Re: [NTLK] Help! Either my battery or I is (or am) ODD

~~~ On 2007/09/02 19:07, Frank Gruendel at newtontalk@pda-soft.de wrote ~~~

> ...
>> My lame excuse is, my laziness is a disguise for my ignorance.
>
> Weird. In my case it's usually the other way round ;-)
>
And that's not even the weirdest thing about me.

> ...
>> Incidental question: is there any possibility that a communications card,
>> e.g., a modem in one machine but not the other, can significantly interfere
>> with all this? Newt #1 has a modem in it more often than not.
>
> Yes. Very much so. All cards suck current, some more, some less.
> Communications cards have a tendency to suck more current than e. g. memory
> cards. Some can discharge a fully discharged battery within hours. There are
> some other ways to waste current, by the way, like e. g. having set "Receive
> beams automatically" in the Prefs.
>
Turning off greedy preferences was one of the first things I learned on this
list. The reason I asked is because I have a comms card I sometimes use,
and I've been a little suspicious of its appetite.

> ...
> Some things you should know...
>
> 1) It sometimes takes a while before a Newton that has just been switched on
> updates its battery capacity value. I've had Newtons that took almost a
> minute to do this. So if your "charger" Newton reports 100% although the
> battery has been charged days or weeks before, this might actually not be
> correct if you check this value immediately after powering it up.
>
I never noticed, or even thought about, a time lag on registering a
battery's percentage of charge. I'll have to look out for that one.

> 2) The Newton is somewhat dumb if you change the date during a charge cycle.
> It sometimes draws the conclusion that the cycle should have finished long
> ago and simply stops it. Although 100% might be reported, the cycle might
> not be finished, because after reaching 100% the Newton charges happily on
> until the cells' temperature exceed a certain value.
>
Ah! This could be important. Over the last 2 years that I've had my Newt,
I've been moving old journal-type items into it little by little, so I can
have them with me in one place. It suits my purpose to create back-dated
Notes files so they will arrange themselves the way I want. From time to
time I create these back-dated files by setting the Newton back to the
relevant date. (So far the oldest files I've created are for 1981.) I
can't even begin to imagine how that might be disorienting my poor Newt!

> 3) If you do not want to use the sledgehammer yet, try *almost* using it on
> both Newtons before you swap a battery. You should start with Reset #4 as
> described on my site, but press "No" when the Newton asks its "Do you really
> want blabla..." questions. After that you should wait a minute and then
> check the reported capacity. Do this BEFORE you remove the battery from the
> charger Newton and AFTER you plugged it in the other Newton.
>

Thanks for that, Frank. This is worth knowing. I know it's only a box of
circuits, but I have the same feeling about the Hard Reset that I'd have if
I heard a client was going to be leucotomized. Like I said, I can't get the
picture out of my mind that scene of HAL9000 singing, "Daisy", slower and
slower, deeper and deeper, as his "mind" is shut off. Irrational? Oh, yes.
But it's there none-the-less. More rationally (and this is where my
ignorance comes in), I don't want to wipe his -- sorry, its -- brain, only
to discover I failed to back up some program I really want but can't find.
And I don't want to have to teach the Newton my technical terms, my foreign
vocabularies, all my little short-cuts, etc., all over again. Heck! I'm
not even sure I'd be able to remember all of them if I had to recreate them.
I suppose it's about the time I'd waste.

I'll try this "lump-hammer" first.
 
Shalom.
Christian

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

³Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from a Newton.²
            -- What Arthur C. Clarke meant to say

http://youtube.com/watch?v=1ZzpdPJ7Zr4
(With thanks to Chod Lang)
http://tinyurl.com/29y2dl

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Received on Mon Sep 3 11:51:56 2007