Intermittent Bios Battery Problem - solved

[peternsomerset]

Just thought I might save people some time!
(sorry if this may have been covered)

Bought a T23 second hand and it had a low capacity main battery and occasionally lost its bios date/time.
Bought a new battery and cmos battery - still had intermittent date/time loss and I damaged the cmos battery socket on the M/B!

After a few months it got worse (failing almost every other day, so replaced M/B.
This seemed to cure the fault, but it gradually returned!

I was about to replace the machine when I read somewhere that the cmos battery relies on the heat-shrink insulation to make the connection.
I did not even have to remove it, I gave it a rub like Aladdin's lamp, and like magic, it has now been working for several months!

And the moral of all this, look for the simple solutions first.

Hope this may help someone with a similar problem

[Peak2Peak]

Another similar solution that may of worked in this situation, would have been to heat-up the heat-shrink insulation of the CMOS battery with a hair-dryer in the hope that the insulation would have shrank a little more so as to increase the connectivity between the wire-leads and battery contacts within.

[RealBlackStuff]

A better solution would have been to buy a proper IBM CMOS battery which comes with attached leads.

[Robbyrobot]

I was about to replace the machine when I read somewhere that the cmos battery relies on the heat-shrink insulation to make the connection.

Just for the record: it doesn't. The leads to the battery are spot welded on the battery. The insulation is just that: insulation, and serves no other purpose. If heat treatment of the shrink insulation helps, the leads to the CMOS battery have bome detached (although I would normally think this impossible, as they are welded! to the battery) and for that reason alone the battery should be replaced.