Battery drain on a 32SII

[Chris]

I own a HP 32SII, and for whatever reason, within about two weeks of VERY light use, my batteries drain to the point of being dead. I have little knowledge of the inner workings of this calculator, but I know this is not supposed to happen; I've read snippets from the forum where the batteries last for years, not weeks. I had assumed that I had purchased a bad pack of batteries, but after purchasing a brand new set of Duracells, the exact same thing happened. Does anyone have a similar problem or a solution they might suggest. I like this calculator, and would prefer not purchasing a new one. Thanks a lot for any input!

Chris.

[bill platt]

Well, something strange is going on with your machine. Definitely atypical for 32sii or any other 2nd or 3rd tier Pioneer. (42s, 27s and 17bii use much more juice).

[Randy]

With normal use, batteries should go a minimum of a year or two on a 32Sii.

You either have spilled something on the unit that worked its way inside or the processor has failed in some way that it doesn't enter sleep mode. There is the very, very remote possibility the continuious memory backup capacitor has failed.

The only way to repair is to open it. Here's how: Pioneer "Observational Internals"

[Chris]

Is is possible that a full reset could solve this problem? I'd read on FixThatCalc.com that this works for situations where the calc. is dead when new batteries are installed. Mine works fine with new batteries, but dies after two weeks. Thoughts?

[Katie Wasserman]

I have a newer 32SII (blue/white color scheme) with a high quiescent current draw problem (somewhere around .05ma). I haven't seen this problem in the older 32SII's (orange/blue color scheme). In the problem calc that I have, a defective chip is at fault, but the current drain isn't too terrible in that the batteries will last 6 months or so.