Text 358, 83 rader
Skriven 2006-09-14 19:55:56 av Mike Luther (1:117/3001.0)
    Kommentar till text 336 av Greg Easthom (1:153/7715.0)
Ärende: Z386-25 CMOS Bat Locatio
================================
Hi Greg.. let's try some more at this, OK?

 GE> Is it black, rectangular, with one corner cut off?

Yep..

 GE> http://www.dsmiller.com/html/Desktop-CMOS-Zenith-386-25-B-282.htm

 GE> MFG Part#: B-282

 GE> Description:
 GE>  Lithium CMOS battery
 GE>  Clock and battery module.

 GE> Qty Availability: Backorder

Yep..

And after about a month of trying I finally got the gent on the phone who runs
D S Miller.  He told me they were on vacation and someone was supposed to be
manning the phone, but ..  Anyway.  He told me that they had no way of getting
it from Dallas Semiconductor, but gave me another possible source for whatever.
 I've been trying to contact that source,but so far no luck there either.

So .. out of curiousity, I looked up the Dallas Semiconductor URL,  I found
they have apparently been bought out by another larger whatever. OK, they have
an Email 'contact us' interface.  So I put in the data there and asked if there
was any possibility that they might have or could help me or point me toward
someone who could.  Left my message.

Absolutely no reply to my Email at all as far as I can tell after about three
weeks now.

OK.  Yes, as another thoughful poster here noted, in many cases you can just
pry off the top of these plastic holders and there will be the more or less
'standard' 3.5 volt lithium cell inside.  You can pry it out,put in a new one
and off we go.

Well in this case, as far as I can see, the plastic is really fully molded into
the rectangular case that you are talking about.  And there is no evidence as
far as I can see of any seam line in that plastic case.  So now what?

I wonder?

Years ago, when a battery went dead in some of these older computers,there was
a little 'fix it' external battery you could buy.  It had a little pin plug on
the wires to it.  You jammed it, if my memory is correct, over the three pin
plug that has a jumper plug on it to erase the CMOS memory or something like
that.  And what happened next is that the 3.5 volt CMOS maintenance support for
your power down state is then held up by that external little support battery.

I think I actually have one of these things in the junk box from long and far
ago.  As far as I can see, only THREE foils are actually in use for the two
rows of about twelve or so pins each on this Dallas Smartbattery device.  Thus
there must not be much going on here if only three lines are active with this
whatever device.  Thus, is the actually clock assembly really inside this
device, or is it just a battery and the clock is on the circuit board.  And in
that case what does this 'Smartbattery' term printed on the plastic case for
the device mean?


What I guess I really wonder is this..

Since the computer works just fine as long as the power is on and you have
reset the CMOS to whatever you need, might it be possible to cheat in this
case?  Might it be possible to simply either splice in or whatever this older
trick of an external 'fix me' CMOS battery and thus stabilize this whole mess
that way?  Or .. because the internal battery which looks like it really is
sealed in this case, then simply drain down the external one if I were to do
this?

Inquiring mind wants to know!


Thoughts, anyone here?


--> Sleep well; OS/2's still awake! ;)

Mike @ 1:117/3001

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