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From: ear@wpi.wpi.edu (Eric A Rasmussen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: 286 CMOS RAm and batteries...
Message-ID: <6197@wpi.wpi.edu>
Date: 11 Dec 89 23:32:41 GMT
References: <JX-V^=@rpi.edu>
Reply-To: ear@wpi.wpi.edu (Eric A Rasmussen)
Distribution: na
Organization: Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester ,MA
Lines: 34

>How does one tell if his battery pack is low in a 286 based system
>(specifically I have an Epson Equity III+)? I have a feeling my
>battery is getting low because I got a "Time not set" error message
>when the machine booted this morning. When I ran SETUP, the time was
>something like 45:17:00 but the date was ok. Could this be symptom of
>some other problem? The machine is 2 years old (at least that when I
>purchased it new, no telling how old the batteries are). Are there
>other symptoms concerning low batteries??? If I need to replace them
>I'd like to know as soon as possible to avoid an real problems.

What you are experiencing sounds exactly like your battery or batteries, as
the case may be, is/are getting low.  The first symptoms are that your time
and date come up wrong.  The first thing to do at this point is to go into
your setup program and write down on a piece of paper what type (a number
generally between 1 and 40) your hard drive is.  This is very important
because once your battery voltage gets too low, the cmos WILL forget what type
of hard drive you have, and when this happens, you won't be able to boot off
your hard drive or even access it at all.  

In general, batteries are supposed to last 5 years, but I don't think I've
ever seen them last that long (and I work in a copmputer store).  The fun part
is finding a replacement battery.  There are many, many different kinds that
are used for cmos backup.  I'm not familiar with the Epson Equity III, but if
you are lucky, it uses either a watch style pancake battery or AA cells.  If
you have the soldered in mutant type, you can generally clip it out and add an
adapter which holds 4 AA cells which you can stick inside your case somewhere.
This works because, fortunatly, most motherboards with the mutant batteries
have two jumper leads which you can attach this type of adapter to.
                                                                              
Hope this helps.
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