Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 09:57:49 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub Cap\" McKinney"
wrote:

Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.


Beats me. It could be a drive controller on the MB going bad. Could
be other things - lost setting in the BIOS. When you hit DEL on
reboot it found the master again.

- check the cable on the drive, disconnect from the MB & drive and
connect it again

- Boot sector corruption on the drive?

- Do a virus scan

Run Belarc Advisor http://www.belarc.com/ a free product. Do the
definition update. Cut and paste the OS, Drives, Controllers & Virus
Protection parts of the report back here.

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 11:58:35 AM UTC-5, Snuffy Hub Cap McKinney wrote:
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:31:57 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(?)_/¯

True. If dead it would likely ask for a date and time, but the BIOS
found his drive, showed up again as the master when he hit DEL into
the BIOS.

On 08/14/2015 01:39 PM, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:31:57 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(?)_/¯

True. If dead it would likely ask for a date and time, but the BIOS
found his drive, showed up again as the master when he hit DEL into
the BIOS.




I'd correct the settings in the BIOS and if they don't stick, then it's
time for a new CMOS battery

Uncle Monster wrote:
On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 11:58:35 AM UTC-5, Snuffy Hub Cap McKinney wrote:
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

How could he boot if that is the case?

In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 09:57:49 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub
Cap\" McKinney" wrote:

Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I confess. When you were eating I was modifying your settings. Sorry.

I regret what I did. I'm glad everything turned out all right

You'd be better off posting to xp.general than xp help.

And uncle, why did you remove the other ng from the list? Does your
software make you do that or did you want to exclude them? It would
help Snuffy (What a name. Reminds me of Snuffy Smith. That's why I
attacked your computer in the first place.)

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 1:40:04 PM UTC-5, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:31:57 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. Å»\_(?)_/Å»

True. If dead it would likely ask for a date and time, but the BIOS
found his drive, showed up again as the master when he hit DEL into
the BIOS.

If the voltage gets low, the date and time may remain unaffected but I've seen weird behavior that's mitigated when a new battery is installed. Sometimes you must default the BIOS and start over. There are also cosmic rays and Bush you can blame it on. O_o

[8~{} Uncle BIOS Monster

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 7:23:49 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:
On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 11:58:35 AM UTC-5, Snuffy Hub Cap McKinney wrote:
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

How could he boot if that is the case?

Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 5:16:15 AM UTC-5, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Fri, 14 Aug 2015 09:57:49 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub
Cap\" McKinney" wrote:

Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I confess. When you were eating I was modifying your settings. Sorry.

I regret what I did. I'm glad everything turned out all right

You'd be better off posting to xp.general than xp help.

And uncle, why did you remove the other ng from the list? Does your
software make you do that or did you want to exclude them? It would
help Snuffy (What a name. Reminds me of Snuffy Smith. That's why I
attacked your computer in the first place.)



Duh, wut? I'm powerless to harm anyone with my Chromebook and Google Groups.. I feel naked and alone, err, wait, let me pull up my shorts. These big boy disposable pull-ups don't fit that well. o_O

[8~{} Uncle Chrome Monster

On Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:20:27 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 1:40:04 PM UTC-5, Oren wrote:
On Fri, 14 Aug 2015 11:31:57 -0700 (PDT), Uncle Monster
wrote:

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ?\_(?)_/?

True. If dead it would likely ask for a date and time, but the BIOS
found his drive, showed up again as the master when he hit DEL into
the BIOS.

If the voltage gets low, the date and time may remain unaffected but I've seen weird behavior that's mitigated when a new battery is installed. Sometimes you must default the BIOS and start over. There are also cosmic rays and Bush you can blame it on. O_o

[8~{} Uncle BIOS Monster

You used to have to set the drives manually, later the BIOS would
auto-detect them. Maybe Hillary wiped his BIOS out :-\

In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Uncle
Monster wrote:

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 7:23:49 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:
On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 11:58:35 AM UTC-5, Snuffy Hub Cap McKinney wrote:
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. ¯\_(?)_/¯

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

How could he boot if that is the case?

Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

Yes. The Mac 2, and maybe other macs?, is an exception to that rule.
Even though a moderately handy person can replace the soldered in bios
battery of a mac2 with a battery holder and a cheap-enough battery, I'll
bet most took it to a mac repairman and endured a high service bill.

