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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

How do Energizer Lithium AA cells work?

How do Energizer Lithium AA cells work?

Non-rechargeable lithium cells are 3 volts right?

But if they're AA cells, then people will expect a notional 1.5 volts at the terminals right?

So ... what gives? Do they have an internal DC-to-DC converter or what?

The answer is that there are many battery formulations which use lithium, and cells made using them can all be described as "lithium cells".

As far as I can tell, Energizer Lithium AA cells are Lithium Iron Disulfide cells. According to Wikipedia this formulation results in a cell voltage of about 1.4 to 1.6 volts, which should make them broadly compatible with scenarios expecting 1.5 volt cells.

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  • How do Energizer Lithium AA batteries work?
  • How do Energizer Ultimate Lithium AA batteries work?

Monday, July 4, 2011

Lexmark X543 beeping five times

Lexmark X543 decided it didn't want to start up. The power was coming on and the display was lighting up, but nothing was being displayed, and it was giving me a five beep cycle.

The Lexmark website said that this five beep indication would be given if the main board could not see the control panel.

So I wondered if it was as simple as a loose connector on the cable connecting the main board and the control panel.

So took off the back panel which covers the main board and had a look. Had a poke around to see if there were any loose connectors. Nothing really in evidence.

Switched it back on. Still not working. Gave each cable a poke and a wiggle. When I poked the membrane cable in the top centre, the display changed and started to show the sequence of dots for the printer startup. The printer then came up and was able to print. Cool.

Later on I tried printing but the printer had frozen again. Switched off the printer and switched it on. Not working. Held the cable slightly up. The printer then started up and I was able to print a page.

Decided it must be this membrane cable causing a problem and wondered if it was just the connection to the main board which might be the problem. Wondered if it could be unplugged from the main board so, with the machine switched off again, gave it a progressive tug.

The membrane cable came out of the recepticle on the main board. Then wondered if it would go back in again, so carefully lined it up and carefully eased it back into the recepticle.

Switched printer on, and it booted up without assistance. A few minutes later it proceeded to print the entire backlog of unprinted jobs on the Windows 7 machines on the network. Ah well, at least it's printing again.

If it carries on working, I may decide to risk putting the back cover on again.

If this posting helped get your Lexmark X543 printer working again, please consider donating 5 U.S. dollars or 5 Euro.

Keywords: Lexmark X543, not printing, not starting, beeping 5 times, beeping five times, five beeps, 5 beeps