390X: broke the backup battery holder!

[LaraM]

Hi everyone,

[context - feel free to skip!]

I have an old 390X around which I bought off ebay perhaps one year ago. The loudness of its fan always bothered me, especially since it would never go silent even the system was totally idle.

The machine was also never able to keep time -- the clock would never be right. More recently, I started getting the '0270 - real time clock error' message.

Searching this forum, I learned that the two might be connected: misfunctioning fans seem to have something in common with the need to update the CMOS battery.

So, I located the hmm for this model and went about extracting the battery so that I could buy a new one tomorrow.

[/context]

That is where I messed up: at the part where the manual for the 390X (printed p69, p75 in the PDF) said "Use your thumb first to pull out the backup battery(RTC)", I kept pulling and pulling and, yet, the battery would never come out of its holder. What ended up happening was that the entire holder jumped off the board to which it was attached. It has two little metal contacts on the sides.

I guess I need to find someone who will solder this for me, right? (I feel tempted to ask "is glue ok?", but that is a bad idea, I guess...) But if so, how can I figure out what the correct alignment is? The battery holder is nearly symmetric, and I can find no hint on which contact (on the battery holder) should be soldered to which contact (on the board).

In any case, ever since this broke the machine's fan is no longer permanently on. : )

Thank you for any guidance,

L

[virge]

I can't help you on figuring out the proper alignment-- on mine I was able to match the broken solder points. I'm not even sure that it matters for the clock battery, but some more knowledgeable should be able to help with that.

My solution was to have my brother in law solder two wires onto the pads on the motherboard. I then hooked them up to a regular CMOS battery. You need a pretty fine tip on the soldering gun. My backup option would have been to use electrically conductive glue. Just be careful not to put too much on there. Supergluing the battery holder back with regular stuff did not work for me.

[LaraM]

Thanks : )

Lara