The 03.10.29 at 18:24, Carl William Spitzer IV wrote:
This is a PII box and the MB book does not indicate all the special messages you suggest.
Second all the behaviors were the same as those I observed in a 486 when its CMOS battery went down.
My experience led me into the same wrong path so dont feel put upon because I asked questions considtant with my experience.
I'm sorry; perhaps I was too harsh. But try this, if you want to experiment one day: with the computer powered off, remove the battery for a minute, or put the jumper in the reset cmos position for a second if it is not of the removable type. You will see when you boot a message of the bios saying that the CMOS memory was corrupt and reset to sensible values. If you remove the battery completely, the message will say that the battery is bad, and replace it. This has been the behavior since... who knows, from the 386 or earlier. Certainly earlier, I have an 8086 that does this. But... if you say that it happened to you some other time, that the battery was low and the clock drifted, without a warning message during boot... well, I accept that could happen. :-) Bad design. :-(
I stumbled upon the type of time setting when I was studying hardware settings trying to resolve internet and email issues. As I had mislaid my books I decided to change something and see if it helped or hurt my system. the next day when I found my books and booted the system things worked correctly.
I dont expect anyone here to apologise for asking for help while continuing to hack arround their system to fix problems. Thats how we grow linux and get smarter ourselves. That said I did not intend to waste anyones time; only to solve a problem.
Sorry again. But please, try to explain your problems better: I have tried several times to answer to your queries, but I don't get a clear picture of what you are asking. It may be me, but :-? it seems that sometimes you contradict yourself. -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson