On Sun, 2007-08-26 at 17:44 -0700, Les wrote: > On most systems the battery only comes into play when the system power > is off. The battery is on charge the rest of the time, It's been a very long time since I've seen a rechargable battery for the BIOS memory power on a PC. All the ones I've seen use a watch battery cell. NB: I mean Personal Computer, when I say PC. I don't work with real servers, and I wouldn't call them a PC. > and if the battery is shorted, it can load the powersupply and affect > the clock and CMOS stuff (If there is CMOS stuff any more?) There's still plenty of CMOS technology around, but I haven't looked into what's actually used with the BIOS, these days. Out of the motherboards that I've looked at, the power to that section has been diode and resistor coupled. It'd be difficult to produce a dead short to the supply from the battery terminals. You wouldn't want to short some of those button cell batteries, they can get damn hot. -- [tim@bigblack ~]$ uname -ipr 2.6.22.1-41.fc7 i686 i386 Using FC 4, 5, 6 & 7, plus CentOS 5. Today, it's FC7. Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.