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INTERtan 286 cmos/bios loosing memory

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First post, by gaz

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I still have my brothers first ever PC .
It's an 286 12.5 mhz

Problem is it never remembers the bios time and date and HDD settings.

I can't see anything that looks like a battery on the motherboard though , so I'm a bit confused.

It used to remember settings back in the day.

I used to play wing commander 1 and 2 and Wolfenstine, lemmings etc.

I'd love to get it running again.

Need to also sort some sort of IDE HDD for it though as the original 40MB drive died a long time ago.

Reply 1 of 2, by jakethompson1

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Need a picture of the motherboard; it's possible you have a Dallas chip with the battery (safely) encased inside

Lots of options on HDDs, the two best being just find another IDE HDD that is still working (of any capacity) or get a passive adapter to use a CompactFlash card.

Reply 2 of 2, by gaz

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jakethompson1 wrote on 2024-02-18, 03:30:

Need a picture of the motherboard; it's possible you have a Dallas chip with the battery (safely) encased inside

Lots of options on HDDs, the two best being just find another IDE HDD that is still working (of any capacity) or get a passive adapter to use a CompactFlash card.

Ah.. if I have one of these 'Dallas chips' , can the battery be changed in them?

What do they look like?

I'll try and get some photos of the mobo..

One interesting thing I noticed about the 286 mother board is that it doesn't seem to have any of those tin can style capacitors .

It seems to have those tiny square boxes ? Are those solid state caps? Or something?

Are they better?

If they are, I'm surprised to see them on such an old computer.

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