On Sun, Jul 23, 2023 at 12:20 PM Montague Bestes via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I do stupid stuff once in awhile too, lol. Nice to be able to laugh about it.Watch out with vacuuming the motherboard though; I sucked up a few jumpers once doing that.
Static electricity can also be a problem using vacuums instead of canned air. For extreme situations I have used copper mesh with a ground wire over the vacuum inlet. That would filter out jumpers, but then you have to figure out where they came from, so take photos and make notes before attempting.
_______________________________________________On Friday, July 21, 2023 at 05:54:16 AM EDT, ToddAndMargo via users <users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:On 7/19/23 01:02, Tim via users wrote:
> Tim:
>>> Or had the CMOS battery going flat?
>
> ToddAndMargo:
>> Have not noticed my date and time messed up, but ...
>
> I've found that only when a battery was *really* bad that time may be
> off. It could be sufficiently low to be a problem, and your clock
> still keeps time. Especially if your PC supplies mains-derived power
> to the BIOS/UEFI when running, and the battery is a back-up rather than
> the only supply for it.
>
> There's an often stated claim the BIOSs are designed to run slow when
> the power is low, but I don't have faith in that. I think people are
> trying to fit their own explanation into something that happened by
> accident. It may well be that some do that, simply by virtue of how
> the circuit behaves rather than being a deliberate effect, but I've got
> PCs which kept very good time with a near dead battery (they are
> designed to be a really low power consumption device). When their
> batteries did die, the clocks simply resetted to some distant date in
> the past, and drive parameters went haywire.
>
> If motherboard manufacturers wanted to make it obvious that you needed
> to change a battery, they could have designed the BIOS with a voltage
> reading that any OS could easily read without arcane knowledge, and
> your OS could pop up a warning which told you what was needed.
>
> Expecting the masses of computer illiterate to know that the clock
> being off might mean you need to change a battery, rather than them
> just writing the behaviour off as yet another Windows setting screw-up
> is a bit of an ask. And it's a hidden effect by so many systems which
> continuously auto-correct the clock.
>
>> I do change a lot of CMOS batteries for my customers.
>
> Bearing in mind that many of those coin batteries have an expected
> working lifespan of about 3 years (that's less than their shelf-life),
> it may be worth simply replacing them that often without trying to
> squeeze the last morsels of power out of them until things go obviously
> wrong. And modern batteries have worse chemistry than older batteries
> (less pollutant, by a fractional amount, but far more prone to leaking
> and causing corrosive damage).
>
> I give my PCs a vacuum once or twice a year, and I write a maintenance
> log in texta inside the lid (last cleaned so-and-so-date, new battery,
> etc).
>
> I've got a very old iMac sitting next to me that needs a new coin
> battery put in it, but thanks to idiotic design for cosmetics rather
> than practicality, you have to remove every single bit of hardware from
> the casing to get to the battery at the back of everything (lots of
> interconnected boards and devices). Why they couldn't have mounted it
> on the other side of the board I don't know. I'm tempted to use a hole
> saw on the cabinet to make replacing it much easier. That, or I'll
> solder in a battery holder on fly leads and put it in a much more
> sensible place.
Wonderful write up!
I tested it with an extended hard power
off (outlet strip). It worked fine.
So, it must have been something stupid I did.
:'(
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