A Varta battery too good not to share...

[chris_nh]

I pulled a Varta battery from a 1984/85 vintage Quadboard and was surprised it hadn't yet leaked ... even better, it still has .8v haha

Ironically, this battery has destroyed most Quadboards. Not this one, somehow. The PC it came out of was a rat infested nightmare, yet this thing cleaned right up and still has voltage. To the trash it goes anyway, but I also got a cool souvenir... check it out:

 

[the3dfxdude]

I would be curious how badly these can leak out, being encased in the plastic. I pulled one of these off my quadboard a few weeks ago, and was leaking down the center pin. But it was barely noticeable without close inspection, and hardly left a mark on the board.

It would be nice to know a way to replace these.

 

[chris_nh]

They can leak pretty bad ... I have a couple of quadboards with bad traces due to battery leakage. The traces are very fine on these boards and it doesn't take much leakage to cause damage. Some boards are more durable than others, but these Quadbords seems to take it pretty hard with the battery.

You can replace the battery with another 2.4v as they still make these in nicad varieties so you can ensure future leakage if you want that super authentic retro experience A good fix might be to add header pins in place of the battery, then it would be fairly easy to apply 2.4v from any source and not have to worry about leakage. I got lucky on this one too, it de-soldered fairly easily.