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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • If you still have a land line you can dial locally without even an area code. This worked in most countries. Some mobile phone networks kept this tradition although in a weirder way: you could dial locally when physically located in those areas, and your phone would display the area code you were in on the its standby screen. Which worked as long as you weren’t on a border between cells and it picked the wrong one.

    Over time this went away.

    I don’t think this is what you have experienced, but it was a nice thing that blurred the lines between land line and mobile phones for a little while, and I think it’s interesting.










  • I’d go even lower, maybe 50mA. The main issue you’re fighting is internal resistance, which will cause things to heat up. Your other issue is that I’ve averaged things, however it’s quite likely that one or more cells has a significantly lower voltage than others (and therefore a higher resistance) so can cause more risk.

    If you’re able to get the pack apart and measure the cells separately that will help a lot



  • I am assuming that 18v is 5 cells in series, with a nominal voltage of 3.7 x 5 = 18.5 volts. At 15.22 each cell is around 3 volts. 3 volts is usually considered the absolute minimum you can discharge cells to. (3.3v is considered flat) If it won’t charge, it’s probably dead.

    It might be possible to rig up a charger to very very slowly charge the battery up to about 3.3 volts, at which point the proper charger might agree to fully charge the battery, but with the cells already below 3.3v there’s a good chance it won’t work even if you did that. And it’s not without risks.