage will drop before the supply can react to increase the current and the laptop dies as a result.
Your current measurement is probably wrong - you need more power.