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 6:28:06 PM UTC-5, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Uncle
Monster wrote:

On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 7:23:49 PM UTC-5, Tony Hwang wrote:
Uncle Monster wrote:
On Friday, August 14, 2015 at 11:58:35 AM UTC-5, Snuffy Hub Cap McKinney wrote:
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up.. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master.. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

I wonder if your Bios battery could be dead or dying. Something like that can cause computer dementia. Å»\_(?)_/Å»

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

How could he boot if that is the case?

Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

Yes. The Mac 2, and maybe other macs?, is an exception to that rule.
Even though a moderately handy person can replace the soldered in bios
battery of a mac2 with a battery holder and a cheap-enough battery, I'll
bet most took it to a mac repairman and endured a high service bill.

Those lithium coin cell battery holders have the same lead locations as solder in lithium coin cells. I've installed many of them in all sorts of digital electronic equipment that has programmable features especially commercial electronic/digital telephone systems which have a much longer life cycle than a desktop or laptop computer and some of those phone systems can have been in service for 25 years after going through numerous battery replacements. (¬€¿Â¬)

[8~{} Uncle Coin Monster

On 8/15/15 7:28 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Uncle
Monster wrote:


Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It
comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was
published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

Yes. The Mac 2, and maybe other macs?, is an exception to that
rule. Even though a moderately handy person can replace the soldered
in bios battery of a mac2 with a battery holder and a cheap-enough
battery, I'll bet most took it to a mac repairman and endured a high
service bill.


What Macintosh ever had BIOS? The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

I don't know why you PC guys use a term so un-PC as "master-slave." BDSM
is no laughing matter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WGVgfjnLqc

On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 11:34:50 PM UTC-5, J Burns wrote:
On 8/15/15 7:28 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Uncle
Monster wrote:


Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It
comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was
published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

Yes. The Mac 2, and maybe other macs?, is an exception to that
rule. Even though a moderately handy person can replace the soldered
in bios battery of a mac2 with a battery holder and a cheap-enough
battery, I'll bet most took it to a mac repairman and endured a high
service bill.


What Macintosh ever had BIOS? The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

I don't know why you PC guys use a term so un-PC as "master-slave." BDSM
is no laughing matter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WGVgfjnLqc

I'm not an Apleophile but I do own a few Apple computers older than the women I chase, err, limp after, err, shuffle after, err, roll after. I never went over to the dark side. Ù©—”̯—”Û¶

[8~{} Uncle Snob Monster

On Sunday, August 16, 2015 at 2:06:33 AM UTC-5, Uncle Monster wrote:

I'm not an Apleophile but I do own a few Apple computers older than the women I chase, err, limp after...

"Limp after" is fine...limp before...they have a pill for that. ( ͡ᵔ ͜ʖ ͡ᵔ )

On 8/16/15 3:06 AM, Uncle Monster wrote:
On Saturday, August 15, 2015 at 11:34:50 PM UTC-5, J Burns wrote:

I don't know why you PC guys use a term so un-PC as "master-slave."
BDSM is no laughing matter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WGVgfjnLqc

I'm not an Apleophile but I do own a few Apple computers older than
the women I chase, err, limp after, err, shuffle after, err, roll
after. I never went over to the dark side. Ù©—”̯—”Û¶

[8~{} Uncle Snob Monster


My relatives resented people smart enough to run computers. When they
saw the 1984 Super Bowl ad where the dumb person smashed the giant PC
monitor, they were sold. They sold others by showing them how they
could move the cursor with the mouse, like magic. It provided hours of
fascination.

They always assumed I was a nerd. When they wanted to know how to make
their Macs print, for example, they'd call on me. To make a Mac do
something, it helps to understand the Apple Philosophy: "How would a
really dumb person try to do it?" I had a knack for guessing right
without even pondering.

After ten years, they learned to print without me. Suddenly, they didn't
want me on their computers anymore. By then I had piles of floppies and
zip disks with my files, so I had to buy a Mac.

Neighbors with PCs figured that if I'd spent the money for a Mac, I must
know what was wrong with PCs. They'd call me when they had trouble.

Their philosophy was that if a sequence hadn't worked the first thousand
times, the solution was to persist. If that didn't work, the solution
was to have me watch them persist.

If they had a computer problem, they'd call the printer manufacturer.
If they had a printer problem, they'd call the ISP. If they had an ISP
problem, they'd call Microsoft. If they had an OS problem, they'd call
the computer manufacturer. They were right every time. I was glad I
didn't have a PC. I couldn't have remembered all that.

