Battery options for 82143A printer

[Dave Britten]

(02-09-2020 02:34 AM)mfleming Wrote:  I have the same 2x2 AA stacked holder, and unfortunately it's a bit too high to fit the battery door over it. The diameter of an AA battery is more than half the height of the stock battery, so you can't really stack them vertically.

I suspected that was probably the case.

(02-09-2020 02:34 AM)mfleming Wrote:  Mouser has a 2x2 AAA holder that is 24.5 mm square, which is almost exactly the height of the stock battery. You would need to attach clips to the battery wires to connect to the contacts in the compartment, and maybe add a strip of foam to the cover to keep the holder from rattling around in the battery compartment. The cost of the holder was only a little more than a dollar.

The capacity of an Eneloop AAA rechargeable is 750 mAh while a generic subC NiCd is 2500 mAh, so operating life would be much less. Four short AA batteries in a cut-down 2-wide by 2-long holder might work, but I'm sure the capacity would less than the subC and would be a bit of a pain to charge the short AA battery outside the holder.

What was the rated capacity of the original battery pack? Modern NiCd batteries seem to roughly double those from the '70s, and NiMHs are about quadruple. Woodstocks can run for a crazy long time on a pair of AA NiMHs. So AAAs might not be that far off the original spec, actually.

When you say "short AA", are you referring to flat-top cells, or something else? I've got a charger that handles flat-tops just fine, and has spring contacts on the negative end, so it can handle anything ranging from just a hair longer than an N, all the way up to a LiIon 18650 (and possibly longer).

(02-09-2020 02:34 AM)mfleming Wrote:  How about using a modern charger on a rebuilt battery pack outside the printer? Mark Hoskins has something like that for the Classic 3-pack.

I could certainly live with that, if such a charger is available for the Topcat/printer batteries.