exxos's Atari, Amiga & retro forum

Hey guys, currently working on a Toshiba laptop restoration and need to find some new batteries, or rebuild them. But I noticed they're nicad so would I even be able to replace them with NiMH? Or lithium?

Any ideas welcome!


EDIT: Found some battery details online

I'm a bit rusty with all this but..Swapping to NiMH probably be ok.. but lithium is a bit more complicated because they are normally charged to a set voltage.In that if you have a 12V battery, it will be charged current limited to 12V. Older batteries tend to use "float charging" which could actually be several volts higher than the rated battery voltage. So it really depends what your charger is outputting as to what types you can actually use..

I found a source for the nicd 4/3aa battery:
https://www.allbatteries.co.uk/nicd-bat ... n0113.html

They also do one similar to the MEMO POWER battery, but nimh:
https://www.allbatteries.co.uk/nimh-bat ... h0019.html

I might contact them about the second one...

I did some research online and it seems it would be best to stick with nicd, mainly due to the charge/discharge differences. Apparently nicd are actually better for laptops because they discharge must more slowly than nimh (so much better for cmos rtc etc)

nicd have nowhere near the run time capacity of nimh though. Just look up Ah figures. Back in the day AA's were like 100mA ni-cad. Now we can push 2-3amps from nimh.

RS still sell nicads AFAIK. Last time I checked they stock tabbed ones so you can solder wires and heat shrink them if space is too tight to fit a cell holder.

Were I live ni cad battery can be found in stores the carry spare batteries for cordless phones cheap. I just got one for my shaver just had to change the end

Tom