Help w/3b1 date/time

[Donald Lashomb]

In article <2508 at ultb.isc.rit.edu> kes7613 at ultb.isc.rit.edu (K.E. Staffan ) writes:
>
>My 3b1 loses the date/time when I shutdown.  I don't have any documentation. 
>Could someone tell me where to look for the problem?  (i.e. is there a separate
>battery, or is it a chip).  Thanks in advance.
>

Yup - sounds like your battery is dead ( quite common now that most 7300s
are about 5 years old or more now).  The battery is a 3v lithium that's
soldered in the mother board - front left quadrant, near edge, about opposite
the volume slide control that's on the right side.

If I were you, I'd edit your /etc/rc file to ask the operator to enter the
correct date and time before doing much else.  Having the wrong date will
muck up a few things.  This will serve as a temp fix until you can change
the battery.

There a a couple of choices for the battery, all involve (de)soldering on
the mother board, so if you are not comfortable with hardware stuff, find
someone who is.

1) You could simply un-solder the old battery and solder in a new one of the
   same type.

2) You could un-solder the old battery and solder in a lithium button cell
   battery-holder.  Then in 5 years, you just clip in a new lithium.

3) [what I did]  Unsolder the old battery.  Solder a couple of wires in
   place of the battery.  Lead the wires back to near the fans.  Attach
   two AA size Duracell(tm) alkyline batterys in series (1.5v + 1.5v = 3v)
   to the end of the wires.  Be sure to get the pos-neg right.  Probably
   best if the Duracells are in a holder - it's not really a good idea
   to solder directly to the batterys.

Hope this helps -Don