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On the battery there will be a model number. Put that model number into duckduckgo search engine and see what you get. I have an old Black & Decker battery electric mower (old as in late 90s) and I can still find batteries for it.
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NiCd batteries need to be used regularly to be able to hold a charge. It's a poor choice for something that's going to sit unused for most of a year (not that it was your choice). You might have better luck with lithium batteries. There are also battery repair stores all over the place, so they might be able to extend your tool's lifetime when it comes to that.
A cord on a hedge trimmer is going to be just as annoying if your hedge is large. And eventually the plastic insulation on the wiring is going to break down. Maybe you'll get twenty to thirty years out of it. Plan your budget accordingly.
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I bought several products from a "universal" line of small battery-powered devices, figuring that the battery packs would be replaceable and interchangeable. Not only did the battery packs die, but the company didn't add any models to their line, so both the product and its entire concept became obsolete.
Some of the motors for these battery-powered devices make good robot effectors.
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No Science here but if you are going to purchase a cordless anything
in the Power Tool Visit the local Pawn Shop and look at the brands and
the type of Battery the tool requires and the motor type Brush less
vs Brushed
You will find very few Milwaukee M 18 Lithium Brush Less tools
Ryobi 18 Volt Lithium Brush Less Tools
If you are shopping NEW this is a way to weed out what you do NOT want
Ryobi and Milwaukee are both owned by Hong Kong based manufacturing company Techtronic Industries
The price difference is HUGE by my standard that said I still believe you get what you pay for
Side Note I have a 20 year old Dewalt Corded Drill will drive screws in 2 in OAK with no effort
the Milwaukee Fuel Hammer Drill takes longer and more effort
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We've used a local place that would take those packs apart and rebuild them for us. I think it was Batteries Plus.
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batteries plus will rebuild the batteries for you.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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I used to use rechargeable nicad batteries with bicycle lights. I learned from the seller that you have to fully discharge the battery before recharging it, otherwise it develops a type of memory where it will not hold more power than you usually use.
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An 18v Ni-Cd battery is not going to last very long. All the cells are in series, and so they all discharge and charge at the same rate. But since they don't have exactly the same capacity, the weakest cell will end up being fully discharged first (and possibly reverse charged, which is especially bad for Ni-Cd cells), and it will be fully charged before the others, further stressing it. Once this cell goes bad the whole thing is toast. So fully cycling an 18v Ni-Cd battery can cause it to go bad sooner than mostly discharging it.
I have several of the Ryobi one+ series of tools and batteries. All the Ni-Cd batteries have long ago gone dead and been discarded, and all the Lithium-Ion batteries I bought are still going strong. Yes they cost a lot more, but they are well worth the difference in price.
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Not just cordless equipment, but other things like printers. Print head on my HP 8640 died. $200 for a new print head; $180 for a new printer--go figure. BTW, the time to replace the print head is under 5 minutes and requires no tools.
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The mention of computer history and the book, "Soul of a New Machine" made me remember the old days and mini-computers. They were called "mini" because they weren't like the old room-filling mainframes. Most of these were about the size of standard refrigerator. That's the era in computing that I am most fascinated with and one that the details of are mostly unknown to most people today. I especially like how the machines were built. They used what is known as the "bit-slice" design. The CPU usually took an entire two-foot square circuit board and it was built with circuits that were initially just one bit wide and they essentially stacked them together to achieve the word width they wanted. Many of which were 32-bits and, as I recall, DG's was 36. AMD was probably the biggest company making the chips at the time and eventually they came up with 4-bit wide chips. All of this was before microprocessors became useful enough to compete with the bit-slice designs.
