Laptops Powered by AA Batteries

https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4952673/laptops-powered-by-aa-batteries-seriously

by BryanLunduke • 3 years ago

22 14 3 years ago

lunduke.locals.com

ggm2• 3 years ago

Back when Mp3 players were a thing (before the iPod) Archos were making an MP3 player which took 4 AA, and the mail list for alternate runtime (rockbox) was full of discussions about NiMH trickle charging, approaches to maximising battery life, as were Apple Mouse conversations. People went wild for the most long lived, fastest recharge AA.

In some ways, I think it's a shame we didn't go to consumer goods run on Lithium batteries but in this form factor, with discrete charge management cards. So for instance, replacing the batteries in a Thinkpad could have been commoditised.

Bagged cells are damn good for small devices, but they do make it harder.

My Minidisc players were equally 'my battery, my form factor' as are most digital cameras. I guess some people (Dyson) cannot go past the opportunity to make accessories and replacements bound in them, at their price. After sales income is big.

stl_fan2• 3 years ago

I had the Archos Jukebox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archos_Jukebox_series) - so great - I remember the corner bumpers actually working pretty well. Thanks for the memories!

ggm2• 3 years ago

The unit I had also. I put a larger hdd in, I think CF would have been neat. The recorder function was good

mmh0000• 3 years ago

I had a Rio Karma, it remains to this day one of my favorite piece of tech I've owned. The UI was simple and fast, and the tactile buttons let me control playback by touch alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rio_Karma

After my Rio broken (failed HD, and a terrible pain in the butt to take apart, and beyond my skills to put back together...) I got an iAudio X5 L and stuck Rockbox on it. After a few years, I upgraded the HDD to a CF-Card using a CF-to-miniIDE adaptor. I loved the battery life on that thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAUDIO#iAUDIO_X5

But, sadly, now I just use a phone for everything.

I am very happy though that I can at least have foobar2000 on my phone. But, I really miss the well thought-out tactile UI of my previous dedicated players.

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

Seems like the EU laws are going to fix this problem soon!

It sucks that we don't have a universal battery standard for lithium yet though. Seems like at the very least, the OSHW community should have one.

We could have separate charge and discharge pins, and I2C data, so everything stays chemistry-agnostic, and you could parallel two batteries just with diodes on the discharge pins.

You could have all the connections on one side, and only have one width, just different lengths, so the small ones fit anything with just a a spacer block.

Or you could even specify an integrated screw hole.

justinlloyd• 3 years ago

I had the Atari ST Book. Somewhat dreadful machine.

And I had the Amstrad PPC 512 portable which could also be powered by ten regular C-cells. It would eat NiCads by the hour.

And I also had the Sinclair Z88, which lasted about a week or two on a few AA batteries which I used all through college because laptops were new and bulky and the keyboards were noisy and so a number of professor's banned laptops, but the Z88 with its squishy dead-flesh keyboard was all but silent.

The great thing about the Z88 was everything was pre-loaded on to ROM, and your documents held in battery backed RAM for weeks at time, though you flash your files to the EEproms for safety. There was enough capacitance in the Z88 that if you pulled the batteries out to change them for fresh ones, you had about two or so minutes before the contents of RAM was lost.

A friend of mine, Ken, (who worked for Apple at the time) has a prototype Apple portable (pre-powerbook, IIc line I believe) that runs on C-cells. He keeps it on top of his fridge.

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

AA batteries were insane back then.

Technically rechargeables existed. It was always cheaper right now to buy disposables, so of course, if you were a kid in a poor family, rechargeables probably did not exist.

Just complete madness buying disposable batteries on a monthly or weekly basis! I'm glad we don't have to do that anymore!

NikkiA• 3 years ago

if you were a kid in a poor family, rechargeables probably did not exist.

Poor kid from a poor family here, I switched entirely to NiCad AAs and AAAs in 1986 'because it was cheaper' to reuse the same batteries over and over.

I accidentally wiped a bootleg Guns and Roses concert tape by leaving it on top of my NiCad charger (bought from Maplins) once and somehow it had this huge magnetic field that rendered the tape to something that faded in and out in line with the angular position of the tape on the spool.

Today I have about 60 sets of NiMH AAs and AAAs, and still never seem to have a good set around when something needs it's batteries recharging. Today's chargers are a dream compared to the 80s though, I have 5 or 6 and they all have different pros and cons (eg my AccuCell is the 'overall best all around'; my Nitecore can resurrect cells that have gone below 0.7v, deep cycle cells, and handle 18650/14550; and my iMax can charge anything that even looks remotely like a battery)

edit: oh, and a shoutout to EBL for making awesome rechargable Li-Ion PP3s that are actually 9v and have a decent capacity, even if they do need a special charger.

eternityforest3• 3 years ago

Heh, you must have had better long term planning than we did!

I've got a similar number of LSS NiMH, but only one crappy single bay charger for all of them, and they're all over 10+ years old I'm pretty sure, so I don't really have any way to refresh them or even detect which are still good...

The few times a year I need one is always a hassle, I keep meaning to get an ISDT A8 Air, but haven't yet, because I have so few remaining AA/AAA devices and they mostly only need charging once a year.

OfSanguineFire• 3 years ago

What computer-like devices still use AAs? The only ones I can think of are some of Garmin’s GPS units. (There the user-replaceable battery, in a standard format you can buy from any developing-world shop, is seen as a big plus by many users. But one dreads that such units will eventually no longer be offered, replaced only by USB-charged batteries, just because that’s how things go nowadays.)

goosedragons• 3 years ago

Some kids toys for sure. Stuff like the Leapster, mini arcade cabinets, etc.

znpy• 3 years ago

I expected to see:

- The IBM WorkPad Z50 (could use, IIRC, 8 AA batteries)

- The HP Jornada 720/728 (there was an adapter to use two AA batteries IIRC).

I had the HP Jornada 728 and used to run JLime Linux and NetBSD on that. It was a nice toy for a 16-17 years old geek like me.

I had hopes for the Jornada 728 flashrom board... But it never materialized AFAIK.

dragontamer• 3 years ago

Modern AA NiMH is so superior to the crap we used to have, and cheaper too.

I get that Li-ion charges faster, but there is something about industry standard batteries.

Hmmmmm. Maybe it's not so much AA that I miss, but the standardization. If Li-ion were sold and designed for swappable 18650 form factor, then we wouldn't need as many. The problem is that different Li-ion can have different specs and/or safety features (protected cells have slightly less current and are slightly longer).

Still, modern AA NiMH remains a standard form factor and capable.

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The other set of standard batteries is Lead Acid (6V 4.5 Ahr is standardized for example).

When did we become incapable of standardizing parts btw? Why are all of our batteries across iPhones and Google Pixels and Samsung Galaxies different?

Laptops Powered by AA Batteries

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