Has the battery gone south in your gidget? Are you sure?

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Not too terribly long ago one of my camera batteries stopped holding a charge, or couldn’t accept one. It pissed me off because the darned thing was only 3 months old. “That’s what I get for buying a 3rd party battery,” said the Biggles.
I saved it so I could dispose of it properly, I figure there’s enough nitwits tossing such things in to our landfill. 2 days out I remembered a trick taught to me by a long since disappeared friend and technical guru. I was fussing with a full height floppy drive, when they only held 360k worth of data, attempting to get the beast to transfer that all important data. It wasn’t working. He came over, looked at the drive, closed one eye, looked at me and said, “Pull off the ribbon cable, take this pencil and clean the contacts on the drive with the eraser.”
I did the same with my camera battery, charged right up! That was months ago with many charges since. So, the next time your battery doesn’t want to cooperate, try cleaning the contacts.
Biggles

4 thoughts on “Has the battery gone south in your gidget? Are you sure?”

  2. Meatgyver! Ha ha.
    I have a balky ink cartridge in my printer that is not “recognized.”
    I couldn’t immediately find an eraser, but I used the reliable mommy recipe of spit and sweatshirt cuff to rub the contacts.
    IT WORKED!!!
    Thank you.

  3. Yup… that’s an old pc tech trick. It’s amazing that something like that will work, but it does.
    Bet the same thing will work on those pesky cell phone batteries that always seem to be dying on me.

  4. I’ve got to try that out on my cordless drill’s power packs. Not sure if it’ll work, but it sure can’t hurt to try.