IBM T60 with broken RTC (real-time clock) ?

[fuxxi]

Hi there,

I have a Lenovo T60 here with a strange problem. The RTC circuit seems to be broken. If You went into BIOS and check date/time settings You can see, that the time just stops, the second counter doesnt count, like it usually does.

I have already loaded default setup, supplied latest BIOS Update (2.26) and changed the cmos battery. There is no problem.

Does anybody know where the RTC is stored on the T60? For desktop mainboards I have read so far, that there was a chip taking care of the RTC ("DALLAS", later "ODIN" for example). On newer mainboards the RTC is stored inside the southbridge, according to Wikipedia.

Except this error there is no other visible problem with that mainboard. But its annoying for Windows, because if You set time to 09:00 in BIOS for example, then shutdown the notebook and restart it 6 hours later the time in Windows will jump again to 09:00 as its grabbing the time from the BIOS/internal RTC. This is another indicator that the mainboards rtc just keep staying at last set time.


Anybody any idea?

[tannerj]

May be a silly question, but are you sure you don't have a worn CMOS battery? Most computers use a 2032, which you can get for less than $2. Can be easy, can be difficult depending on the laptop. I haven't cracked open my T61p yet (no need so far), so I can't say where it's located.

[BKthink]

Prior to my current T60 I had a Compaq Evo N600C that I purchased with an amex card, which at the time extended the 3yr warranty by either double or one year - can't remember. Anyway, at year 4 the RTC stopped working. Replaced the clock battery with no joy. Amex had it sent to one of their contract repair facilities all expenses paid. Three way conference call with the tech and amex specialist and it was determined that the mobo was kaput since the RTC didn't work with a windows bootup CD and the Compaq diagnostics also indicated an issue. Amex credited the purchase price in full (!!) and allowed me to buy back the Evo for $150. I bought my current T60 with the proceeds - props to amex. Fast forward a couple of years...sent the Evo to my brother serving in Iraq, non-functional RTC was no big woop for him at the time....on the return trip the HD got hosed so I put in a new HD and reloaded the OS from scratch. Magically, the RTC started working and it's been working flawlessly ever since!!

BK

[yak]

Anybody any idea?

You could use an NTP server to let the OS get the time from the Internet. Not perfect but maybe you could live with that.

[RealBlackStuff]

@yak:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=461352

[BKthink]

Prior to my current T60 I had a Compaq Evo N600C that I purchased with an amex card, which at the time extended the 3yr warranty by either double or one year - can't remember. Anyway, at year 4 the RTC stopped working. Replaced the clock battery with no joy. Amex had it sent to one of their contract repair facilities all expenses paid. Three way conference call with the tech and amex specialist and it was determined that the mobo was kaput since the RTC didn't work with a windows bootup CD and the Compaq diagnostics also indicated an issue. Amex credited the purchase price in full (!!) and allowed me to buy back the Evo for $150. I bought my current T60 with the proceeds - props to amex. Fast forward a couple of years...sent the Evo to my brother serving in Iraq, non-functional RTC was no big woop for him at the time....on the return trip the HD got hosed so I put in a new HD and reloaded the OS from scratch. Magically, the RTC started working and it's been working flawlessly ever since!!

BK

Reading above I fear the moral of the story might have been lost - OS reload from scratch might just fix you up.

Also, as someone already mentioned, running a small utility in the background to sync with time servers at user-defined intervals and reset the system clock is a decent work-around for this issue, but after a while it gets sort of old.

BK

[yak]

@RealBlackStuff
Thanks but I started looking for one after all khtse's panels were sold.