[NTLK] Re - Power was interrupted...

From: Frank Gruendel (Frank_Gruendel_at_t-online.de)
Date: Tue Aug 07 2001 - 17:17:50 EDT


>Well, I haven't cracked it open yet. I may tonight. However, it seems
>less than random. It's completely reset itself several times in the past
>hour, and every time it's been due to me trying to perform an action -
>set a repeating date, creating a new event, filing a note. Whenever I try
>to perform this action - POOF! the unit shuts itself off. When I turn it
>on again, it tells me it was reset because power was interrupted.
<snip>
>It seems too tied to
>particular operations to be a bad contact in the battery compartment...

It's not a very common case, but electrically it is perfectly possible.
A bad battery contact is basically a resistor that lies between the
battery terminal and the logic board inside the Newton. Depending
on how bad the contact really is this imaginary resistor has a lower or
higher resistance (resistance gets higher when contact gets worse).
When you Newton draws current, this current must pass the imaginary
resistor. According to good ol' Ohm's law current through a resistor
will result in a voltage across this resistor. The higher the resistance,
the higher the voltage. The higher the current, the higher the voltage.
This voltage is missing from what the Newton's electronics "sees".
Now doing things, any things, on your Newton usually results in an increase
of the current the Newton draws. How much depends on the action you do and
sometimes on how fast and which what frequency you do it.
Handwriting recognition on my 130 requires more than
twice as much current as what the Newton draws when idle. Twice as much
current means twice as much voltage across the imaginary resistor which
might cause the Newton to draw the conclusion that the power has been
removed.

Frank

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