This is just to report one last time that the battery pack mentioned in the previous post is working perfectly, with a long, long runtime, and with the machine's charging circuitry being happy at last. This contrasts with several "solder your own" solutions I have tried over the years, which always ended up as disappointments. You seemingly need specialized welding equipment to make that work, since the cells are fatally damaged by the heat of conventional soldering equipment.
I see that I last posted about this on December 11, when I first charged the battery purchased. After intermittent but regular use (I have turned the machine on more or less every time I have passed it, as well as using it weekly for this and that), I just charged it up for the second time, 78 days later, on Feb 27 — and the battery was not yet completely exhausted. I would expect the second cycle of the NiMh battery pack to give an even better result.
I think I am going to order more sets for other machines, and not just my Newtons, as it would be trivially easy to recell, say, a PowerBook 190cs with a couple of 6-cell NiMh packs. Once that can be shown to work, then maybe a 1xx-series battery would be next.
I see that I last posted about this on December 11, when I first charged the battery purchased. After intermittent but regular use (I have turned the machine on more or less every time I have passed it, as well as using it weekly for this and that), I just charged it up for the second time, 78 days later, on Feb 27 — and the battery was not yet completely exhausted. I would expect the second cycle of the NiMh battery pack to give an even better result.
I think I am going to order more sets for other machines, and not just my Newtons, as it would be trivially easy to recell, say, a PowerBook 190cs with a couple of 6-cell NiMh packs. Once that can be shown to work, then maybe a 1xx-series battery would be next.