Tandy 3200 (486) CMOS Battery

[Paul Piazza]

I really messed up on this when I removed the cmos battery #2032 with 3 prong holder and glued to the motherboard with a piece of sponge.

It was taken out completely and replaced a week later to find the computer would not boot, although the message for the almost dead cmos no longer came up. I thought I followed the instructions in the manual that came with it for control/alt/escape to set it up again. It then asked for a system disk, does that mean Windows 3.1 (which I have) as it gave me a message that it was not a system disk or a bad one. What am I doing wrong?

I really appreciate your help as I have had it for a long long time and betting that I lost some info, if not everything that wasn't backed up.

 

[kyeakel]

The CMOS battery keeps the BIOS configuration settings that you'd specify in the BIOS screens. Once removed or dead these settings are lost. You probably didn't lose any data. You need to know what hard disk you have in the machine. Copy down the parameters cylinders, heads, sectors and the size, if this info is not listed on the label of the hard disk then the model # can be looked up on-line to get this info. Reboot the machine and enter BIOS setup, specify the hard drive and you should be able to boot. If you don't replace the CMOS battery you'll have to do this everytime you power on the computer. These batteries can be found rather easily, or you can replace them with a commonly available 3.6v cordless telephone ni-cad battery pack. Just make sure what ever battery type it was is what your replacing, i.e. ni-cad to ni-cad is ok, ni-cad being replaced with l-ion not ok.
Kipp