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 09:45:57 -0400, J Burns
wrote:


My relatives resented people smart enough to run computers. When they
saw the 1984 Super Bowl ad where the dumb person smashed the giant PC
monitor, they were sold. They sold others by showing them how they
could move the cursor with the mouse, like magic. It provided hours of
fascination.

They always assumed I was a nerd. When they wanted to know how to make
their Macs print, for example, they'd call on me. To make a Mac do
something, it helps to understand the Apple Philosophy: "How would a
really dumb person try to do it?" I had a knack for guessing right
without even pondering.


LOL

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:34:46 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 8/15/15 7:28 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sat, 15 Aug 2015 06:23:48 -0700 (PDT), Uncle
Monster wrote:


Most computers I've dealt with will boot without a BIOS battery. It
comes up in a default configuration with the date the BIOS was
published. ^_^

[8~{} Uncle CPU Monster

Yes. The Mac 2, and maybe other macs?, is an exception to that
rule. Even though a moderately handy person can replace the soldered
in bios battery of a mac2 with a battery holder and a cheap-enough
battery, I'll bet most took it to a mac repairman and endured a high
service bill.


What Macintosh ever had BIOS?

Okay, I retract "bios" but it still had a battery in it.

The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

That would have been fine but in fact it would not start at all when the
battery was dead.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

This was a mac 2, and after someone at the PC club told me to replace
the battery, I did (wtih a battery holder and a couple AAA batteries
iirc) , and it started up after that.

I don't know why you PC guys use a term so un-PC as "master-slave." BDSM
is no laughing matter!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WGVgfjnLqc

On 8/16/15 11:36 AM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:34:46 -0400, J Burns
wrote:


The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

That would have been fine but in fact it would not start at all when the
battery was dead.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

This was a mac 2, and after someone at the PC club told me to replace
the battery, I did (wtih a battery holder and a couple AAA batteries
iirc) , and it started up after that.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

The OP said his Mac II worked with a dead battery. One respondent said
there were some Macs (like my clone) that wouldn't work with a dead
battery.

According to them, one needed only to pop in a lithium camera battery.
That would keep it above an ambiguous voltage for a very long life. Long
life is why in 30 years I've had almost no experience with dead Mac
batteries. Let one sit for years, start it up, and the clock is a
little off.

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:16:17 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 8/16/15 11:36 AM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:34:46 -0400, J Burns
wrote:


The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

That would have been fine but in fact it would not start at all when the
battery was dead.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

This was a mac 2, and after someone at the PC club told me to replace
the battery, I did (wtih a battery holder and a couple AAA batteries
iirc) , and it started up after that.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

The OP said his Mac II worked with a dead battery. One respondent said

There may well have been more than one rendition of the Mac II.

I'm 99% sure it was a Mac ii. It had two 5 1/4" drives although I don't
know if that was the basis of its name.

there were some Macs (like my clone) that wouldn't work with a dead
battery.

According to them, one needed only to pop in a lithium camera battery.

This battery could not be popped out nor a replacement popped in.

For sure it was soldered in, and I also don't think it was a lithium
battery but that I'm not sure of.

That would keep it above an ambiguous voltage for a very long life. Long
life is why in 30 years I've had almost no experience with dead Mac
batteries. Let one sit for years, start it up, and the clock is a
little off.

Well I'm glad they improved their design. My story goes back almost
20 years, so the machine was only about 10 years old or less.

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 13:23:29 -0400, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:16:17 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 8/16/15 11:36 AM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:34:46 -0400, J Burns
wrote:


The Mac II had a lithium backup battery.
If it failed 10 or 20 years down the road, I suppose you'd have to set
the date and time each time you booted.

That would have been fine but in fact it would not start at all when the
battery was dead.

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also
the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner. It was a
4.5 V alkaline in a plastic case with a velcro strip and a connector on
leads several inches long.

This was a mac 2, and after someone at the PC club told me to replace
the battery, I did (wtih a battery holder and a couple AAA batteries
iirc) , and it started up after that.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...art=0&tstart=0

The OP said his Mac II worked with a dead battery. One respondent said

He's talking about a Mac IIci. No reason to think it's exactly the
same as the one I had, a straight Mac II.


There may well have been more than one rendition of the Mac II.

I'm 99% sure it was a Mac ii. It had two 5 1/4" drives although I don't
know if that was the basis of its name.

there were some Macs (like my clone) that wouldn't work with a dead
battery.

