OT: Can CMOS battery on PC motherboard be hot-swapped?

[Joerg]

[...]

But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.
Who does that, with flash being so ubiquitous?

Jeff brought an example, I don't know which mfgs use this:

http://www.bioscentral.com/misc/cmosmap.htm#

I have a Dell and the manual states that an image of the CMOS should be
taken before removing the battery, in order to be able to restore the
settings in there. But it fails to say how and what software to use for
this.

Maybe just write down the settings? There's not very many.

Everything past 0Fh? Not "many"?

Ok, I just bought a new set of ink roller pens so at least I wouldn't
run out of ink

 

[[email protected]]

[email protected] wrote:
[...]

But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.
Who does that, with flash being so ubiquitous?

Jeff brought an example, I don't know which mfgs use this:

http://www.bioscentral.com/misc/cmosmap.htm#

I have a Dell and the manual states that an image of the CMOS should be
taken before removing the battery, in order to be able to restore the
settings in there. But it fails to say how and what software to use for
this.

Maybe just write down the settings? There's not very many.

Everything past 0Fh? Not "many"?

Come on! You DO have equipment later than 1980 ???

Ok, I just bought a new set of ink roller pens so at least I wouldn't
run out of ink

I just bought some T\u\l (that's an over-bar medium needlepoint
pens. I've been having problems with the usual rollerball offerings
going all the way thru the cheap-ass paper masquerading as "green",
and bleeding such that readability goes to hell. So far the T\u\l
pens seem quite good.

I've been using Tul pens since 2007. I just wish I could buy only the
red ones. I have plenty of the others. I have some of the medium
point ones. They're great for writing (what little writing I do) but
I prefer the fine point for markups.

 

[Joerg]

[...]

I just bought some T\u\l (that's an over-bar medium needlepoint
pens. I've been having problems with the usual rollerball offerings
going all the way thru the cheap-ass paper masquerading as "green",
and bleeding such that readability goes to hell. So far the T\u\l
pens seem quite good.

I've been using Tul pens since 2007. I just wish I could buy only the
red ones. I have plenty of the others. I have some of the medium
point ones. They're great for writing (what little writing I do) but
I prefer the fine point for markups.

Actually, I'll have to correct my statement, it's gel pens. Pentel
EnerGel BLN105, 0.5mm. Those are really nice for drawing schematics that
need to be scanned and shared, or "skyped". Also to write on the back
side of the green AMPAD paper where pencil is hardly readable.

[...]

 

[Jasen Betts]

You do not need an addon since Win2000/XP they do ntp natively, should be
within 1 ms or better.

speaking NTP is half of the solution, clock scaling is the other half.
without clock scaling you get serious jitter each time the clock is
resynchronised.

 

[Jasen Betts]

Socketwatch updates the clock once an hour. My statement was
technically incorrect... the 50ms was the last correction before I
read the clock.

Socketwatch is automatic and settable to any interval desired and
checks _multiple_ time servers.

Where is this Win2000/XP feature that does ntp automatically?

microsoft calls it internet time, it's in the clock control panel
somewhere

 

[Jasen Betts]

Way back in the early days of XTs you actually find the logic that
segregated those addresses from actual memory to the clock chip. Been
that way ever since.

The XT dodn't have an RTC, DOS would by default ask you the time on
boot (all XT the clones I encountered did have an RTC but needed a
vendor specific app to update the DOS clock from the RTC)
the clock was in the I/O address space

AIUI the first PC compatibles from IBM to ship with RTCs were 80286
based, but IIRC the 8086 based PS/2-30 had one too.

 

[Jasen Betts]

The "CMOS" has long ago gone to flash onboard the southbridge chip.

Last week I was able to reset the CMOS on a modern (2012) board by shorting
the battery contacts. I can't say for sure that Foxconn wasn't
emulating CMOS by detecting the short or the loss of clock power. but
It sure behaved like it was actual CMOS.

I had configured the bord in such a way that the onbord display
hardware was inactive and I needed to get it back, a brief visual
search of the board didn't reveal a CMOS reset jumper.

 

[SoothSayer]

speaking NTP is half of the solution, clock scaling is the other half.
without clock scaling you get serious jitter each time the clock is
resynchronised.

Your Internet connection has latencies and jitter as well.

see what the FCC says about your hooks.

See who they say the best is.

http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/ookla.htm


I get 24 down and send 20 up, and have 36ms latency with 2ms jitter.

Damn near T3. Not bad for $50 a month.

 

[josephkk]

And after 2h the fun is over, battery exhausted. I do heavy SPICE and a
laptop won't last long that way. The HD writes for the RAW files alone
are a major burden.

But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.

It has a line cord and brick for doing the SPICE runs. Other than that i
seem to get over 5 hours no problem.

?-)

 

[josephkk]

I just bought some T\u\l (that's an over-bar medium needlepoint
pens. I've been having problems with the usual rollerball offerings
going all the way thru the cheap-ass paper masquerading as "green",
and bleeding such that readability goes to hell. So far the T\u\l
pens seem quite good.

Do the world a favor... locate a greenie and burn his ass to the
ground >:-}

...Jim Thompson

The way to really get the point across to the is to force them to use only
the green products that are seriously inferior.

?-)

 

[josephkk]

I meant all the other settings. Think about it a little more: Why does
the handbook insist you copy everything in the setup before swapping the
battery? They would surely not say that if all you'd lose is date and
time (which nowadays cen even be auto-updated from the web).

I'll check my manuals, but it is more difficult to make static ram that
needs battery than a bit of flash. Look at the common PICs, AVRs, and
such; very many have flash, none have static ram requiring battery.

?-)

 

[Jasen Betts]

Your Internet connection has latencies and jitter as well.

see what the FCC says about your hooks.

See who they say the best is.

http://www.broadband.gov/qualitytest/ookla.htm

they say I've got 4ms jitter not bad for the other side of the world,

I get 24 down and send 20 up, and have 36ms latency with 2ms jitter.

Damn near T3. Not bad for $50 a month.

I pay about half that, for a slow DSL connection.

to nz.pool.ntp.org I get ICMP pings between 34.7 and 35.8 ms (6 hops).
and TCP pings in the same ballpark.

OTOH to the national standard I get 5ms jitter

I haven't bothered to optimise my NTP settings I'm still using the
defaults. which is pick 4 servers at random from an international pool.

 

[John Devereux]

[email protected] wrote:
[...]

But what I meant was PC sales in general, including laptops. Many older
folks buy laptops these days because they don't want a space-hogging
tower and monitor setup. And it's the saem thing there: Writing setup
info that hardly ever changes into voltaile RAM is not smart.

Who does that, with flash being so ubiquitous?


Jeff brought an example, I don't know which mfgs use this:

http://www.bioscentral.com/misc/cmosmap.htm#

I have a Dell and the manual states that an image of the CMOS should be
taken before removing the battery, in order to be able to restore the
settings in there. But it fails to say how and what software to use for
this.

Maybe just write down the settings? There's not very many.

...Jim Thompson

One of the best points in the entire thread.

I usually try to set things up to work with the defaults anyway.

 

[G. Morgan]

The strap or the battery? The strap is NOT the degree of "conductive"
you may think it is.

The battery. Make sure you have a good hold on it before removing &
replacing. If you drop it on an a energized circuit you can short
something out.