"Fred" wrote in message
...
"Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, the Dark Remover""
wrote

One thought about the latter. In some equipment, they put a
rectifier
diode across the battery with the cathode to positive, so that if
the
batteries are put in backwards, the diode will short them out and
save
the equipment from being damged. Well you may have such a diode,
and
the backwards batteries may hav damaged it so that it's drawing
serious
current and draining the batteries.

Thanks. I'll check those diodes. I know that the batteries aren't
being
drained in this case, though, because the "dead batt" warning comes on
upon
the first attempt to take a photo. Then, if I remove those batteries
and
put them in a flashlight, they work like new.

Yesterday, one of the ladies at work came into the shop and asked me
for
an AA cell, needed for the new wall clock she had just bought. I
gave
her one, and what'd she do? Just shoved it into the holder on the
back,
not even watching which way it was supposed to go in. And of course
she
put it in backwards. Well, DUH, after she turned it around the
right
way, it started working. Murphy's Law applies. :-P

Good thing these ladies don't work at the local nuclear reactor, eh.

SHHHH!! Don't talk about that!

By the looks of this, they already do! (Or did!)

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/n...cfm?pageID=790

Local? You might think you're glad that you live a long ways away from
Cincinnati. But statistically, Chernobyl raised the incidence of cancer
of the thyroid over the whole world. :-(