According to them, one needed only to pop in a lithium camera battery.

This battery could not be popped out nor a replacement popped in.

For sure it was soldered in, and I also don't think it was a lithium
battery but that I'm not sure of.

That would keep it above an ambiguous voltage for a very long life. Long
life is why in 30 years I've had almost no experience with dead Mac
batteries. Let one sit for years, start it up, and the clock is a
little off.

Well I'm glad they improved their design. My story goes back almost
20 years, so the machine was only about 10 years old or less.

On 8/16/15 1:23 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:16:17 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

The OP said his Mac II worked with a dead battery. One respondent said

There may well have been more than one rendition of the Mac II.

I'm 99% sure it was a Mac ii. It had two 5 1/4" drives although I don't
know if that was the basis of its name.

Well, all right...
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...cs/mac_ii.html

If you replaced them with AAA batteries, the lithium batteries must have
been in parallel. The only reason to do that would be to get a big
current surge. They must have been needed for the startup sequence,
which wasn't usual.

This site indicates that the pop-in battery is right for all Mac II's.
http://www.newertech.com/products/pram_3_6v.php

See why I'm mixed up? It also says the symptom of a dead battery is
clock trouble. That seems to be true of most Macs, but not yours or my
StarMax. (I think a StarMax could be started without a battery if you
knew what you were doing, but I replaced mine twice without waiting for
it to die, to be on the safe side.)


Well I'm glad they improved their design. My story goes back almost
20 years, so the machine was only about 10 years old or less.

It sounds like an anomaly. Sculley came in from Pepsi in 1983. He
wanted to make Macs more like PCs. Jobs quit in 1985. The original Mac
II may have been Sculley's dream computer.

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:48:58 -0600,
(Neill Massello) wrote:

J Burns wrote:

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also

Does this mean they made them in Tanzania? The country made up of
Tanganyika and Zanzibar? I don't think of that place as a high-tech
place, or even manufacturing.


the only Mac I know whose battery would die before the owner.

My recollection of a discussion on one of the comp.sys.mac groups is
that there was an Apple PowerPC model that wouldn't start up if the PRAM
battery was dead or missing. As for life, if you keep a Mac plugged in
when it's not running, the logic board battery will last a _very_ long
time. Pull the plug, and the clock eventually runs down the battery.

In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 14:19:44 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 8/16/15 1:23 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 12:16:17 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

The OP said his Mac II worked with a dead battery. One respondent said

There may well have been more than one rendition of the Mac II.

I'm 99% sure it was a Mac ii. It had two 5 1/4" drives although I don't
know if that was the basis of its name.

Well, all right...
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...cs/mac_ii.html

If you replaced them with AAA batteries, the lithium batteries must have
been in parallel.

Why parallel? FWIW, maybe it was AA.

The only reason to do that would be to get a big
current surge. They must have been needed for the startup sequence,
which wasn't usual.

This site indicates that the pop-in battery is right for all Mac II's.
http://www.newertech.com/products/pram_3_6v.php

I don't care what it says. It wasn't there. I was.

See why I'm mixed up?

Yes. ;-)

It also says the symptom of a dead battery is
clock trouble. That seems to be true of most Macs, but not yours or my
StarMax. (I think a StarMax could be started without a battery if you
knew what you were doing, but I replaced mine twice without waiting for
it to die, to be on the safe side.)

I had expected to get an old free Apple monitor some day, and I let the
computer sit on its side for a year or two, and eventually something
leaked, and dripped on one of the empty slots. Given all this, I threw
it away. which is pretty rare for me, but it's why I can't check any of
the details now. .


Well I'm glad they improved their design. My story goes back almost
20 years, so the machine was only about 10 years old or less.

It sounds like an anomaly. Sculley came in from Pepsi in 1983. He
wanted to make Macs more like PCs. Jobs quit in 1985. The original Mac
II may have been Sculley's dream computer.

On 8/16/15 11:24 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 14:19:44 -0400, J Burns
wrote:



Well, all right...
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...cs/mac_ii.html

If you replaced them with AAA batteries, the lithium batteries must have
been in parallel.

Why parallel? FWIW, maybe it was AA.

If they were in series, they would have produced 7.2 V. How would you
get that from two AA alkalines?

The only reason to do that would be to get a big
current surge. They must have been needed for the startup sequence,
which wasn't usual.

