That said, the battery pack definitely contains 3
Ni-Cad cells, each
typically around 1.1 or so V. (I have had mine apart, rebuilt with
stock Ni-Cads, ond not fried anything.) Therefore 3.3 V to the
electronics makes good sense.
IIRC it was called a 'BP1A' battery pack. It was just 3 NiCds in series,
notihing more, and I'd estimate it as being about 3.6V open-circuit. I
know (becuase in my younger and even more foolish days I did it), you
could run the SR51A calculator off 3 alkaline primaey cells in series
(4.5V).
One thing I would *not* do would be to plug in the calculator without
a good battery pack in place, based on the circuit diagram and on
No, nor would I. At least one of my old TIs has a warning label on the
bottonm which says something like 'Battery pack must be in position
before connecting charger'.
Tony's advice pertaining to the dire consequences
of similar actions
with HP calculators.
FWIW, there is one more factor in the story. TI made a printer base
(PC-100?) that you could place the calculator (TI-58, -58C, or -59)
on to generate printouts. The method of connection was to take out
the battery pack, and place the cavity that it just vacated over a
protrusion on the face of the printer, which would then expand to
lock the calculator into place. (There was also a compartment to put
That 'plug' connected both to the normal calculator battery contacts and
to a row of a doze or so contacts on the logic PCB which carried the
printer data signals, etc.
the battery pack into so it could charge while you
printed.) Whatever
the power supply in that doohickey was, it circumvented the battery
completely. If anyone has one of those and could measure the voltage
on its power pins, that would likely shed lots of light on what the
I do have one (in fact I have a couple), but the one I can easily get to
has a 110V transformer in it, so it would take a little time to test it.
It may not help anyway. It'll apply 3.6V or so to the calculator power
contacts to run the machine, and it'll supply a suitable charging
voltage/current to the removed battery pacb. But that won't tell you what
the calculator's internal charging circuitry needs from the wall-wart,
since that circuitry is not used when you use the printer cradle.
Oh yes, IIRC, if yuo put a TI58C on the cradle, it'll work, but you lose
the contents of the continuous memory if you turn off or unplug the
cradle from the mains.
-tony