Help with MB losing memory!

[philipg]

Mr Computer has a point you maybe able to purchase a battery pack that can plug into the board neard the Bios Chip. Make sure you buy the correct voltage or you will fry the chip.

[800XL]

The CMOS battery typically comes in two forms. It will either be a coin shaped metal disk in a holder that can be removed easily, or it will be a barrel shape that usually has a blue/grey plastic coating that cannot be removed. The coin shape type is a little bigger than a dime, and the other type is about the same size around, but 3/4" long. The other possibility is that it is built into the real time clock chip itself. Usually, if it is not a replacable type, there will be a header on the board that you can connect an external battery to like MR C says. If you can find the battery on the board, it will give you the voltage you need. The set of pins should be labeled in some way or another. If you have the board model number one of us will probably be able to look it up and give you some exact info on how to do this.

[Eli]

I have a question... My parents recently got an old 386 in a garage sale for like $10 (gotta love that enormous 50 meg hd, eh?), but it won't hold it's BIOS setting either. The motherboard battery is definitly dead, since I checked the voltage with a voltmeter, as well as teh fact that it's kinda corroded. I really don't want to put any money into this thnig, so would it be safe using some of my old sub-c cells from my R/C cars in place of the button cells? Three cells in series equals the necessary 3.6 volts, but it's the amperage that worries me... the roughly 50mA of the button cells vs. the 1200mA of the sub-c cells. Would this damage anything? Or would it simply last for a very long time? Thank for any advise...

[reckless]

I have a computer with a Aopen FX chipset MB that started to lose it's memory when it is shut off. The first time it was unplugged for 2 days and when it was restarted it said "Primary HDC Failure".
So i went into the bios and just selected the HD again and all was fine. Then the same thing happened again only it was never unplugged? I know the CMOS battery is probably gone bad but shouldn't it be ok if it is not unplugged?
Also the battery must be built into the MB somewhere because I don't see it anywhere?
Can anyone help me with this?

Thanks

[This message has been edited by reckless (edited 06-13-99).]

[MR COMPUTER]

Sure sounds like a dying mb battery.Which Aopen board do you have?If the mb battery is not a disk type,there should be a set of pins where you can plug in an external battery. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[philipg]

I'm not familiar with your board but lets say the battery is good you probablity haven't left the computer up and running long enough to charge the battery If it is bad then leaveing it on and not turning it off for long periods of time will prevent Cmos settings loss.

[reckless]

The motherboard is the AOpen AP5C/P and the battery is built into the 'Real Time Chip'. I downloaded the manual from Aopen and I can't find anywhere in it about hooking up an external battery?
Also I noticed I made a mistake in my original post, the error message was actually "Primary HDC Failure" instead of "HDD"
Does this make a difference? I also tried hooking the HD up to the secondary channel but it couldn't find it either. I'm wondering if the HD itself is fried?

Thanks

[This message has been edited by reckless (edited 06-13-99).]