I can't seem to find any reference to some tech. info I need regarding the obsolete Alpha-4 and was hoping someone might know.

Specifically, I'd like to know what the voltages were set for the following features pertaining to its' charging Nicads:

1. The Delta-V voltage trip point (voltage drop in mv used to determine full charge).
2. The discharge-to voltage trip point (per cell).

Anyone?

The reason I ask is because a charger I just bought allows setting these parameters while the Alpha-4 settings were factory-set and not changeable by the user.
I still use my Alpha-4 (a lot), and it seems to be a lot more accurate than the new charger I bought that does allow setting those parameters. The Alpha-4 ends up showing much more accurate capacity measurements after discharge (averaged over three identical and new packs), and I thought I'd like to see how things turn out if I could set the new charger's trip points to be identical to the Alpha-4's trip points (that I do not know at this time).

I was thinking that this new charger just might be the "new and improved" version of what the Alpha-4 "would have been" if Peter (Litco) were to have upgraded it to address the new technologies of batteries, but the Alpha-4, at this point, still seems to be one of the best chargers still for Nicad batteries.

I am also a satisfied Alpha 4 user, best for Nicd/Nimh

I doubt that info is available but you might be able to check it yourself by hooking up a voltmeter to a cell and running some tests charging/discharging to see for yourself.

The problem with that is that any meter hooked up between the battery and the A-4 will affect how the A-4 reacts with and reads the battery.

I was just hoping that someone much more learned than me might have figured it out.

I love my Alpha-4. I use a lot of large NIMH batteries . NIMH batteries have to be cycled several times when new, or they will not take a charge.
I wish they were still in business. Is the Hughes charger similar? I know they both have four ports.
Brian

The problem with determing "similar" is that it's easy to find a charger with the same physical features, but it's the technical determinations that the designer puts into the software that is what actually makes for a really good, or not, charger.

I looked at the Hughes as an Alpha-4 replacement for three reasons:
1. It utilizes 4 ports which I really like in a bench charger.
2. It adds the capability of taking care of additional chemistries beyond just Nicad. (The Alpha-4 will handle NimH on a couple of it's "devices", but it's still not optimized for NimH batteries due to the difference in Delta-V characteristics between Nicad and NimH batteries).
3. It boosts the available charge rates.

The thing is, those are what I referred to as "physical" characteristics, and I cannot personally say if the design parameters in the software are equal to the seemingly perfect parameter choices that Peter made and incorporated into the Alpha-4.

I recently bought the HobbyKing Quattro 4x6s charger, another charger that has the same added physical characteristics of the Hughes (but significantly less expensive). I've been playing with it, but a problem (well, not a "problem", but rather, a "feature") is that the Quattro allows you to set your own parameters that are key to cycling and charging Nicad and NimH batteries.
The Quattro does use what looks like reasonably good Delta-V default settings for Nicad (Default = 12mv drop) and NimH batteries (Default = 7mv), but the user can also over-ride those settings and change them. That's cool if you are "into" batteries, but changing those Default settings could also get you into trouble.
Also, the Quattro lets you set the bottom voltage for stopping the cycle process, and lets you fine-tune the charge rate and cycle rate. With the Alpha-4, you got to chose just one of 4 different rates by programming whatever number of ports to do that. With the Quattro, not only can you set those rates, but you can set them to go way beyond (cycle AND charge rates) what the Alpha-4 allows. So there's plenty of room for variation with the Quattro that I'm trying to account for with regard to how it "talks" to batteries compared to the Alpha-4.

That's why I asked in the OP to see if anyone actually knew what those two settings were that I mentioned, because those two settings form a "bracket" between which the charger will use to report the capacity of a battery at the end of a discharge and charge cycle. The greater the "distance" between those two points, the greater the capacity of the battery that will be reported. (And by the way, the Quattro also allows you to set a maximum "amperage in" and a timer setting, both of which will terminate the charge at user-selected safety points. If set wrong, the charger could terminate the charge too early which would result in a report of lesser battery capacity).

At the moment, my Quattro is reporting my three brand new Nicad packs as having an average capacity of about 1300mah when they are actually 1700mah packs. At the same time, the Alpha-4 cycles and reports those same packs as having capacities averaging about 1750mah (typical for healthy, brand new batteries).
So what I'd like to do is to set the Quattro at exactly the same trip points I asked for in the OP, as well as setting similar charge and discharge rates as the Alpha-4 uses, and then see how that changes the capacity report of these packs.

I do not know if the Hughes allows more or less custom settings than does the Quattro, but whether it does or not, it's fair to assume that the designer of the Hughes did not "exactly" set the Hughes to work "identically" to the Alpha-4, so I would assume from the get-go that you would not get exactly the same capacity reports from the Hughes as you would from the Alpha-4 either. And that would also mean that the Hughes wouldn't be expected to charge and maintain batteries in "exactly" the same way as the Alpha-4. Since the Alpha-4 has been proven over time to be a virtually "perfect" charger for Nicads, it follows that if the Hughes does things in slightly different ways, then it may not be "as good" as the Alpha-4 in some ways.
I'm not stating that the Hughes is a lesser charger than the Alpha-4, only making a logical conclusion that the Hughes and the Alpha-4 cannot work exactly the same since they were designed by different people who may have used slightly different paradigms in their design.

I just wish that Peter (Litco) would have gone on and upgraded his charger to incorporate similar physical features as the Quattro or Hughes. If the Alpha-4 would have been upgraded to being able to properly charge and balance the new battery technology at reasonably higher rates (including tweaking the software for NimH battery maintenance), and kept all the same characteristics of Nicad charging, I would never have looked elsewhere for a new charger.
I think that Peter really screwed up when he walked away from the business because he had a built-in customer base for new sales that other companies couldn't have even dreamed of.

WIll the Alpha -4 damage a NIMH battery if slow cycled on the ALPHA. I have cycled a 2700 battery several times with the Alpha with no appearant damage,. All of my packs are 2700 to 4000, so the max charge of 1 AMP does not seem to bother the NIMH.
Brian

You have to be careful to only use a couple specific "devices" for NimH batteries. I forget which ones at the moment and I'm at work so I can't go look. But if you use only those allowed devices on NimH, you're good to go.
I've charged many a NimH battery on my Alpha-4 and it works just fine. Evidently, the Alpha-4 is precise enough that it can determine the smaller Delta-V drop of NimH batteries very reliably which says a lot for the programming and quality of the charger.
But again, you should only use a couple of the devices for NimH batteries, and those were named in the FAQ on the Litco site, although I think it (the FAQ or even the entire site) may be gone by now.

The diffulty of slow "cycling" (discharging) isn't the issue because the charger (any charger) simply looks for a certain voltage reading to stop the discharge.
The problem can come in the charging portion at the full charge point because of the flatter Delta-V of a NimH battery when done with a slow charge as I explained earlier. I would continue to charge at the 1amp rate with the Alpha-4 for that reason.
However, I have charged NimH batteries at lower rates and the Alpha-4 seems to detect the Delta-V just fine as far as I can tell, yet another testimony of the programming and quality of the Alpha-4.

I recently aquired one of these chargers and found this while searching for a manual, hope it helps.

http://home.att.net/~LitcoSys/review.htm
http://home.att.net/~LitcoSys/al4.htm
http://home.att.net/~LitcoSys/djn.htm