On 2018/02/19 5:19 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 19 Feb 2018 17:03:30 -0800, John Robertson
wrote:

I've had 100's of NiCad/NiCd batteries leak on our pinball game boards
since the 1970s. I stored these leakers for many years in a couple of
milk crates (didn't want to simply toss in garbage) until the recycling

Just curious. It sounds like you repair pinball machines. Aside from
playing them when I was a kid, I know little about them. But I did once
see one taken apart, and it appeared to be little more than a
complicated bunch of relays and lights. And they operated from a wall
outlet. I kind of think there was a power transformer inside, so I
assume those relays and lights were low voltage. (probably 6 or 12V).

So, why are there batteries inside of them?


Batteries are used to keep book-keeping information - number of games
played, number of coins, replay levels, game adjustable features, etc.
The most common chip used at first was the 5101 256x4 CMOS RAM, needed
roughly 2VDC to maintain and usually a 3.6VDC Ni-Cad battery was
installed to keep that device charged.

I didn't toss these batteries as I didn't want to pollute the garbage
with them and kept them under my bench in a milk crate (had two crates
filled over 20 years - they didn't leak enough to make any sort of mess
or odor) and in the last few years recycling got to the point where they
would take old batteries at no charge so we could finally safely dispose
of them - I assumed safely, but not so sure now that I hear about all
the recycling done in 3rd world countries...

John :-#(#

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