An amusing story from the tail end of this era : I worked at a company that had a room full of mini-computers including several VAXes. We were doing a project that controlled the North Shore Pipeline and talked to several RTUs using the Modbus binary protocol. It uses CRC-32 CRC-16 to compute a checksum for every packet and that would bring the VAX 750s to its knees. The CPU usage would spike every time because this was before the table-driven algorithm had been publicized. DEC's answer was to implement the CRC-32 CRC algorithm in firmware. To implement this a new set of microcode on EPROM was installed and the CPU board was re-wired. The local service guy, Ed, came and had to change the wiring on the CPU board which was ALL wire-wrapped. I couldn't believe it. It was NOT a printed circuit board - it was all wire-wrapped. Those modifications made a huge difference and CPU usage was normal afterward. This was in around 1985 or so and it still amazes me.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
modified 13-May-21 12:25pm.
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Rick York wrote: several VAXes
Before Ravi falls over in a dead faint, I'll let you in on a small correction. The plural form of "VAX" is "VAXen"  .
I worked on several VAX-11/780's back during the 1980's. The 780 would let you load microcode at startup time via an 8" floppy drive attached to the PDP-11 they used as a console/boot device.Rick York wrote: the wiring on the CPU board which was ALL wire-wrapped
Reminds me of a project I watched in the same facility during that era. It was a graphics engine, 1024x1024 resolution, with 32 bit planes. Four cabinets of 8 bit planes each, 4 boards per bit plane. Each board was densely populated and looked to be about 24" square. All. Wire. Wrap. I really felt sorry for the poor schmucks installing the nightmare. After months of work they finally got one cabinet to power up successfully and run for a demo. I don't think the Air Force ever accepted the system, however.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I still insist that the plural is "VACes" -- "VAXen" is too Germanic in my opinion.
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Gary Wheeler wrote: Each board was densely populated and looked to be about 24" square. All. Wire. Wrap. I really felt sorry for the poor schmucks installing the nightmare.
I have a small project I created that uses a small tft screen and there is one data line for each channel (8 total) plus about 8 or so other lines I have to wire to the arduino and just dealing with those few and running into issues where something isn't making a great connection can drive you insane, so I can only imagine.
Best Debugging Tool Ever: Continuity test setting on multimeter. 
Great stories, thanks for sharing
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You're welcome.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Why CRC32?
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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That is part of the Modbus RTU standard. The Modbus ASCII protocol does not require a CRC but apparently they added it for the binary RTU version. Back then, communication was mostly 9600bps and 19600 was considered fast. RTUs were usually separated at far distances so repeaters and modems were frequently used. In the case of the pipeline, the RTUs were separated by about a quarter mile between them so some were miles away.
Today, the vast majority of communication using Modbus is over TCP/IP and no checksums are used - TCP/IP's error handling is relied on.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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RTU MODBUS standard uses CRC16.
"In testa che avete, Signor di Ceprano?"
-- Rigoletto
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OK.
"They have a consciousness, they have a life, they have a soul! Damn you! Let the rabbits wear glasses! Save our brothers! Can I get an amen?"
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I supervised the CAM group in the early 70's at GTE where we built PABXes. Our group took circuit data from the CAD group and produced the wire wrap data for Gardner-Denver wire wrapping machines. The data was created and stored on a pair of IBM 370 models 158 & 168. It was accessed from three IBM 1800's via 9600 BPS bi-sync links and stored locally on 2311 disk drives using a MRU algorithm. We drove 30 such wiring machines and 10 testing machines from two of these computers with the third as backup and running low priority applications.
We got more productive work done out of 32K mini-computers than most people get out of 32GB machines nowadays. OF course, we didn't have to worry about fonts, font sizes, colors, windows, icons and all the other glitz.
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He went West, reached one end of the flat earth and fell down.
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Interesting read. Haven't heard form him in years now I know why.
Used to like his stuff, but haven't heard anything in a very long time.
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If you ate a clock, would it be time consuming?
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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You got that thought second hand, didn't you.
"the debugger doesn't tell me anything because this code compiles just fine" - random QA comment
"Facebook is where you tell lies to your friends. Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers." - chriselst
"I don't drink any more... then again, I don't drink any less." - Mike Mullikins uncle
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