Dell :: Battery And BIOS Replacement

I went to the Dell website the other day to check out if there were any updates for my system, as my CD drive was not working. I ran my service tag, which did not help my drive problem (which I will touch up on in a bit) but did notice that it said my BIOS needed to be updated, the urgency level is optional (so I'm assuming it's not all that important). So, I downloaded the file and went to run it, but got a message stating something like both my charger had to be plugged in and battery had to be charge before it would flash the bios.

I thought that was weird, so I did some investigating. First thing I did was go into the device manager to see if it would even show the battery, which it did, without any errors. I scratched my head a bit, and then went into the setup menu (pushed F2 at startup) and went to look for battery info. It showed that there was no recognized battery nor was there a recognized charger.

I remembered that my laptop had been shutting off (just going completely black) for no reason, which told me two things; that my battery in fact was dead and also that there was a problem with the charger. I went to look at the charger, and noticed it was frayed at the connector.

I replaced the charger, and my computer quit shutting off on its own. However, it still was not recognizing the battery. In the device manager it is still showing a fully functional battery, and in the startup menu it is still not showing any battery, yet it now shows the charger.

I forgot to mention that I have also replaced the battery. Both the new and old batteries did show that they were fully charged when the new AC adapter was installed, I checked by pushing the button on the battery its self and got 4 green lights. Oh, these are genuine Dell batteries and the computer will run on battery power alone.

I have found a few ways to flash the BIOS without the battery, but this sounds a bit too risky.

So, here are my questions:

1) What the heck do I do about my battery? Sure, it's just a minor annoyance that I can't see the charge in the system tray, but it's also starting to drive me nuts simply because it's a problem I cannot seem to solve.

2) Right now my BIOS version is A04. Dell wants me to install A17. This seems like a huge jump, and not knowing all that much about BIOS, I am not sure if this would even be a good idea to upgrade. What do you think? The frustrating thing is that from what I've read I need to update my BIOS in order to get my comp to read the battery (or this is one likely solution), but I cannot update the BIOS without the computer recognizing the battery. Catch 22...

3) Off topic, but the problem which brought me to my current battery/BIOS situation. My CD drive is shot. I took it out and checked to make sure all ribbons were properly in place and looked good, cleaned the lens, etc, but like a moron I ripped one of the ribbons, so now it truly is trash. Does anybody know of an inexpensive, yet reliable DVD-R/RW (not just CD-RW) drive for sale that will work with my system?

Information that may be important (let me know if I need to post more):

Dell Inspiron E1505
Windows XP Pro, SP3
BIOS Version A04
Original Dell Battery and AC Adapter.