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Comment by iforgotpassword | Hacker News Reader

Pretty cool hack, these things are just beautiful and math is math, so no need to retire these things.

Two things I stumbled over:

It says alkalines are 1.25V, could've sworn they're 1.5V. don't have any around to check...

Also, first they state with normal AAs you'd need to replace the batteries frequently, but with the 900mAh lipo pack it's good for several weeks of usage. Aren't AAs at over 1000mAh? Again I don't actually have any around to check...

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You are right about alkalines, they are definitely marked as 1.5V nominal. It is the reasoning behind the warnings on Gameboy manuals to not use rechargeable batteries (1.2V), but they worked just fine nonetheless.

Anyone know what they were worried about happening?

I still feel guilty...

IIRC it was mainly a problem with cart based accessories like the camera.

The low battery indicator doesn't work particularly well with recharchables.

With a standard non rechargeable alkaline the voltage drops gradually as the battery discharges, so the battery light coming on at a certain voltage gives the user enough time to save their game and replace the batteries.

Rechargeable AA batteries have a much flatter voltage curve - they basically give a stable 1.2V until they run out of juice and then drop rapidly.

Edit: not lithium, Ni-MH

> Lithium ion batteries have a much flatter voltage curve - they basically give a stable 1.2V until they run out of juice and then drop rapidly.

Did you mean Ni-MH (and possibly Ni-Cd earlier)?

Lithium based rechargeables are usually not in AA format and the voltage is closer to 3.6V.

Oops, yes. For some reason I thought rechargeables like enerloop were lithium but I was remembering wrong.

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