SMS wrote
Don Klipstein wrote

My computer has an Asus A7N8X-E "deluxe" motherboard for the AMD "Athlon XP" processor. That is maybe 5 years old.
I got it the
same day I got a "3200+" processor. The battery is removable and
replaceable. I have that computer on a power strip that I often turn off.

Asus is a top of the line motherboard, so you'd expect them to have a replaceable battery.

There's very few motherboards from anyone that dont have a replaceable battery now.

The boards sold for use in name brand computers
are decontented to save ever penny possible, literally

None of those have soldered in batterys now.

(I used to work for a very large Taiwanese motherboard company's U.S. office).

But dont have a clue about whats happened since then.

This includes using a very low capacity back-up battery, and soldering it in.

Bet you cant list even a single example of one of those with current motherboards.

Remember the large rectangular Tadiran batteries with a wire and a
connector used on old AT motherboards? They used these because the battery had to power the RTC and CMOS for long
periods of time because when the power was off there was no +5V to power the RTC.

Nope, they didnt use coin cells because they couldnt
provide enough capacity for the older RTC and CMOS.

The ATX supply changed all this.

Wrong again. The real change was the current used by the RTC
and use of flashram that takes no battery current for the settings.

ALL modern motherboards get YEARS out of the replaceable battery
even if you unplug the system from the mains when you arent using it.
And it costs peanuts to replace when that is necessary too.

There were other reasons as well. With the ATX supply, there is power to the PCI slots so you can do remote power-up
through the network (though with most boards these days the Ethernet chip is on the board, and can be powered directly
with standby power).

How odd that that wasnt eliminated in the cost cutting too.

You've never had a clue about the basics, which is
presumably why you got the bums rush from that importer.