Not really "Mac Hardware" but the closest this forum has.

I refurbished my eMater battery for the second time. Last time I did this was years ago, and I followed instructions here: http://www.pda-soft.de/emate_battery_pack.html

This requires soldering a load of batteries together and when the battery failed, I really didn't want to go that process again. However, someone on Twitter recently said that they had used a standard battery box. It fits in the compartment of the eMate (with a spot of modification) and it works.

So I decided that this was the best way forward, so I bought a battery holder form a Maplin, one of those 9 volt battery plugs. I picked apart the battery I had rebuilt before to get the plugs and the thermoresistor and connected the lot together. The result was this



After checking it worked, with a multimeter and then connecting it to the eMate (which booted up), I had to cut one end of the battery compartment away to let this longer construction fit.


The wires seem long, but they tuck away nicely. The result is a working eMate, with batteries that can be easily removed for recharging. The on,untying that's missing is the small silver temperature sensor that sits in the circuit and detects if the batteries are getting too hot. The received wisdom from the Newton people is that the charging circuits may not be as reliable as they used to be, and if you are using LiON batteries, it may not work as expected. So the best option is to have batteries that are removable and recharge them in a midnight charger. That's entirely possible in a Newton 2000 (a 4AA holder shipped with them as well as the rechargeable battery), but the eMate was never designed for that kind of battery. However, this modification appears to do the job nicely. By separating the battery like this means that any further refurbishment is separate from the older, hard to find bits that connect it to the machine.

So, one working eMate