[NTLK] I have a question about the way the eMate handles

[Dan]

In general, the charging systems is the same.  The difference is it has a light and contacts on the bottom to allow for dock charging (some schools apparently had a rack where you could put a bunch of them on to charge at once).  But the circuity is the same, if I remember right.

I have ran into this before.  You see if the newton (eMate in this case) tries to charge the battery and it doesn't take the charge at a quick enough rate, it will call it "deep toast" and stop charging.  Sometimes various things will make the newt try to charge the battery again.  Sometimes it will succeed and charge the battery.  All will be fine unless the battery gets to 0% again or close to it, then not want to charge.

A pressing the reset button on the bottom will often get a stubborn battery to charge again.  Not always but try it a few times and usually it works unless the battery is really bad.  Sometimes a day it won't want to, then the next day it will and work fine for quite a while.  Also sometimes just leaving it plugged in, it might trickle charge it enough to get the level high enough where the battery starts to charge normally.

In short the battery is in the "grey" zone.  Keep it charged and it might work for quite a while.  Also Ni-Mh CAN get a memory effect.  I don't care what the promotional info says, they can.  And a full discharge is advisable at times.  They aren't near as likely as Ni-Cad but they still can if you do enough shallow charges.  I have had enough of them to know.  On the good side, one deep discharge or two can break the memory unlike Ni-Cad which is much more difficult.

-Dan

On 3/31/2021 7:30 PM, Forrest Buffenmyer wrote:
> I have a question about the way the eMate handles its battery charging task, vs. the way the Newton does.
> 
> Briefly--I recently purchased a like-new eMate off eBay. Not a mark on it; display intact with no marks or scratches. The seller had no way to power it up, so it was sold as-is.
> 
> The battery looked new, as if that mattered. It would not take or hold a charge, which is not surprising considering that it is probably at least 23 years old. But an odd thing happened after I applied the eMate Y2K patch--the battery started to accept a charge, and reached a full charge in a few hours. In fact, I was able to leave it disconnected from power for about 4 days. When last I checked it was at 23%--I probably should have connected the power adapter then, but I foolishly thought it should discharge further, forgetting that NiMH cells don't have the memory effect NiCds do.
> 
> When I came back to it 3 days ago, it was fully discharged, so I connected the eMate to power to recharge it. But again, it would not accept or hold a charge. The eMate said it was "deepToast" and that I should replace it, for those reasons.
> 
> I tried all sorts of things--it worked before, why not now? What if I had caught it before it died?
> 
> I purchased some NiMH AA-sized cells with tabs from Amazon, as I had read Frank's instruction on rebuilding the eMate's battery pack. They were set to arrive today, and that was to be one of today's tasks.
> 
> Meanwhile, I was also struggling with getting MailV to work. I had improperly installed the Internet packages in the incorrect order, so I removed everything I had installed by doing a hard reset, as I had put extra stuff on there that I didn't need. I then installed the Internet packages in the correct order, then added and configured MailV. And then, another odd thing happened.
> 
> The battery AGAIN accepted and held a charge, after a day or more of trying, but only AFTER the reset, as before. It fully charged until the orange charging light changed to green--several hours later.
> 
> So now what happens? Do I tear down and rebuild what could be a still-functioning battery pack...or do I wait until the issue shows up again? 
> 
> Does anyone have any guidance or knowledge regarding this behavior?