First post, by PeterTheWomble
Having kept an eye out for years I've just got hold of a PC that's the same as my first one, a Commodore 486sx-25. There can be fewer safer ways of having a mid-life crisis 😀.
It powers on and goes through the POST, but won't proceed any further. It won't go in to the BIOS settings, though it does seem to recognise that I asked it to (the screen goes blank when I press F1).
I was expecting this, because rather than a CR2032 or one of those wretched barrel batteries that leak poison everywhere, the battery is held within a chip - a Twinhead TH1287.
Rather than being housed in a socket for easy removal, the chip has been soldered on to the motherboard.
The only option that seems available to me is to de-solder the chip, remove some of the casing, to expose the internal battery terminals, and add a CR2032 battery holder. I've seen various youtube videos of people doing this sort of thing.
Have others here done similar to this? I don't want to get this wrong, so would love to hear about what to do or to avoid. I'm very nervous about taking a soldering iron to it.
Thanks