On Sun, 2006-05-28 at 11:06 +0100, Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk wrote:
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.
??
I wouldn't have thought so, the battery contacts are spot welded to the battery casing and are actually quite hard to remove. I can't imagine them coming undone by themselves.
These contacts are then soldered straight onto a couple of pins on the chip...You don't usually get dry joints on a leg to leg joint.
It's doing pretty well, the battery in those things is rated for about 5 years, unless of course it has already been replaced once.