DECpc 425SE

[Antonio Carlini]

On 05/12/2019 00:36, Adrian Graham via cctalk wrote:
>>> ...
>>> The button cell looks very much like it is soldered in. It's approximately 12mm in diameter. I've read numerous warnings not to go to near a button cell with a soldering iron so I'm not really keen to do that, especially as I don't know for sure that it will fix the problem.
>> I'm curious what the reason is for that warning.  After all, the thing was soldered in to begin with; it certainly won't mind the heat.  You'd want to make sure you don't short it out while doing it, of course; some insulating tape might help with that.
>>

There are plenty of warnings, e.g.: 
http://www.cr2032.co/soldering-article.html

>
> Many years ago I removed the soldered coin cell from the control board of the Compaq 7000 series and replaced it with a 2032 coin cell holder, worked nicely so I can’t see why it wouldn’t work in this DECivetti monstrosity.
>

Well I suppose removing it means unsoldering the two tabs from the 
motherboard rather than unsoldering the tabs from the cell, so maybe 
I'll give that a go. Then I could work out what the battery is, get a 
suitable holder and solder that in.


It would, however, be much more useful if a manual turned up and I could 
just perform a system reset and get past the password that way!


Antonio


-- 
Antonio Carlini
antonio at acarlini.com