If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Options
CMOS Battery
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Hello peoples 
Basically, I have an ol' computer back in 1995, and this is a last ditch attempt to resurrect it. The only problem that's apparently stopping it is the message saying the CMOS battery is running low. This is all well and good, but finding the little blighter has proved very very difficult! In fact, I've taken pictures - if anyone can find it or suggest where I'm going wrong, please help me out! And if there's any info about the system you need...tell me where to find it and I'll get the info. I haven't a clue where the original manuals are so that's why I'm having to ask.
Thank you to anyone who helps out!
Motherboard
And these are two of the attached components which link to the outside to plug in all the attachments.
Here
Aaaaaand here!
Basically, I have an ol' computer back in 1995, and this is a last ditch attempt to resurrect it. The only problem that's apparently stopping it is the message saying the CMOS battery is running low. This is all well and good, but finding the little blighter has proved very very difficult! In fact, I've taken pictures - if anyone can find it or suggest where I'm going wrong, please help me out! And if there's any info about the system you need...tell me where to find it and I'll get the info. I haven't a clue where the original manuals are so that's why I'm having to ask.
Thank you to anyone who helps out!
Motherboard
And these are two of the attached components which link to the outside to plug in all the attachments.
Here
Aaaaaand here!
0
Comments
shouldnt that CPU have a heat sink?
I should think it should! Jesus, it must get hot.
And its about a 10p sized battery, move hte IDE cables(unplug 'em) and give us a motherboard shot, WHOLE board, if yer still stuck.
They are obvious mostly, unplug all wires and look then.
it should really easy to see it'll jsut be sitting there, im surprised its low, they usually last a very long time.
They should make them god damn rechargeable!
rechargable cmos battery *patent pending*
dont take my idea!
>.>
<.<
And yet I have a 486 still on its originall battery! I tried to change it. It is stuck though. Balls.
Erm yeah... Rechargeable. Like anyone could be arsed with that
Oooooookay. Not good.
Before we start, your picture of the motherboard is somewhat lacking. I think it is a PC-Chips M560 or a rebranded variant, but these boards were used a long time ago so I'm not 100% sure.
If so, then you'll not find a battery as it is part of the real time clock. It is built in to the IC, and you end up swapping the whole chip.
Forget it. If you're planning on using the machine for some kind of firewall that is on 24/7, then just set the BIOS up and leave it running. Replacing the RTC will cost more than a replacement motherboard - you can buy a Celeron or P2 motherboard and processor for under £10 on eBay.
Complete bollocks!
Ah, it was a theoretical statement then, and not a factual one? Sorry, I thought you were saying that it should/does recharge it, rather than it would be a good idea if it did recharge it.
Yes, it's a good idea. But the batteries last for years and years - beyond the useful life of the computer. And they cost 20p to replace, when the machine is 5+ years old.
Incorporating a mechanism for recharging the battery would be a sensible idea, but in the real world it is a pointless excercise.
"OMGZ CMOS BATTERY CHARGER!!!111one!!eleven!
DONT BE CAUGHT WITH NO POWERZZ!"
we could get barry scot to sell it, he can sell anything with valour and enthusiasm.
Go on, point it out on here
I alos am seeing an absence of a battery...
time to hit ebay monkay ?
Even took a few processors and HS/F's. And getting a key to a store cupboard was a good one too.
They also used to set the teachers moniters contrast and brightness to 0, making them think it was broken
Ffft, thats nothing. Killing the server was the most fun. It didn't like being told to play Monster Truck Madness 2 across the whole school as a dedicated server.
Didn't like being used for Torrent either (A mate nearly got expelled for it!). Nor did it like getting formatted once, although in my defense, I thought it was the admin computer, not the server. Wrong one.
I took:
Memory by the ton.
10 Processors with HS/F's.
100's of IDE cables.
Floppy drives.
Office 2k (Then lost it
A couple of HDD's
Several Mice, for some reason.
A PSU that exploded.
i've always fancied a laser printer though...
Tell you what mate, have a laptop, give it here and I'll chuck 20 your way. Deal?
If i got one it'd stay at my home, id format it to get rid of the stupid security polices and network boot crap and then windows/linux it up.
Oh my, how a geeks mind works. Fancy a bird? Embarass her, it'll work wonders...
Also showed a few people how to remove semi-completed jobs from the print server. People got most disgruntled when they only had another hour or two before the deadline.
Stole a 'T' piece from the BNC network at my secondary school. Any self-respecting geek will know exactly what happens, and how difficult it was to locate the 'fault'
Harsh! They must have had fun.
Best thing I did... was overclock a computer when we found the BIOS p/wd. Then I changed it. Then I set everything to stupid options (look for k/b and mouse on USB, display on onboard when it had a gfx card, boot off CDROM only when it had no CDROM). The technicians went absolutley mad trying to fix it. They didn't seem to know how the reset jumper worked. :eek2:
They used to have some great flaws in security. You could open an explorer window and with a few manipulations acess ANYTHING. So, 1,000 files put on the server called things like "sirc32_worm.exe" etc. That must have shitted them up. And the fun of telling the Admin Office printer to print out an excell document with only one space in the bottom right cell.