[Wolves] Ron hows the wlug laptop

[Andrew Lewis]

Peter Cannon wrote:

>On Tuesday 06 September 2005 13:29, Ron Wellsted wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Yep, it is that Thinkpad.
>>
>>The CMOS battery is currently outputting 0.169V instead of the normal 3V,
>>so that explains why we were getting date not set and memory size errors.
>>
>>The TP is on charge at the moment so that I can flash the BIOS to the
>>latest version.
>>    
>>
CAREFUL! You might already know this, but some thinkpads can be rendered 
completely useless if the bios battery is disconnected for too long. 
It's a password issue - you can password the disk, bios and boot on some 
thinkpads, and if the battery dies, the passwords get overwritten with 
garbage, and there is no way to set it to blank when this has happened. 
IBM's own solution for this (big fanfare from the 'not thinking ahead' 
department) is "replace the motherboard"!?*$

I know this sounds a little bit unbelievable, but we've had it happen at 
work more than once. There is suppoosed to be a very complicated way of 
fixing it if it does happen, but it involves LOTS of soldering and 
eeproms and a mind meld with tommy flowers.

Caveat Emptor, Aptenodyte Grex!
Splineboy