jj@rabbit.UUCP (11/06/84)
There's a much better (for the batteries, at least) way t discharge nicads than leaving them in the appliance over a long period of time with the appliance on. When you do this, the series connection of the nicads will very often REVERSE charge the weakest cell in the set, and short it. <Reverse charging a nicad often shorts it permanantly, because sharp crystals build up rapidly on the separator, and quickly puncture it.> A better way to discharge a nicad is to take 10 ohm, 1 watt (or even less, really) resistors and connect one of them across EACH battery individually, withOUT the device turned on. One or two nights of this treatment will completely discharge all of the cells, without a chance of reversing any one cell. This trick has brought back quite a few "dead" calculator packs for me. -- BE KIND TO SOFT FURRY CREATURES, THEY OFTEN HAVE LARGE, WHITE, TEETH. "And it's 1, 2, 3, ..." (allegra,ihnp4,ulysses)!rabbit!jj