Hello everybody.

I bought a Texas Instruments TravelMate 4000E 486 WinSX/25MHz today and I need some help with it. I didn't get a manual for this machine and I wasn't able to find one online either, so I hope that one of you can help me out.

First of all, the system itself appears to work just fine. The seller was kind enough to let me test it before I bought it and the first thing I saw was a CMOS checksum error. With the system being over 23 yeras old, it was no surprise that the CMOS battery is dead. I didn't pay attention to the BIOS settings at that time and just did a "save & exit" and it booted MS-DOS from the harddisk and started up Windows 3.1. When I got home about half an hour later, I powered it on again, and didn't get a CMOS error. I spent some time looking through the folders on the harddrive (basically just DOS, Windows, 3-4 shareware games for Windows, and Zak McKracken) and powered it off.

I wanted to see what type of CMOS battery was used in that system and tried to open it, but even after all visible screws had been removed, I still couldn't open the case. I didn't want to break anything, so I put all the screws back in and powered it on again. This time, I got a CMOS error, but "save & exit" didn't work so well this time around. The system wouldn't boot from the harddisk anymore and there was no way to enter the BIOS setup. I ended up leaving the system with no power connection for a while and then I got the CMOS error again. Knowing the harddisk had about 100MB free space, I was able to set the correct harddisk type in the BIOS and it booted from the harddisk again. I also wrote down the harddisk type on a post-it just in case.

My search for a manual only got me a 4000M manual. I was going to ask you how to enter the BIOS setup, but then I found something in the 4000M manual. It says the key combination to enter the BIOS setup is Ctrl+Alt+Esc and this seems to work for my 4000E as well.

So the questions that remain unanswered are:

- Does anyonw know what type of CMOS battery the system uses? Barrel, button, or embedded in a real-time clock chip?
- Does anyone know how to open the case without breaking anything?

I can post photos if you need them.

Edit: Nevermind. I managed to open it myself. The battery is soldered onto the mainboard and has already started leaking: