The Mother Board

[cw4cam]

My old box has a pc800 M916 socket 478 mb. I was browsing about a week ago around 11pm, when the monitor went black and "no signal" came up. I fooled with this thing all week. tried a new power supply, no deal. Tried a new vga card, no deal. Put new heat sink compound under the processor, no deal. Just today had a little time so I reset the bios jumper, No deal. Took the bios battery out and measured it with a dmm and it read 1.4 volts. went to Radio Shack and bought one and I'm back up. The old battery was older than 4 years. I should have tried that first.
I'm going to change the battery in my wife's 'puter tonight.
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"A pessimist sees a problem with an opportunity. an optimist sees an opportunity with a problem."
Winston Churchill

Civilization is invaded by barbarians every generation. (author unknown)

[evasive]

The amount of "zombie resurrections" on computers I have done by just changing the cmos battery is nearing 100...
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We hate rut, but we fear change.



System error, strike any user to continue...

[Karlsweldt]

Indeed, the BIOS battery is critical to any computer. Same as with any motor vehicle!
Typically, 2~3 years life expectancy, then should be replaced. The first clue it is dying is the date and time wander off. Then BIOS settings change by themselves. That is due to the CMOS memory not having sufficient voltage to retain settings.
Some motherboards will not show any life signs, if the real-time clock is not active.. again due to a dead CMOS battery!
But the battery is only a backup for when no power enters the PSU. All ATX-style computers have a stand-by +5 volt source that powers the BIOS/CMOS circuits as well as the USB ports, when the computer is "off".. as long as power is fed to the PSU. The AT-style older systems relied only on the battery, when turned off. But those batteries were about 6x the size of 'modern' batteries! A problem with the older batteries was that they were soldered to the board. And when they aged, they leaked acid that ruined the circuit traces!
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F@H.. to solve mankind's maladies.. in our lifetimes!