I dug my LC III out of storage the other day and replaced the battery that had been in there for 31 years. Good to know about these capacitors. I'll leave a note for myself inside the case.
this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2024
89 points (96.8% liked)
retrocomputing
4180 readers
200 users here now
Discussions on vintage and retrocomputing
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
So uh, just a friendly suggestion: don't leave any battery in any computer stored anywhere for any length of time.
If you're storing anything (expecially if it's somewhere that's going to be subject to extreme heat/cold, or humidity or whatever) longer than a couple of months, you should probably be yanking the battery out, because even newly made ones will leak given the right circumstances and enough time.
Yes I know. It just took me 31 years to get around to it.
Well, I mostly was reading it as 'I put a new battery in, then tossed it back in the closet.' and was wanting to comment that adding the new battery isn't a great idea, heh.
Anecdotally, but the only leaky batteries I've had are ones that I replaced with new ones, which is why I'm on team no batteries if you're not using it and no batteries if it's not absolutely required to make the system work.
I'm assuming it's just a case of basically depreciated battery sizes being made by factories that aren't putting in the time to do as good of QA as you might get from a more first-tier manufacturer, but whatever it is, even a shiny new battery is a risk to vintage stuff at this point.
Thanks for the warning. I got the computer out to use it for a bit, but I'll pull the battery again before it goes back on the shelf.
also if they go below the min voltage it won't be safe (and it'll usually not allow you) to charge it back up