On 8/16/15 11:11 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:48:58 -0600,

J Burns wrote:

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also

Does this mean they made them in Tanzania? The country made up of
Tanganyika and Zanzibar? I don't think of that place as a high-tech
place, or even manufacturing.


It was Sculley's idea, an Apple motherboard that used some PC parts. I'm
not at liberty to confirm or deny that they were made in the VIP suit at
the Starmax hotel.
http://www.zoomtanzania.com/Starmax-Hotel

Jobs was away building the NEXT computer, which Sir TimBL used to invent
the World Wide Web. He came back in 1997 and scuttled the Tanzania
project. PC parts in a Mac? Heresy!

In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 17 Aug 2015 06:05:54 -0400, J Burns
wrote:

On 8/16/15 11:11 PM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:48:58 -0600,

J Burns wrote:

The only Mac I know that needed a PRAM battery to start wasn't made by
Apple. It was the Tanzania-based StarMax, a Motorola clone. It's also

Does this mean they made them in Tanzania? The country made up of
Tanganyika and Zanzibar? I don't think of that place as a high-tech
place, or even manufacturing.


It was Sculley's idea, an Apple motherboard that used some PC parts. I'm
not at liberty to confirm or deny that they were made in the VIP suit at
the Starmax hotel.
http://www.zoomtanzania.com/Starmax-Hotel

Jobs was away building the NEXT computer, which Sir TimBL used to invent
the World Wide Web. He came back in 1997 and scuttled the Tanzania
project. PC parts in a Mac? Heresy!

For sure.

I had a friends whose sister married some guy from there and moved
there. But I don't think I ever met that sister.

"Snuffy "Hub Cap" McKinney" wrote in message ...
Pardon the cross-posting. win2000 newsgroup is practically dead.

What could have happened to cause this problem? Master and slave drives were switched without me doing anything.....

The system has Windows 2000 Prof. Today I shut down powered down the system as usual - Start Shut down, etc. The an hour later powered up. When the first screen came up, I noticed the slave drive mfr/model was listed as master and vice versa. I let it start up as normal, and the desktop was like when first installed. Opened Windows Explorer and c: drive was in fact the former slave. Former master was now one of the other drive letters. All the other drives were there, but with different letters.

I also noticed something in the recycle bin - which is normally empty. It has a couple of backup folders that had been on the original master. They were 1-2 GB each, and there's no way I would have deleted those accidentally. If they were deleted it would take a minute on this machine to go thru the deletion process. So I moved them back to a safe place on a drive.

Then I hit start shutdown restart. Hit DEL and sure enough they were showing up as being switched. I set it up to manually set them back, rebooted and all came up normally again.

Now all is back to normal.

------

"philo" wrote in message ...

I'd correct the settings in the BIOS and if they don't stick, then it's
time for a new CMOS battery

------

Thanks, philo. No time/date or other errors seen, but this system is 9 years old and past due for a new battery. I found this info that might help someone else....

http://ccm.net/faq/625-replacing-the...d-cmos-battery

Symptoms

If your computer is experiencing problems with the date and time or you see the following error messages:

- bios cmos checksum error defaults loaded
- bios cmos battery low cmos wrong memory size
- no operating system
- CPU overclocking failed
- New CPU has been installed

Replacement sequence
It is recommended that you change the CMOS battery every 5 years.

Saving the BIOS data
Open the BIOS screen and note all the information on a piece of paper. It's important that you don't make any modifications. Once completed this document will be useful to check out if all the parameters are correctly inserted after replacing the battery.


Removing the discharged battery
First of all, be sure that your System unit is laid down horizontally. The positive pole of the battery should be visible. Remove the battery, but avoid forcing it and any contact with other parts of your motherboard (refer to the manual provide with your motherboard). Go to your local retailer any buy a battery of the same model or something equivalent.


Installing the new battery
Be sure that the battery is placed correctly (firmly) in the slot allocated
Verify the BIOS data and resetting the clock

Once the operation complete, it is important to configure the BIOS settings:
- Start your PC.
- Enter the BIOS.
- Modify the date.
- Check the parameters are the same as the ones noted in step 1. Perform any modifications required if not
- Save and quit BIOS.

On Fri, 21 Aug 2015 09:17:15 -0700, "Snuffy \"Hub Cap\" McKinney"
wrote:

No time/date or other errors seen, but this system is 9 years old and past due for a new battery.

Given that age, the BIOS likely has an auto-detect feature. Replace
the battery, enter the BIOS and select auto-detect (hardware). Save
and exit.

YMMV