Old videocamera, bad battery

[Joel Crane]

Back in the day my dad paid a lot for his old 8mm (Right?) Hitachi VM-E220A videocamera. I'm thinkin' that he bought it back in '97 or so. The original Ni-cad battery has gone bad. About a year ago, I purchased a Ni-MH battery on the internet but after only a few cycles it was dead.

You might be wondering, why mess with such an old videocamera? I'm a college student, so my budget is very limited, and I have a capture card in my desktop so I can easily capture the videos and edit them there. I'm interested in getting this thing working again because I constantly shoot videos with my cell phone (Nokia 6300) and digital camera (Ancient 2.0mp easyshare), but the quality is awful and it's difficult to convert the formats.

So back to the batteries. My theory is this, while the battery I bought is "new" out of the box, It had been sitting in a warehouse for years. I've had the same trouble with Li-ion laptop batteries, they are advertised as "new" but only run for 30 minutes or so.

I'd give up on it and throw it away, but the camera also runs on 6 AA batteries. Ni-cad and Ni-MH batteries tend to suck. I used to be into RC cars so i know all about how awful they are. Even my digital peak charger seems to kill them after only a few cycles. Also, the lower voltage means that the camera thinks it's batteries are almost dead and shuts off.

How about AA batteries in Li-ion? Is there such a thing? Maybe some funky battery with a couple of charging contacts on the sides for special chargers?

[Joel Crane]

Back in the day my dad paid a lot for his old 8mm (Right?) Hitachi VM-E220A videocamera. I'm thinkin' that he bought it back in '97 or so. The original Ni-cad battery has gone bad. About a year ago, I purchased a Ni-MH battery on the internet but after only a few cycles it was dead.

You might be wondering, why mess with such an old videocamera? I'm a college student, so my budget is very limited, and I have a capture card in my desktop so I can easily capture the videos and edit them there. I'm interested in getting this thing working again because I constantly shoot videos with my cell phone (Nokia 6300) and digital camera (Ancient 2.0mp easyshare), but the quality is awful and it's difficult to convert the formats.

So back to the batteries. My theory is this, while the battery I bought is "new" out of the box, It had been sitting in a warehouse for years. I've had the same trouble with Li-ion laptop batteries, they are advertised as "new" but only run for 30 minutes or so.

I'd give up on it and throw it away, but the camera also runs on 6 AA batteries. Ni-cad and Ni-MH batteries tend to suck. I used to be into RC cars so i know all about how awful they are. Even my digital peak charger seems to kill them after only a few cycles. Also, the lower voltage means that the camera thinks it's batteries are almost dead and shuts off.

How about AA batteries in Li-ion? Is there such a thing? Maybe some funky battery with a couple of charging contacts on the sides for special chargers?