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Trouble with internal clock battery

mitm19

New Member
Joined
Mar 25, 2013
Messages
5
Hi,
I have an old Gateway 2000 486/33C and I an not able to find a jumper setting to force the board to ignore the soldered on Ni/cad battery. The board has an external 4.5v battery that I assume was dead, so I replaced it with a battery box with 3 AAAs in it, but every time it boots it is still showing a clock failure. The board is a Micronics 09-00081-02 Baby Gemini. I have seen

http://webpages.charter.net/dperr/micindex.htm

which has some jumper settings, but doesn't show one to have the board ignore the internal battery. I did try leaving the machine on for several hours to see if it might charge the ni/cad, but it didn't work. The battery hasn't leaked or anything as far as I can tell. I found a number of other sites that show basically the same manual as my link above. Any help would be appreciated, thank you.

I have another of the identical machine, and it will not post, or even issue a beep code, I'm not sure what to do about that, I tried pulling all of its cards and RAM, still not even a beep code.
 
You should probably remove the battery, even if it hasn't leaked yet as it probably will if it's a barrel type battery. Also, it could be shorted internally and that might be affecting your external battery's ability.
 
Thank you for your suggestion, I removed the battery and the problem still remains unfortunately. I tested the ni/cad after I removed it and it only showed about .5v. Do I need to install a jumper between the terminals where the battery was? I wasn't thinking that I should need to do that. Is it possible that my makeshift battery replacement is somehow not getting it enough power maybe? The battery that was originally there was a Rayovac 844, which shows 4.5 volts on the side of it. There is no rating for milliamps. Thank you
 
No jumper -- that would be a short.

Did you test your replacement battery to be sure it's still got something left?

Even without a battery your system will function normally. It just won't save the CMOS settings.
 
The replacement battery is one that I made up just using three AAA cells, I did test it with a meter and it is putting out 4.5 volts. Yea, it will work its just annoying to have to go in and manually enter the hard drive parameters every time to get it to work. Thank you
 
According to the manual the external battery should be 6V.

A solution that will surely work, is solder a new 3.6V barrel battery to replace the old internal one, or a 3V CR2032 and don't bother with external batteries
 
According to the manual the external battery should be 6V.

A solution that will surely work, is solder a new 3.6V barrel battery to replace the old internal one, or a 3V CR2032 and don't bother with external batteries
Not usually a good idea to replace a rechargeable battery with a non-rechargeable like the CR2032.

I'm confused; was there a 3.6V NiCd on board and an external 4.5V Rayovac 844 Alkaline battery? 4.5V should be enough; instead of a jumper to disable the internal battery there is sometimes a jumper to enable an external one; have a look around.

Worst case, put rechargeable AAAs into that battery holder and connect it where the onboard battery was connected.
 
Last edited:
Yes, there was a soldered on 3.6v Ni/cad and an attached 4.5v external battery. I bought this system recently on eBay, however I did own one of these when they were new, and the external battery is the same. I purchased another on eBay also, and it has the same setup, with the same battery, but I wonder if there is only an external battery maybe it needs 6v? I'd be leery of installing a non-rechargeable battery on the board since I'd figure the board would try to charge it like it did the original cell? I have looked all over the board and I don't see a jumper *labeled* as enabling the external battery, but I wonder if there is one that isn't labeled, I was hoping someone might still have a more extensive manual than what I've been able to find on line. I suppose I could try rigging up a 6v battery box to the external connector and see what happens.
 
You're talking about a clock failure. It might be the clock and not the battery. Does the system retain its CMOS settings? If it does the battery is doing its job.
 
That is a good idea, I had not thought of that at all, but I don't think that is it since no settings are retained in the CMOS at all after a full power off. I looked around and it seems that those batteries are still available, or maybe I could make up a box with 3 ni/cad AAAs and solder it in place to where the original was to see if that will work? Is it possible that the clock needs 6V getting some from the external and some from the internal? Thank you
 
4.5v or 6.0v it doesn't really matter. Either one would give satisfactory results if nothing else was wrong. I'm beginning to think that there is another problem with this board that is neither the clock nor the battery.
 
The following is typical:

batt_int_ext.jpg
 
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