15 Aug
2006
15 Aug
'06
1:21 p.m.
O. Sharp wrote:
Er, I don't think it's the longevity of the
battery _power_ which is at
issue here; it's the physical longevity of the battery itself.
I have mini-Maglites in my toolkit - three of 'em, and they all get use; I
work in the dark a great deal, but that's another story * - and recently
had the unpleasant surprise of having one of the "regular" batteries
corrode and die (and the batteries had been replaced less than a month
earlier). This did an _astonishingly_ effective job of destroying the
interior of the Maglite as well, the acids eating away the Maglite's
shell in a way I literally didn't think was possible. Defective battery?
Some other problem? We may never know.
Could you have left the flashlight on the last time you put it back into
the toolbox? I have had batteries left on for a long time do rather nasty
things. Probably nasty things happen when they go past "discharged".
Whatever the cause, I'd hate to even _contemplate_
the idea of that
possibly happening right next to a DEC backplane.