Rom 3 GS battery ram questions

["Jayson Smith" <ihatespamratguynospamplease@insightbb.spamsucks.com>]

Hi,

     Someone sent me a ROM 3 GS in exchange for sending them some disk 
images. The system works great, but the battery seems to be dead as a 
doornail. I have a few questions. Before I ask these, keep in mind, I'm 
blind, so something that would seem painfully obvious to a sighted person, 
might not be to me.
1. Stupid question time! How do you get the battery cover off? I've figured 
out you have to pull the power supply. But then what do you do to get the 
cover off so you can actually pull the battery?
2. Does the battery, and/or any replacement I am likely to get, have 
different-feeling positive and negative terminals, like those on AA, AAA, C 
or D batteries? On a standard ROM 3 motherboard, which terminal is in front, 
and which one is in back?
3. The big question... Where do I get a replacement battery? What, exactly, 
do I ask for? I know Reactive Micro sells a kit to allow ROM 00 and 01 
owners to replace the battery with a pack that holds three standard AAA 
batteries. I assume doing this on a ROM 3 would be impossible, or seen as 
totally pointless since there's already a holder there? The reason this 
would appeal to me is that, years down the road, replacement should still be 
easy.
And now, an interesting observation. When I turn the system on, the Control 
Panel settings are all defaulted. But the date and time seem to just be set 
to totally random values. I can turn the system off, and within five 
seconds, the control panel settings are gone. I'm sure that's because, if 
even one bit of the RAM is corrupted, the validity check fails, and the GS 
resets them. But why does the clock just power up at any old random time? 
Does this mean the battery isn't totally dead, but just dead enough to cause 
RAM instability? Or does the clock just do that, even with a totally dead or 
missing battery?
Thanks for any help!
Jayson