Soldering directly to button battery

[Jules Richardson]

That's probably about the age of one of the firewall systems - it doesn't need to be any faster (I think it's an AMD K6) for the job that it does, and it's in a nice shoebox-sized case so can sit neatly on the shelf. My main data-recovery system's a few years older than that, kept because it does what I need (where modern systems wouldn't) and I have a few spares for it.

My oldest machines are over 30 years old now, but as they don't even have any kind of battery they're probably not relevant :-)

As salty says, I think AAs would be worse (and AAAs worse still), but maybe for the OP it's a convenience thing (I can never find one of those

2032's kicking around when I need it. Not sure sure about AAAs though, I don't think I have a single thing that takes 'em)

cheers

Jules

[AZ Nomad]

f*ck it. Just buy a few batteries.

I've never soldered to a button cell, but had no trouble with flashlight batteries.

[mick]

Is this a standard 2032 or one of those with 2 legs that stands on edge? Just wondering, as it wouldn't be easy to solder onto the negative side of a 2032 that's mounted in a holder. If you have to solder, why not solder to the other side of the pcb and take the 2032 out? Far easier to just change the battery.

The ones on legs are harder to get, but they are available. If you take them out you get 2 holes to solder your wires into. (The right way round...)

[newshound]

And what if the old battery has low internal resistance, and shorts out your AAAs? It probably won't be easy to solder to anyway, aren't they nickel plated?

[clare]

AAA batteries are almost unheard of in Europe and Africa - but for some reason pretty common here in Canada. We used to install AA battery cases for CMOS batteries way back when - the standard CMOS battery then being a "custom" battery and quite pricy. They were 6.6 or 6 volt, and the size of a 9v battery.

[Tegger]

jamesgangnc wrote in news: [e-mail]:

OP didn't mention that. I did. And only in relation to permanently-affixed CMOS batteries, which were only brought up as an example. I had mistakenly believed that the leads on such batteries were soldered to the battery, but have since been corrected.

[Tegger]

AZ Nomad wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I agree. They're less than five bucks each, full-retail. And their voltage is correct for the equipment in question.

[aemeijers]

AZ Nomad wrote: (snip)

Got a stack of them in the other living room. Want one? I keep meaning to load Ubuntu on them, and put them on the swap board at work for 30 bucks or so, as 'emergency backup e-mail terminals, for when you can't get the kids off the real computer.' Perfectly adequate for that, or for use as typewriters for simple word processing. Haven't checked lately to see if they remember the date, but I have fired up computers stored for

3-4 years before, and they came right up and said hello.

[aemeijers]

I remember those! Zenith z-248 had those, except ours were the size of a short AA. Purple, and made by some company in Israel. Hard to find in civilian world, and damn expensive.

[AZ Nomad]

Fuck it. I get P4 class machines for nothing from people who can't run windows on them any more. Have a pentium-m laptop as a firewall and a P4 Dell as an asterisk based home PBX. Total cost for both machines? Zero.

[clare]

Yes, those too. But MOST motherboards had a "battery header" that allowed you to install an external battery. We even had a rechargeable CMOS battery kit available that charged from a floppy drive connector.

[Bob Martin]

Huh ????????

[Bob Eager]

News to me. I keep quite a few AAAs 'in stock' and use quite a few. One of my cameras (a cheap one) uses them. My old Palm Pilot uses them. Lots of other stuff round the house.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Like remote controls for TV etc? AA are too big for many these days.

Ever noticed that AAA normally cost about the same as AA, but are half the capacity?

[The Daring Dufas]

I've had flashlights/torches that use AAAA cells. They're kind of cute. I have some LED lights that use two lithium cells that are smaller than the AAAA,s and they have a little pin sticking out one end.

TDD

[Chris J Dixon]

Poundland right now have some compact (1) 9 LED torches which use

3 x AAA. They have two versions with either plastic "glow in the dark" or aluminium body. Quite useful illumination, not yet sure how much it glows in the dark.

(1) The aluminium one is about 25 mm dia x 90 mm.

Chris

[Tim Downie]

Um, why?

Tim

[Bob Eager]

Yes, that's another thing. Several Maglites round here use AAAs.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

This RISC OS RPC is 1996, and still on the original battery. It's only powered up when in use - so no more than a couple of hours a day on average. And survived my last holiday. But I really should change the battery as a precaution.

[john hamilton]

============================================================================

Thanks to all. Mike's suggestion of just finding disc/washer the same size at the battery is a good simple solution. why didn't i think of that? Removes the need to be worrying about leaking or explosions.

The reason to replace the button battery with a couple of AAA batteries in a holder, is that the battery powers a very small Laser beam. It really eats the batteries. My understanding is that if I use two rechargable batteries and they are in series I'm going to get about 2.4 V total instead of the 3.4 V of the button battery. Am I right in thinking that this lower voltage will not do any damage to the Laser light mechanism? If it is a bit dimmer as a result, I dont mind.