Re: Z-RAM ultra 2... replacing the battery?

["John Van Winkle" <appleiieman@charter.net>]

Gary,

I had an AE Time II clock card that had a Varta 3.6v 100mah battery.  I went
to radio shack and bought a new
battery pack and 2 double AA batteries at 1.2V apiece and soldered it to the
card.  The Time II  keeps great time
now.  If you would like, I can send you a pic of my card and the battery I
had and the mod I made.   Just email me at appleiieman@charter.net

John Van Winkle

"Gary" <dontyouspamme_vengefultacos@comcast.nospam.net> wrote in message
news:GAvWc.78060$TI1.15396@attbi_s52...
> So, after having a fit of nostalgia, I dug my trusty //c out from storage,
> and tried booting it up. In retrospect, this thing was pretty tricked out
> for its day... 1MB of RAM in a Z-Ram ultra 2 card (the one with a built-in
> clock... wow, remember when having a clock in a computer was a big deal?),
> a 65802, and a 3.5" Unidisk.
>
> Anyhow, trying to boot up using my old usual boot disks resulted in the
> system diving into the monitor after displaying "setting the real time
> clock" which was what the system program that Applied Engineering supplied
> to read the clock on the card would print on the screen. It took a while,
> but I was able to find a boot disk that didn't have the clock system file
> on it (I had been pretty thorough in putting it on just about any disk I
> would normally boot). That disk booted up just fine, and removing the
> clock.system file from the other boot disks had them boot up just fine as
> well.
>
> I'm guessing that the battery backup in this thing must be toast, and that
> the battery was the only way the clock chip got power, because even warm
> booting the system still gets the same message. On the plus side, the RAM
> expansion function of the board seems to be working just fine.
>
> I just disassembled the //c and removed the Z-ram board. Fortunately, the
> battery didn't explode and leak noxious stuff all over the place. The
> battery is pretty easy to spot on the card... a large black rectangle
> labeled "VARTA Mempac 3.6V 100mAh 53010 703 012." Looking at the back of
> the board, I can see that the battery seems to have four pins on it that
> have been soldered into place. The pins aren't labeled on the back (in
> fact, there are no traces leading away from the pins on the back... I
guess
> they must be on the front.) I'm hoping that the traces are labelled on the
> front... or perhaps that the bottom of the battery itself is labeled.
>
> Before I grab a soldering iron and start messing with this, I thought I'd
> check to see if anyone else has managed to find a replacement for the
> battery and successfully completed a transplant. I googled for Varta
> batteries, and found they are still in business, but as far as I can tell,
> they no longer manufacture a battery with the same specs and same form
> factor as the one on the Z-Ram board.
>
> So, anyone replace one of these batteries before? Any tips on what to look
> out for? I would like to at least get the battery off of the board, so
that
> there's no chance for a toxic spill should the thing decide to break open.
> Getting the clock functioning again would be a nice bonus.
>
> I was thinking that I would perhaps just desolder the thing, and then run
> leads outside of the case to an external battery enclosure... that way I
> could replace the battery without opening up the much-abused //c's case
> again, and could pull the battery in case I put it back into long-term
> storage. I assume I can find some sort of replacement battery for this, as
> long as I match the specs printed on it, right? (voltage and mAh).
>
> Thanks,
> Gary
>
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