[NTLK] 2x00 battery rebuild

[NewtonTalk]

> I don't know if you've seen this:
>
https://hackaday.com/2024/12/13/apple-newton-gets-rebuilt-battery-pack/<http
s://hackaday.com/2024/12/13/apple-newton-gets-rebuilt-battery-pack/>

The thermistor is in fact a polyswitch. This is a self-resetting overcurrent
protection. The pack will work fine without it, but it would no longer be
protected from being shorted out from the outside. Admittedly this requires
some bad luck and a certain amount of carelessness. This is why I only
managed to do this once in 24 years. When it happened, I was very happy that
Apple had foreseen there might be Franks out there.

Not soldering or spot-welding the negative contact isn't really a good idea.
Apple did this for a reason. It'd be much safer to carefully remove this
contact from the old battery, clean it, hammer the bottom side flat and
spot-weld it to the battery. I've recently treated myself to a spot-welding
tool and will try this out in the foreseeable future. 

Reusing the wires' soldering is not a good idea. Often those wires are in
very poor condition due to the corrosion. Most times they barely hang on to
their contacts. This especially applies to the temperature resistor's wires.
You should always cut the resistor's ends off and replace the red wire
completely. This makes things reliable and is also much easier to solder.

Cheers

Frank

-- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de