HP-50G Excessive Battery Drain / Fix?

[jebem]

I have experimentally confirmed that the current consumption from the 4 x 1.5V AAA dry batteries will be 0.0mA when plugging the calculator to a 5V USB power source.

Every time I plugged the USB cable to my PC, the dry batteries current dropped to zero mA. Unplugging the USB cable, the current rises right away to the normal value.

Smart power supply mechanism inside the 50G. And it means that it really work nicely with only 5VDC.

That explains why a lot of people posted here in the old forums about using 1.2V rechargeable batteries without problems at all.