On 28-May-06 Wayne Stallwood wrote:
[...] The black box is a small "cap" over a socketed Real Time Clock chip (usually a Dallas) the cap contains a small 3 volt battery which is soldered to two of the chip legs that have been bent upwards. ... [...] In your case however I am not sure why pressing on it has cleared the fault. I think there may be a write enable pin, perhaps if this isn't connected properly the system cannot update the HW clock ?
Now that I think about your description of how things are arranged, I suspect that the contacts between battery and chip pins may have degraded over the years (the m/board dates from 1995), and possibly leaning on the cap has improved the contact.
??
Cheers, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 28-May-06 Time: 11:06:03 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------