The [Toshiba T-1000] battery is just 4 NiCad cells in an open-frame plastic holder... trivial to rebuild.
Doesn't it have some sort of "Sense" terminal as well? (I'm pretty sure I've lost the actual pack.) I was disappointed that it failed to run with no battery installed :-(
I would've mailed it to Dave for a tear-down, if it was such an expensive PITA to mail things internationally from the US. :-(
I just had a pack rebuilt a few months ago. I seem to remember there are two red and two black wires in parallel going to a 4 pin connector.
NiCd chemistry is very rugged and doesn't need balance sensing, it can just be float charged indefinitely and sheds the excess energy as heat. This is one reason why simple substitution of NiMH cells in older devices doesn't work.
Sometimes the reason the machine won't run without batteries is that it also uses them to rectify the power input (I think certain HP calculators worked this way).
If the old NiCd charger circuit was a trickle charger, you can often substitute NiMH cells. A 0.1C charger for 1500 mAh NiCd cells works out to a 0.03C 4500 mAh NiMH charger. Most NiMH cells will tolerate C/30 trickle charging just fine.
"Ahh the VT52, great device, and one of the best keyboards ever. The keyclick was generated by a big relay that just clunked closed when you typed. "
A BIG THANK YOU to user Boffin for this idea. I just tried it and it works remarkably well
The solenoid, as it was called, was added for touch typists accustomed to the sound of the printer head. It could be enabled or disabled on the fly as this IBM 3278 demo shows. The solenoid basically hammered the casing of the keyboard which was built like a tank.