Hi Roy.

17-Nov-03 12:08:14, Roy J. Tellason wrote to Jasen Betts


 RJT> Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 RJT>> What,  battery dead?  Ok,  but that should make any difference
 RJT>> if I don't shut it off,  right?  Wrong.  I'd go through and put
 RJT>> all of the settings in,  and then hit "save and exit" and I'd
 RJT>> get the _same_ message!  Go back into setup, and there's nothing
 RJT>> there but the default settings

 RJT>> Checked the battery,  it's a common coin cell,  CR2032,  and
 RJT>> measures 0.5v! Never saw one get that low...

 JB>> They often don't power the cmos from the motherboard, and only
 JB>> rely on the coin cell.

 RJT> Oh really?  As far as I can tell it's not a separate chip but
 RJT> built into one of the other ones,  so that'd be a little hard to
 RJT> do

 JB>> linux only needs the cmos to boot.

 RJT> *Anything* needs cmos right to boot...

I thing I saw something limp by on a default "autodetect hard drive"
setting once but I can't remember which machine it was... (talking hardware
now)

 RJT> It's dead.  Tried another one,  measuring 3.12V (like new) and
 RJT> that still didn't work

you say it's a dual purpose CMOS chip  (ISTR a CMOS and keyboard combo
being used sometimes) ... I guess that's the end of that motherboard.

 -=> Bye <=-

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