Hanz wrote in
:

Spikes: when the batteries goes from 11.75 up to 14.5 volts during
normal charging. Maybe 'spikes' is a bad word. But the "buck/boost
circuit" of the converter handle it.



I don't know of a single piece of marine electronics that won't run just
fine on 16-18VDC. "Spikes" are 40V pulses that happen when a battery
with a dead cell is charged with an alternator that happens each time the
alternator's regulator, trying to figure out why the battery's voltage is
only 9.8VDC and charging the hell out of it because it measures deep
discharged, feeds full field current to the alternator.

You can hear it in the stereo in a vehicle or boat as a loud, high
pitched and varying with engine speed, whining in the speakers. You can
also see it in any light as you rev the engine and the light gets MUCH
brighter, the light bulb averaging out the pulses into an overvoltage
condition as the spikes try to blow the filament.

A charger will make the stereo speakers hum loudly, VERY loudly if a cell
has died into high resistance. The charger's rectified pulses flowing
through the dead cell's high resistance (higher than milliohms of a
normal cell) create spikes on top of whatever DC voltage the battery
actually is.

If you're measuring the battery with a meter, the meter movement
(mechanical) or a digital meter averaging out the spike during its
measurment sampling cycle, don't give you any indication the voltage
peaks are actually THAT high. In a cheap boat radio you can hear the
spikes, your first indication of either a dead cell or corroded terminals
in the charging circuit at the battery, which makes the same whining in
the speakers.

(42 lurkers have just found out why the stereo is whining every time they
crank the beast...(c

Larry, Since you suggest it I think I'll tie the fan into the 140°
indicator circuit. 180° is meltdown so 140° should be way safe.

As far as the WebTV vs. PC goes, well, I have 2 computers. One with
'98, and the other with XP. I use them quite a bit for digital
photography, storing & transferring audio to my MP3 players, and my
other internet activities, but the WebTV is a better tool for these
discussion groups.

Glenn, I guess you didn't notice my original post. In it I neglected to
tell everyone what the current draw was for this MP3 player, so Larry's
original regulator would have been perfect without any modifications.
As far as efficiency goes I'm still ahead of the inverter. Besides, I
enjoyed the project, and sure couldn't find anything locally that'd do
5V for anywhere near $15!

(Floating Mind) wrote in news:13198-44A18EC1-279
@storefull-3118.bay.webtv.net:

As far as the WebTV vs. PC goes, well, I have 2 computers. One with
'98, and the other with XP. I use them quite a bit for digital
photography, storing & transferring audio to my MP3 players, and my
other internet activities, but the WebTV is a better tool for these
discussion groups.


I have 3 but have pretty much retired the old Win98SE machine only
accessing it on an old LCD display I watched way too long when I'm
looking for something old...(c;

MP3 players - Digital Mind Xclef 500 had 100GB drive, not upgraded to
120GB. The player has is NOT the one RIAA wanted you to have. Computers
just treat everything on it as an external hard drive, no DCA funny
business. Click and drag 800 MP3 files to it and it play them, even if
they only have filename.MP3. Has FM Radio, woowoo!, but no commercial
killer making it useless. Has direct-to-MP3 (your choice of speeds)
audio recorder with virtually unlimited record time because of its
massive hard drives. Runs 22 hours on a charge. Recharges in about 1.8
hours from dead. www.digmind.com. Available in no drive, 20G, 40G, 80G,
100G, but some configurations unavailable most of the time. They can't
keep up with demand. Standard 2.5" notebook drives, standard Li-Ion
battery packs, no proprietary crap like the RIAAiPod has...Nice leather
case standard...

Old one is a 20GB Archos Studio 20, also funny business free, that's been
run so hard the pain all wore off exposing the aluminum case under it.
It must have 30,000 hard hours on it banging around in my truck. V 1.0
failed hard drive, Archos gave me this one, complete with new
accessories, about 4 years ago with a VERY rugged Toshiba drive in it.
Firmware in it is from a great bunch of hackers known as Rockbox, which
is much better than factory w/lots more features/functions/controls.
http://www.rockbox.org/ I haven't upgraded Rockbox in years and I see
they got tons of new stuff for it. It's a simple, rugged
MP3/wav/FLAC/wma player with a little LCD screen. I replaced the
original 750ma Ni-MH AA cells in it (4) with 2300ma Ni-MH cells. It
plays LOTS longer than you can stand to listen to it, now! Charging
takes forever on huge cells, but it's got all night..(c;

I also have a 400GB external Maxtor USB drive that plugs into the Gateway
AMD Turion 64 notebook, which drives a port on my DJ soundboard into a
QSC 1450W amp and 4 huge speaker boxes, 2 12", 2 15" bass horns.

I've collected near 22,000,000 MP3 files from Edison's first cylinder to
DJ music I see no point in. If you'd like to catalog your MP3
collection, the finest MP3 (only) catalog program on the planet is from
Russia, MP3 Catalog Pro. http://www.wizetech.com/amc/
It will automatically catalog every MP3 file, extracting all fields from
the MP3 ID3 data tags into an extremely fast database as fast as your
hard drive can access them, an incredible feat. Once it has created its
catalog, you can search for any field or filename, say searching for
"Jimmy Buffett" songs over 4,000,000 songs on 6 hard drives. It will
display a neatly listed file of Jimmy's music you have across the whole
system in less than a second! Click and drag one or more or all the
songs to any MP3 player, like Winamp's playlist and let Winamp play them
in the sequence you want. If your collection is on CDR or DVDr, no
problem. Feed the catalogger each disk and let it strip the songs on the
disk. Name the disk, yourself, or just let the program feed you a disk
ID number so you can mount it from your disk filing cabinet when it needs
to play a song. The catalog now contains every MP3 stored on optical
discs (or even floppy disks), labeled for callup and mounting. If the
file you want to play isn't on hard drives or in a CDrom drive, the
program asks you to mount disk 18372 and click OK. It then selects and
feeds the song to your MP3 player program. Most efficient catalog
program on the planet...the pro DJs use it. $30, lifetime upgrades and
support.

I'm one of those MP3 collectors you mother warned you about...(c;