Question about switch on Battery and Hour Meter

[johnkalaigian]

Hey guys I just wanted to first offer my thanks to Jarred for the kick ass job he's done with this site - being a green shooter wtih the DVX100A, this place has given me alot of support even before I made my purchase a little over a week ago.

Now onto business - I noticed that on the inner side of the 1600 mAh battery that came with the 100A that theres a small switch that I guess is in the open position (indicated by a circular hole in the current switched position) and when i slide the switch over I'm assuming that is the closed position (as there is no circular hole). I was just wondering if anyone could tell me what this was for, and what the two positions mean; I couldn't find it in the manual but perhaps I'm blind.

The other question I have is with regards to my Hour Meter ,which I took a quick look at last night, as it showed:
00077H. Now unless I've been sleep walking with my camera in my hands I don't recall running 77 Hours of tape (either recording or playback). At most I've done about (and this is pushing it) 1.5 Hours worth of recording and playback and I'm aware of this fact because I didn't wanna push past B&H's 2 Hour maximum in case I needed to return or exchange this camera. I however have had the camera running for another 1.5-2 hours while recording directly to my PC via firewire but that doesn't/shouldn't run up the head time does it?

Also whats the normal discharge time for the 1600 mAh battery if free standing (not connected to camera or charger or anythign touchingn the contacts), and in normal room temperature, and not exposed to direct sunlight, etc...?

Anyway just figured I would post these questions out. Thanks in advance.
John

[Neil Rowe]

...my stars!!! whatever you do dont touch that switch on the batt. it will leak the acid into the outer chamber , and is for stopping an overcharged battery from exploding!!! tell me you didnt ruin your batt already.. :(

lol just kidding.. its just a manual swith so that you can keep track of what batts are charged or not.. you flip it to show red if the batt is not charged..

as for the hour meter, its not uncommon a t all for the unit to come brand new from the factory showing anywhere between 0-10 hours on the head.. alothough alot of people report more than this(up around 100 or so) and they are still factory fresh.. *if you bought from a reputable dealer, i wouldnt woory about it, and its not actuall hours of usage.. if not,, well then youll never know. *but theres nothing you can do about it, so if the cam works. then youre ok for now.

im not sure anyone would know the normal discharge of the lithium 1600 , but it realy doent matter. since its lithium, it has virtually no memory, so just toss it on the charger before you go *to use it, and it will top it off if there has been any drain. *the small amount of memory that lithiums have is so little its not worth worrying about.
good luck in your endeavors, and hope to se some footage /grabs soon!

[Zoomforce]

lol Iamloser I swear you love giving heart attacks to poor unsuspecting folks..

[Neil Rowe]

lol ..hmmmmmm , actually you just reminded me of when i was about 15, and i would buy packs of those snaps that you throw at the ground at they pop. then i would meticulously unwrap each individual snap and dump the crystals into one tissue paper. then when i has all the snaps emptied into the tissue i would carefully tie up the tissue paper to make it tight, and ride my bike around and look for some unsuspecting group of people.. then i would toss it way up in the air in their direction , and watch it come down.. its pretty loud when they are all together like that.. almost like a gunshot. so watching them all soil their pants when it hit the ground was a good end to all the work it took. . i did it once after a big concert, and half the crowd hit the deck, and the police came running out with guns drawn not knowing what was going on.. people started to run. .. that was really stupid of me.
its not a strong explosion, and couldnt hurt anyone, but very loud. i accidentally blew one up in my hand about 2 feet from my face, and my ears rang for quite a while. ..anyway.. that was the last of that for me.. so now i have to vent somehow..lol. .. john hasnt responded yet..i hope he's not flopping around on his floor somewhere.

[johnkalaigian]

Flopping and also ROTFLMAO ;D. I had guessed thats what it was - yet coming from an XL1 (which IMHO was just an overpriced monster compared to the DVX100/A) the canon designers didn't think to put sure piece of mind into the design of their standard batteries ;)

As for the hour counter - i could have sworn that when i unwrapped the cam (again from B&H - I bought from them for piece of mind - you don't want me to tell you about buying cameras from eBay/Nikki Brindle - google the name one day - you'll be suprised.... anyway) that the counter was 00000H but then again I was probably delusional.

Thanks for your help guys.... iamloser would you mind terribly if i had a classic Pitfall Harry as my profile pic :)

[Neil Rowe]

.. i dont care if even you use the same atari symbol..lol its not like its my own trademarked logo or anything. :)