[LRflex] Hyperdrive Support...

HI Doug!
On your suggestion, I purchased a Hyperdrive HD-80 with a 60-mb hard drive.

I charged the batteries, and the unit indicated all was well.  Then, 
when I went to use it, I got Error 20 - low batteries.

I wrote Hyperdrive, and got the following answer, which I thought you 
might find interesting.

>The HD80 would take approximately 3 hours to fully charge a set of 
>empty 2500mAh NiMH rechargeable batteries. Brand new batteries do 
>not come charged and would take slightly longer time to "break in". 
>Do allow up to 6 hours of charging for newer batteries. A recent 
>firmware upgrade has increased the battery charging limit to 6 hours 
>from the original 3 hours mentioned in the user manual.
>
>If the charging time is too short (less than 1 hour), plug out and 
>plug in the AC power to restart the charging process. Avoid moving 
>the HD80 unit while it is charging as movement may cause the 
>batteries to move away from the contacts, causing the HD80 to end 
>charging prematurely.
>
>Do note that the chemistry of NiMH batteries is such that they will 
>self-discharge even when not in use. It will take approximately 1 
>week for a set of fully charged NiMH batteries to lose most of its 
>charge, faster if the batteries are left in the unit. When not in 
>use for extended periods, remove the batteries from the HD80 to 
>extend the battery life. If you intend to use the HD80 over periods 
>longer than a week without recharging, you may wish to consider 
>using non-rechargeable lithium AA batteries as they not 
>self-discharge and can transfer up to 80GB of data on a single charge.
>
>As the HD80 is a series circuit battery charger (i.e. it treats all 
>4 batteries as a single cell during charging), it may not be able to 
>fully charge all the batteries if the individual cells have uneven 
>charge capacity. Uneven charge capacity amongst the cells may occur 
>if batteries of different brand, capacities or charge conditions are 
>intermixed. It may also occur if at least one of the cells is 
>originally weaker than the rest of the cells. Under this situation, 
>you may wish to consider getting an external battery charger with 
>individual circuit battery charging and battery 
>refreash/conditioning function to bring individual cells to full 
>capacity, so that they can perform optimally in the HD80. You can 
>find many of these chargers from http://www.thomasdistributing.com
>
>If the unit is still showing error 20 (batteries not charged) even 
>when the batteries has been fully charged by an external charger, 
>check that the contact points on the batteries and HD80 unit are 
>clean. Pulling out the HD80 battery spring contacts a little also 
>helps to improve battery performance, as the spring contacts may be 
>compressed over time. Remove the batteries when not in use.

I thought the bit about using non-rechargeable Lithium AA's was interesting!

Overall, I'm quite happy with the unit, and will take it (with a set 
of lithiums) to Europe, next week.

Thanks for the idea!

Cheers!
---

David Young,
Logan Lake, CANADA

Wildlife Photographs: http://www.telyt.com/
Personal Web-pages: http://www3.telus.net/~telyt






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