AZ Nomad wrote:

On Tue, 3 Jun 2008 23:04:29 -0700, CWLee wrote:


I've had a Black & Decker cordless power drill for 3-4
years - used maybe 10 times and always recharged when
finished. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that it didn't
seem to be charged, and when I tried to recharge it I don't
think it charged fully. Eventually I took it to a B&D
Service Store, and the employee said that although the
battery was old enough to be going bad, mine seemed to be OK
and accepting a charge just fine. I left puzzled. At home
I put a voltmeter on the B&D wall wart recharger that came
with the drill, and instead of 15 vac output as labeled and
specified in the manual, I was only getting about half a
volt.


I had a couple of other 15 vac wall warts left over from
phone answering machines, so I tested one of them, and it
was providing 15 vac, so I plugged it into the drill.
Battery seemed to recharge for about 30 minutes, with the
wall wart getting warm (as the manual said is normal). Then
it went cold, and when I applied the voltmeter I got about 1
volt.


There are two things you have to consider.

1) the voltage: must match. Too high and the connected device will fry.
Too low and the connected device won't function.

2) the current: must be enough. Too low and the supplying device may fry as
you've discovered. Too high and the supplying device will simply be larger
than necessary. Otherwise, having a supplying device that can deliver more
current than needed is OK.

And of course the billion kinds of connectors available. It is high time
all this nonsense was standardized. Douglas Adams did an excellent piece call
"war on little dongly things" talking about this insanity.
http://www.parttimepimp.net/ptpBB3/v...0&hilit=locked
Hmmm,
Depending on what kinda battery(Ni-Cad, Lithium, etc.) method of care is
different. Ni-Cad has to be deep cycled. If you keep chrging it, it will
hold charge less and less developing memory. Newer batteries don't do this.