Posted 2024-07-30 | Back to blog index
So the other day I was up was late, and spent a bit more money than I should have...
The battery isn't leaking or puffing up so that's good, but all the adjustable power supplies I have put out 7.7V on the 7.5V setting and km getting this "The adapter is providing too much power. The battery cannot be charged with this adapter." error so I don't know if it will hold a charge
I got it for $100 which is about the going rate for them over here (but tested working ones often sell for twice that, not sure if those are fake sales to anchor prices or people are really paying that)
But it's something I've always wanted since they first came out and they're unlikely to get cheaper in the future I guess? /justification
Running it off of my bench power supply for now, it seems happy with when it's supplying a solid 7.45V.
Once you plug it in, it claims to charge the battery (and the bench supply draw goes up by 1A) for only a minute or so until it deems the battery fully charged. Seems unlikely the battery was already charged when I got it, so the battery is probably shot.
It *will* stay on if I unplug it momentarily, I'll have try to see how long it goes before it dies
I guess I was being too pessimistic!
I unplugged it and played dopewars and tetris, with the backlight on, for an hour, and it “only” went down to 30% battery. Pretty decent IMO! I guess it did have a lot of residual charge somehow, even though it wouldn't turn on?
So some conclusions after messing around a bunch with my bench power supply and third-party supplies:
* Anything supplying over 1.2 A will cause it to complain about too much power, even at a lower voltage
* Anything under 7 V and it won't charge the battery
* A cheap third party supply at 7.5 V @ 1 A which ought to work will shut itself off for overcurrent protection
* My bench power supply set to current limit at 1.2 A works great, voltage drops to like 6.9 V (nice)
Today I spent the day re-sorting all the drawers in my office since I've been having trouble finding stuff, and I ran across this Newton OMP box (with 2 dead OMP) that I bought for cheap just to get the "Getting Started" card. I remembered it had a battery charger but took a look in the yellow box again and look what else was in there...
I guess this solves my problem!!
