CMOS protocol

[Olde Man]

I have been replacing CMOS batteries in the 600 series for some time, but just doing it. However, it is the only machines that I have ever done it on.

So, I am reading about replacing the CMOS battery on a desktop and am amazed to find I am supposed to 'back up' something before I replace the battery or awful things will happen.

Hmmm! Howcome I don't have to 'backup' anything in the 600 series or am I missing something here?

[Harryc]

The only thing you'd have to back up (or write down) would be any custom settings in BIOS that you may have done, because when you pull the battery you will reset BIOS to default settings. Other than that no worries.

[ozzymud]

If this is an older machine your talking about, the MAIN thing you need to write down is the hard disk type...

Drive Type # or if set to custom... Cylinders, Heads, Sectors per track, Write Precomp, Landing Zone

It wasn't uncommon to setup a drive for different then it's stock settings... and if you guess wrong now... the drive may work (with errors when filled), or may not work at all.

Past that, just what types of floppies and video type... past that it is user preference, like EMS size, date, time, caches, etc.

BE SURE TO NOTE HARD DISK TYPE/SETTINGS, or bad things WILL happen

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you don't know these numbers, I use an old commercial program called Micro House DrivePro Version 1.19. With it you can recover lost drive parameters... There is prolly other apps out there that will do the same, i aint needed to look in a while.

[Olde Man]

Thanks for the info. Normally, I don't fool with anything so everything should be in the default mode.

I have couple of 6yr+ desktops still grinding away. I would expect that any year now....which was why I was reading up on it.

Thanks again.