Am i totally screwed?

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Am i totally screwed?
started by: tuvok302

Posted by tuvok302 on Oct. 11 2005,22:39

I can't start up dsl in any way shape or form on my computer. I can't make it work with the live-cd or even with the boot floppy. Because the CMOS battery is fried it won't let me set the boot order to A,C from C,A

Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Oct. 12 2005,14:19

Why can't you replace the battery?

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Oct. 12 2005,14:26

Pull the hdd out.

Slap it into another box (using a 44-to-40 pin adapter, if needed).

Install DSL to the hdd (frugal or old-school install).

Swap it back.

-J.P.

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 12 2005,14:58

Quote (SaidinUnleashed @ Oct. 12 2005,10:26)

Pull the hdd out.

Slap it into another box (using a 44-to-40 pin adapter, if needed).

Install DSL to the hdd (frugal or old-school install).

Swap it back.

-J.P.

This method works very very well in fact!!

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by tuvok302 on Oct. 12 2005,22:32

in theory swapping it out would work well, except my father won't let me, and i would replace the battery..... if i could find it! :angry:

, and yes i know in the newer motherboards it is like a clock battery, but there is not a single one of any shape or form in that motherboard.

Posted by haasdas on April 01 2006,12:06

I think I know what you have on that mobo. I've seen similar machines before.

The fact that you don't find any battery on the mobo makes me think that you have one of those stupid bios/battery combo chips installed. Basically this is a bios chip with a battery inside. The way to fix this is to crack open the top part of the chip and solder a socket for a battery to the correct pins. If you can find the bios chip, try to look up on its specs on the internet. Maybe you can find the pinouts and solder the + and - to a battery socket. Or just order another bios chip altogether if possible.

Just some ideas. Use it or don't...

Good luck
(I've seen this done before and it worked!)

Posted by piccolo on April 01 2006,14:07

Over old motherboard i found clock batteries into a package like a electrolytic capacitor because was a difficult search

Posted by safesys on April 01 2006,14:25

If its running windows, perhaps you can get a loadlin install working by pressing F8 when it starts to boot:

< http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install >

Posted by lovdsl on April 02 2006,06:44

does the computer boot.?.test ram?, offer setup entry?<del,fkey>, boot to an existing os..if the computer does not boot at all..check the power supply..if you know its the board..save your pennys and hit a yardsale. if it boots but will not switch from c,a maby a boot manager will work...not enough info ..good luck...as example below

< http://btmgr.webframe.org/ >

Posted by anaconda on April 02 2006,13:33

Well..
You dont need a working battery for changing the boot order to A,C.. !!

Just start the machine, go to bios and change the booting order to whatever you want. Then exit the bios setup and it boots from wherever you wanted it to boot.

Without the battery BIOS setting are lost when you shutdown your computer completely ie. lose power. But from BIOS setup to booting the current is not lost, so the setting stay.

Posted by pyrael on Mar. 09 2007,17:42

Could you give some info on what make model motherboard this is? Is it laptop or Desktop? I might have one here that I can look on to help you find the battery.

Posted by ron on Mar. 09 2007,21:05

Like anaconda says, the battery is for saving the BIOS settings when the computer is turned off, so it should be possible (unless there's something extraordinary about your computer) to just enter setup and set it to boot from LiveCD, and then during the Linux session install it to hard disk.

The other way I thought of was to use one of "dockable" distros, which lets you copy the contents of the LiveCD to your hard disk without creating a partition with a Linux partition. You could then have a dual boot option. But this might not be useful to you if you're dead set on DSL (which is a good choice anyway).

Posted by Mathes75 on Mar. 10 2007,20:50

What motherboard is ist? Is ist a notebook, a desktop?? Give some information, maybe someone can help out ...