[OT] Interesting Thrift Find & Question

Mindfield · July 4, 2003

Went on a bit of thrifting today and came across a lonely and dejected looking Tomy Omnibot for $10 at Value Village. It was in remarkably good condition, all things considered, and was only missing the AC adapter. (I have a universal fitting its 6v/300mA/negative polarity requirements, so that was no problem) There was also a set of contacts inside the remote that were corroded to the point of being brittle, but since it was a simple series circuit, I just had to stuff a length of conductive metal bridging two of the batteries. Worked like a charm. A bit of a cool find, I think, as I've never found one of these in the wild before, and I always wanted one as a kid.

Problem is, the battery is probably dead, despite it looking in excellent condition with no obvious signs of corrosion. (Well hell, a working 18-year-old lead-gel rechargeable battery would probably be Guinness material) I'm sure I could probably somehow find a replacement for it (some brief hunts revealed perhaps one or two sources where they might be purchased) but my question is this: Could I hack together something similar? Say, jury rig a couple of 3.6v Versapak batteries (okay, so it's 0.2v higher than required, but I doubt that'll cause any problems) together? Would that even work? (I'd have to charge the batteries in the Versapak charger of course, but that's not a problem) Just curious if anyone else might be technically minded enough to theorize on the possibility of this.

FWIW I connected the 'bot directly to AC via the universal adapter and it seemed to work, though I couldn't get it to move. (It just produced different tones when I hit various buttons on the remote)