Well, I was having a problem with my Radio Shack 22-801 multimeter, pulled it apart to find a bad fuse. Got it back together and then found the common jack for the banana plug was goobered up. Knowing I had a spare multimeter in storage, I went digging for it.
Turns out I have 5 spare multimeters. I opened them up and three of them had batteries in them, Fortunately, none of them had leaked. They were dead and one battery was starting to weep so I caught it in the nick of time. If you have spare test equipment with batteries in them, go pull them all out. Not sure how that happened. Most of my spare or less-used equipment has the batteries sitting loose along with the piece of equipment. Those batteries expired last year or several years back so I'm not certain how long my test equipment has been in storage.
Unfortunately, I had a cheap analog multimeter from Radio
Shack that suffered a sad fate. The AA battery had leaked a long time ago and destroyed the pads on both ends of the battery compartment. Now I need to cobble something together to repair it. Guess I can find an old piece of electronic junk to gut a new pad out of.
This public service announcement brought to you by someone who doesn't want you to see fireworks when you go to use your test equipment.
have a safe and happy fourth.
Turns out I have 5 spare multimeters. I opened them up and three of them had batteries in them, Fortunately, none of them had leaked. They were dead and one battery was starting to weep so I caught it in the nick of time. If you have spare test equipment with batteries in them, go pull them all out. Not sure how that happened. Most of my spare or less-used equipment has the batteries sitting loose along with the piece of equipment. Those batteries expired last year or several years back so I'm not certain how long my test equipment has been in storage.
Unfortunately, I had a cheap analog multimeter from Radio
Shack that suffered a sad fate. The AA battery had leaked a long time ago and destroyed the pads on both ends of the battery compartment. Now I need to cobble something together to repair it. Guess I can find an old piece of electronic junk to gut a new pad out of.
This public service announcement brought to you by someone who doesn't want you to see fireworks when you go to use your test equipment.
have a safe and happy fourth.


