15 Aug
2006
15 Aug
'06
9:15 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
On 8/14/2006 at 9:35 PM Don wrote:
Exactly! That's why you don't use a proprietary battery!
(and, a battery *inside* a chip is the most proprietary
form I know :> ).
I deliberately redesigned the clock/bbsram's in my SPARCs to
accept an external battery pack -- so I can just swap the
batteries when the time comes (instead of having to hunt down
replacement parts with stale batteries!)
Unless you can make a battery application last A
VERY LONG TIME
(not just a LONG time since those are the cases where you get
screwed because you have forgotten about the battery that
you replaced 1 or 2 years ago... *but*, if you replaced it
*10* years ago you don't mind -- as much -- when it dies
after that long of a service life) it will frustrate users.
Well, consider the Dallas battery-inside-the-chip clock-calendar circuits.
7 years sounded like forever--and it may well have been to the original
owners of the equipment. But now, they're starting to fade and finding
replacements can be a bit of a hassle. In 20 years, it'll probably be
nearly impossible. For this particular application, any keep-alive power
source needs only to
last as long the longest power-off interval. If, as Don, says a supercap
But how often do you power up your '8? I'm sure many folks
have them sit in a corner and only use them intermittently.
E.g., my Voyager hasn't seen power applied in 6 mos or more :-(
OTOH, if you *know* that those AA cells will keep it
running for years AND you just discipline yourself to
put a new set in as a regular maintenance issue (just
like servicing your smoke detector, PDA, etc.), then
you never find yourself worrying if you've not powered
it up often enough to recharge a supercap!
will last several months, that should be good
enough--and it's a permanent
solution. Heck, I wonder if you could trickle-charge the battery with
ambient light via a solar cell. That should extend the keep-alive period
some.
I just don't like chemical reactions in my equipment--it's sort of like
bird's nest soup. It might taste good, but I don't like the idea of eating
bird spit..
I haven't found a "chemical mess" in a piece of equipment
since some paperclad eveready D cells leaked in a flashlight
a few decades ago. I last replaced the batteries in the
SPARCs 3 years ago and my Compaq portable 3 was probably even
longer than that (it is a more "involved" effort to disassemble
than the SPARCs so it doesn't happen as often -- despite the
fact that the consequences of a BBSRAM data loss in the compaq
are potentially more severe than in the SPARCs).