Jamie t hath wroth:
Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Too_Many_Tools hath wroth:
Does anyone have a favorite battery tester that they would recommend?
Other than what Radio Shack sells I see little else available.
Look again, this time using "battery tester" as Google search keyword.
Sure. For automobile batteries, I use one of these:
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=91129
http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=90636
I have one of the 500A variety. If it gets hot and tries to catch
fire, the battery is good.
Is that anything like back in the witch hunt days?
If they drowned when held under water, I guess that
meant they weren't a witch ?
what analogy 
Ummm... that was during the Salem witch hunts. Back then, they didn't
have the benefit of industry and government approved inspections,
standards, and testing procedures. Forced to invent their own, they
produced something similar to hiring a competitor to design your QA
procedures. Everything was guaranteed to fail.
In this case, the basic assumption was that a witch would float while
a non-witch would sink and drown. It would have been simple enough to
just throw the test sample into a pool of clean water with a known and
controlled pH. If they couldn't swim underwater, they were a witch.
If they floundered around thrashed about, they were either a witch or
at least a good candidate for swimming lessons.
Since the local church was deemed to be the competition of witchcraft,
they added an unrealistic time limit. Instead of waiting for the
floatation test to culminate, they attempted to accelerate the test by
holding the test sample under water. The results were predictable.
Everyone drowned.
This is terrible QA testing, but is very similar to battery testing.
If you give the battery time to discharge properly, it will simply
heat up the load and incinerate everything nearby. However, if you
attempt to accelerate the process by shorting the battery, you're more
likely to have an explosion.
Were we to suffer an infestation of witches today, the methodology
would be quite different. Various industry trade organizations would
immediately engage in a turf war to inscribe the necessary test
standards. One is selected by virtue of the size of the consortium
they can collect, the conglomeration of academics, pundits, industry
burnouts, and newly minted engineers meet to hammer out a suitable
standard for witch testing. Each group contributes its best practices
and patented rituals. After years of expense accounts, travel costs,
voluminous email, and multiple votes, a miserable compromise is
reached. The standard is then published and sold an exorbitant cost.
Of course, by then it's too late to do anything about the witch
infestation, so the test procedure expands to include warlocks,
werewolves, vampires, and such. By this time, researchers have
discovered various security holes and inconsistencies in the original
test procedures, and amendments and annexes are inscribed.
Sometimes, I wonder if the Salem witch hunt method wasn't all that
bad.
--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060
http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558