Hello Joe.

28 Aug 04 02:08, you wrote to all:


 JP> Portable phone:
 JP> ----------------
 JP> My portable phone started blinking so instead of putting it
 JP> on the charger,I tried a diferent approach to discharge the
 JP> battery.I disconnected the charger from the phone line and
 JP> just let it blink.I cut a 1/4" slot in the plastic on each
 JP> end and checking the 3 cells,I found:

 JP>                    Volts
 JP>                 1           2         3
 JP>                 ------------------------
 JP> Start          1.21      1.21       1.21
 JP> 2 hrs later    1.17      1.17       1.17

 JP> This wasn't working so I used 2 common pins separated by paper
 JP> into the tiny plug and clipped a 10 ohm resistor across the
 JP> pack with an output of 3.32 volts .The resistor  got hot fast.

3.5W into 10 ohms is close to 1.2W, too much for a 1/4 watt resistor.

4 of them in series-parallel would probably OK.if the had their full leads
and plenty of ventilation,

 JP> WHOOPS   I went too far.The 3 cells showed

 JP>             1.11        -.05       -.11

if discharging a battery of series connected cells don't dischager below
"one cell dowm"  - for a three cell (3.6v)  battery don;t go
below the two cell voltage (2,4V).



Reverse charging a cell does permanent damage (by reducing the amount of
water in the cell), it's safer to discharge each cell individually.

(say with one 10W resistor across each cell.)


 JP> So I charged it overnight and got
 JP>            1.39        1.39        1.39

a partly damaged cell can still work for many years.


 JP> ====================================================
 JP> Sometimes.I would have a bad VCR tape where part of the
 JP> front section,most heavily used,was damaged by a groove
 JP> (tracking section).I would use a rewinder to find the
 JP> end of the bad section,cut it out and rejoin to the
 JP> input reel using Scotch tape on both sides of the joint.
 JP> I used the shorted tape for saving some VCR scenes for
 JP> special give-aways.I also get short commercial tapes
 JP> from the library that they don't want.
 JP> To get an idea of the time on the tape,I calibrated
 JP> my rewinder as follows:

The length of tape can be told by looking at the marks on the window on top
of the tape,  each mark is 30 minutes of tape on the spool.

Jasen


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