I had battery sled failure last night.
I have the battery type in the PMD671 menu set for NiMH.
I brought two sets of NiMH to the show:
8 Powerizer 2250 mAh
8 iPower 2300 mAh
I started with the 2250's in the sled and the 2300's in an outboard battery pack, plugged into the DC outlet.
During the opener about an hour in, my levels disappeared completely.
I checked the phantom power switch. It was still engaged.
I stopped and started the recorder, still no levels...
I turned the recorder on and off and still no levels...
I pulled the outboard DC power pack jack out. Now the deck told me the internal batteries were depleted. (The battery indicator was just an outline, flashing) Then the deck shut itself off. Thinking I was totally screwed and not having my small Radio Shack VOM, I couldn't measure the batteries, so I took all the 2250 mAh batteries out of the sled and loaded them into the external pack and plugged the jack in... WALLA... power and levels again! I got through the next band, Cracker's set just fine. So the recorder was giving me a false reading on the internal batteries
When I got home I measured the 2300's that were in the outboard pack and they were indeed depleted.
In my previous tests, the internals always took over without a hitch from the external batteries, when the external batteries were deplete, which they were in this case. That didn't happen for some reason.
The conclusion that I'm drawing is that the internal sled is unreliable in the PMD671 with the NiMH batteries I am using.