On 26/03/2019 21:21, David Farber wrote:


I cosign on salvaging electronics and exercising the brain cells.

By the way, how is it the computer keeps perfect time once the time is
set and the power remains on? Shouldn't the time shown in the BIOS setup
screen begin to advance too once it's powered on?


The RTC is only read once on startup of the operating system, which then
maintains the increment of it's own internal counter. There is no
'write-back' if current OS time settings are left alone by the user.

The BIOS time itself not incrementing is the fault, I reckon the chipset
has got itself into a funny state and needs a reset which you haven't
yet done. I'd try finding the G2101 link I mentioned.

Interestingly, the ACER ASPIRE V5 471 has the same labelled jumper,
similar circuit (same original manufacturer) - and googling that
"G2101", it looks a known reset method for locked BIOS etc. That Acer
motherboard visually looks different, but the G2101 triangular pads were
located under the DIMM sockets. Maybe Dell is in a similar location.


--
Adrian C