Hi all,

a couple of months back in time, i purchased my "first pc" once again in the form of the PS/2 model 30-286. It had the standard configuration of 1MB ram and working floppy and HDD (30MB). Soon after, i got it an XT-ide card (with a pcmcma/512MB CF card) as well as a ISA memory expansion board populated with 4MB (Acculogic RamPat! plus).

Of course, the original DS1287 was completely drained so i did the dremel trick on it, piggybacking a CR2032 batteri with holder soldered on properly. After configuring it with the reference disk, everything worked perfect for 6 months.

After these 6 months, i started to get those annoying 163/164 errors again. Checking the battery revealed that it still had the proper current and the soldering still looked as it should (and the computer had not been moved around) which was odd. At this point in time, i googled around and found that the Dallas RTC 1287 had a replacement that was confirmed to be working in the form of the Maxim 12887+ (sold by DigiKey and others). I ordered one of those. When it arrived, i plugged the 12887+ in and could enjoy some ~5 months of retro-fiddling without issues.

Last week, the machine started to act up again, and this is where it starts to get a bit weird:

It keeps most of its configuration intact (i.e floppy settings, etc). It also can remember its date settings. But it can't remember the time settings. After booting (with said 16x errors) and checking the time, i get this odd "0.12.3.24" time returned from the OS. Running the reference disk again and setting date and time that way will make it keep the time properly until i do a cold reboot, after which it goes back to this "garbled" time-format again.

Thinking that the PS/2 might not be as compatible after all (?? but why did it then work for quite many months prior?), i ordered and got two DS1287 and did the battery hack on one of them. After connecting this new frankenstein RTC, it did survive one cold start and could keep the date AND time. The second time i cold restarted it, i still had all settings intact, but the time setting (and it then gave me the 16x error before that).

I have tried to disconnect the memory expansion board and the xt-ide, but it makes no difference.

Have anyone here experienced something similar? If so, what was your solution? Is the Maxim 12887+ compatible like some people claim? Any better options around?

br

Dan