-=> JEAN PARROT wrote to WAYNE CHIRNSIDE <=-

 JP>         Good morning to you Wayne, how are you today ?

 WC> A simple zapper can be made with a 50 - 80,000 Uf capacitor rated for
 WC> about about 50 volts and charged with a DC rectified transformer
 WC> rated at 35 volts or so, it'll float higher on such a light load
 WC> as you'll present.

 JP>         Well documented ! I use a simple 12v battery charger and stroke
 JP>         the cells with that 12v 3 to 4 times. It gives a nice spark but
 JP>         will revitalize the cells. I have done this hundreds of times.

More or less the same difference.
I have done it many times as well but I've a couple of diode junctions
and a resistor to discharge the individual cells but not allow them 
to go into charge reversal so it didn't come up all that often.
Think I used a germanium  transistor connected as a diode in 
series with a conventional silicon diode to arrive at the correct
cutoff point.
I'm a real believer in the KISS principle.
My battery charger consists of as above with several
bayonet style bulb sockets for current limiting.
I simply change bulbs to arrive at the right charge rate and it's a 
handy reminder the things on so I turn it on at night
and switch it off in the morning... charged.  
Got to rebuild some of this stuff and buy some more cells
as I lost a lot of stuff in my previous move.
I've got several transformers and and one homemade charger
however so I need not buy or assemble much.

BTW my antique computer project I kludged together out of a fried
and salvaged system is now operating at 66 MHz instead of 50MHz. 
I found the documentation on the board and swapped processors
and rejumpered. Actually the documentation ID'ed both jumpers
wrong but I figured it out.
Only one thing remains to go and that's to jumper off 
the useless daughterboard modem to reclaim COM 1 IRQ 4
but I think I'll do that on the old stripped system first to see 
if it goes as expected, all I need is to arrive at post and 
see what goes however now I'll have to rejumper _that_ board
for the SX-486 50 that now resides in it.
I want to do this so I can put a second voice modem in it to operate
my FAX, data, answering machine software.
I'll have one HS modem for the internet and one slowpoke
for voice - FAX.
My Pentium project only lacks a hard drive :-)
I'm looking towards building a Asus motherboard P4S8X - Pentium 4 based 
system next year unless a better M.B. comes to my attention by the
time I'm ready to build. I figure the costs at 416 dollars
for a 2.5 GHz basic bare bones box. Onboard good video and sound
but can also take cards, 6 USB ports, 6 PCI. 
This of course does not include software, monitor, keyboard, 
mouse, CD-ROM or the like but I've some old stuff here I can use
and upgrade as things progress and prices drop.
I'm hoping to turn this into a money making venture
as the system I'm describing is now available only at a cost of 
3,000 dollars retail but that includes some of the goodies.
 

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