Symptom: after coming out of storage of only a few months--totally dead.
No lights, no sounds, absolutely no indication that a charger, a
docking bay or a battery (all known good) are connected at all...a
brick. This particular (peculiar?) dinosaur has two batteries attached
to the motherboard.

First question: why two batteries (one 7.2 volt 40mah, one 2.4v
unit--both NiMH's)?

Who knows - one for CMOS clock, one for soft-controls? really
depends on the design...


Secondly, any reason why the 7-8 year old 2.4 volt unit still reads
2.4v, while the 7.2v piece is totally dead? Or should I instead be
surprised that either worked at all?

Perhaps the 7.2v has enough current being drawn from it to fully
discharge it more quickly (which NICAD/NIMH really don't like).
Perhaps one better quality - perhaps luck of the draw...

Third--and probably most importantly--would that one dead (7.2v) battery
cause the symptom? I don't know how much more time I want to put into
this relic, but I can spring for a battery if that's likely to fix it.

NICAD/NMIH have a tendency to go "short" when they die from old age,
and it may be keeping some low-power "always on" circuit that detects
the various external events you described powerless...

I had a Sony VAIO which had the same problem - internal nicad went
completely dead and it would not power up at all. Seems the battery
is required to recognize the soft-ON button. Once I replaced the
battery it was fine.

If you want to make sure the battery is the problem, try replacing it with
a 1000uf or so electrolytic capacitor - should charge up quickly and
store enough power to get the machine started - that worked on my
Sony machine.

Dave

--
dave06a@ Low-cost firmware development tools: www.dunfield.com
dunfield. Classic computer collection: www.classiccmp.org/dunfield
com Some stuff I have for sale: www.dunfield.com/sale