Dallas Clock Chip dead, not enter BIOS \ VOGONS

Dallas Clock Chip dead, not enter BIOS

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First post, by Smack2k

Posted on 2018-03-25, 19:00

Smack2k Offline

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Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 503
Joined: 2013-01-27, 18:58

Trying to revive an old Packard Bell Legend 300CD

When I boot up the system it reads the memory fine, asks to hit F1 to enter bios. If I hit F1 there it says entering BIOS, finishes up the boot process, but then gives the following errors: CMOS battery dead, memory decreased,
Then prompts to hit F1 for setup or ESC to boot. If I leave it alone it will wait for a choice until I make one, doesn’t freeze, hitting ESC to boot will boot off the floppy drive fine and I can even navigate the HDDs once the boot disk finishes loading. Hitting F1 however does nothing and the system freezes, doesn’t enter BIOS and does nothing. Keyboard is useless after this, cant reboot, can’t do anything

Could the dead CMOS battery be causing this issue? Or could it be something else? I’ve pulled everything and only booted with keyboard / mouse / monitor / mobo and no change to the issues

Reply 1 of 2, by derSammler

Posted on 2018-03-25, 19:09

derSammler Offline

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Posts: 3886
Joined: 2017-04-14, 11:30

That's exactly how my Intel Neptune board behaves as well. Trying to enter the BIOS with dead Dallas freezes the system. More worst at least with the Neptune board: it also freezes when the date is invalid. So after renewing the Dallas, you need to boot from floppy, use "date" to set the date, and only after that you can enter the BIOS. But that may be the case with the Neptune board only.

Reply 2 of 2, by Smack2k

Posted on 2018-03-25, 19:43

Smack2k Offline

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Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 503
Joined: 2013-01-27, 18:58

Thanks, that helps out a lot...

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