Forcing you to use Dealer parts

[winterdreamer]

ATMEL (and i'm sure others do to) sell a chip which companies put in the batteries for their products that effectively key their batteries to their products, if you use a different (cheap) battery it either doesn't works, we found this to be the case with mums olympus camera and the rechargable AAA batteries that come with the camera

Comments

[evilref]

There is an easy solution, and a slightly harder solution.

The slightly harder solution is to take the chip out and solder it into your cheap battery. Or replace the batteries in the casing but leave the chip in place. Or whatever.

The easy solution is: if you don't like their products, don't buy them. DVD manufacturers know to make region coding easy to crack for exactly this reason.

[winterdreamer]

Its slightly harder than it sounds as the crypto key in the chip is in sram so you need the new battery connected across before you unsolder it or you lose the key.

We wouldn't have bought it if we'd known but it wasn't publicized:- it was in the small print in the appendix at the back of the manual, which is part of what i object to - that removed the option of boycotting the company until its too late :(.

[evilref]

So if you deep-discharge the batteries, the camera stops working?

[winterdreamer]

Thats what it looks like yes, or rather goes into Non oem battery 'Limited' mode