[Slight OT] TDPL in Russia

[Walter Bright]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> I miss the days when there was such a thing as standard battery types.

Me too. My first bad experience with custom batteries was my trusty TI SR-50A 
calculator, vintage 1975. After a year, it would no longer hold a charge, but I 
could still use it with the charger plugged in. And so I used it that way for 
the next 6 years or so. Then the battery got so bad even that didn't work 
anymore, and an EE friend of mine devised a load that behaved like a battery. I 
soldered that in in place of the battery, and got a few more years out of the 
calculator until it completely expired.

Of course, this was in the years before there were desktop computers with 
calculator apps. Gosh I'm old!

(Just for grins, I pulled it out of a drawer and plugged it in. Random led's 
flash. Still busted. Oh well!)