Nickel Metal Hydrids

Hi I thought I'd pass on some info about these batteries. I received a laptop with a "dead" battery. The voltage as read from a meter was "0" volts. I mean dead! I first stuck it into the laptop but quickly noticed the smell of hot resistors ( bad idea ). I then connected it to a bench supply running at about 200ma. I watched the level of the voltage until it gradually came up to about 12v ( 14.4v pack ). I placed it back in the laptop and allowed it to charge until it indicated a full charge. I ran it down once to the battery low level and repeated the charge. That was last night. Leaving it for 8 hours, it seems to be maintaining its charge. Moral of the story, don't give up on these batteries. They are remarkably tough. Most NiCads batteries would not recover from such a level. Dwight