[34S] battery warning indicator / question

[MarkHaysHarris777]

hi John, ... the battery indicator is mostly useless (its nobodies fault, it just is). The reason for this has already been hinted at... but, most of the time the calculator is idle and the current is for the most part zero. The cells have a chance to recover a surface voltage that will read very near perfect!-- 2.9 or 3.0/ but, the cells are dead. Marcus has said if you see 'reset' but, I would add that if the machine takes a couple of seconds to power on (Marcus can fill in the details) ...the machine makes a calibration of the crystal when the power cuts out... my new 30b was doing this right out of the box, because it had weak cells. I replaced the cells and the problem vanished.

To check the coin cells you need to do the very thing you would do if checking the battery in your vehicle... check the voltage under load of significant current. You can do this with your calcualtor by putting the machine into a tight nop loop and then measure the voltage and current. If the machine steps into slow mode, replace the cells. if the voltage drops much below 2.7 in a tight loop replace the cells. Having said that, that is ONLY if you're going to be doing coding, program loops, or updating. If you're only going to be doing that occasional calculation (manual from the keyboard) one a day, don't worry about it... those little coin cells will last 7 months.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
marcus