Seeing the CMOS Battery Socket's Contacts on a T20

[ArtShapiro]

I have a T20 that until yesterday had only booted once in about six months without quickly hanging. Recently it would hang during the "theater marquee" dots at XP boot. Previously it would hang at random while running, often with the disk light on.

In response to suggestions a while back in this forum, I partially disassembled it and took off everything that was "bolted on" - memory, disk, Cmos battery, keyboard, fan, cpu, etc. I reassembled everything, and to my immense pleasure it has been stable for 24 hours, with at least 15 power downs and reboots, and I successfully loaded all the recent months' Windows updates via wireless.

But I have one little problem, naturally.

If I disconnect the AC and the main battery, and then reattach one or the other or both, it appears as if CMOS has been cleared. It reports a problem, slowly puts me into the BIOS, and upon setting the date beyond the default of 1/1/81 everything is hunky dory.

This is with two brand new CMOS batteries and holders.

My hypothesis is that in all the fooling around over the last few months, I may have bent one or both of the pins in that tiny socket, causing the plug to simply not make contact.

The problem, of course, is that this is a tiny socket, underneath the bottom cover, and at right angles to one's field of vision.

How can I see this guy????

I've tried my digital camera - the flash intensity obscured the tiny pins. A small dental mirror under a strong light sees the socket head on, giving no real view of the pins' orientation.

I have to be overlooking something clever or obvious - anyone have an idea how poor aging eyes can get a good view of something small and inconveniently positioned?

Art

[rkawakami]

Take the motherboard out of the case .

Actually the dental mirror should work but if you can't get a good view of it at a 90 degree angle with a flashlight shining down upon the mirror (and thus lighting the socket), then you could try standing the laptop on the left side (hard drive/PCMCIA) and peering straight down into the battery compartment. I can put my nose on the front right corner of the laptop and view the pins in the socket with my right eye. I have to remove my contacts/glasses (severely nearsighted) to do so, but they are quite visible.

[Phazer]

My daughters T22, (similar mobo I think) had the same CMOS problem. I bought another mobo off of eBay, (bad experience, password locked). Ended up repairing hers. The battery connecot on the mobo is surface mounted but it's held in place with two small metal brackets that are bent 90* that engage into slots on the CMOS connector. While I was fiddling around checking te solder joints, prying and wedging on the back of the connector, it slid out and off the mobo. It slid out toward the plug-in side. I just slid it back in, and while pushing straight down on the plastic body of the connector, held a soldering gun, (with a standard spade tip), against the solder ears for about 5 seconds. I used a magnifying glass to look at it before and after to check my work. works like a champ now. Besides the mobo removal, I'd rate it about a 2 out of 10 on the difficulty scale.