Above you see the nice li’l machine that has a nice SAS card that I’m using for my /dvd RAID (that, confusingly enough, has more ripped blurays than ripped DVDs now).
Here’s the major, incredibly important problem:
If there’s been a power outage (for instance, because I’ve had an electrician in to do something), the machine refuses to boot because the BIOS doesn’t know what date it is. I’m sure that’s really important! Oh my god! What would we do with a machine where the BIOS doesn’t know what the date is! The humanity!
So I have to attach a keyboard and press F1 and then everything works, so (this is going to come as a shock to you all) it turns out that the machine works perfectly well without a BIOS that knows what the time is.
I know! Who would have thought!
After much googling, it turns out that this mainboard has a BIOS battery that’s glued to the audio headers (bottom right there). It’s a “wrapped CR2032”.
And today I got this in the mail:
Whoho! Time to become a computer repair guy again!
So rip out the old one — which was fastened with some sticky tape.
Oh, the new one has one, too, so I guess that’s standard.
But jamming my fingers down there while being able to see what I’m doing is hard…
Perhaps I can use these pliers (that the electrician (yes, her again) forgot here and I forgot to call them to give them back (they’re coming again this Thursday so perhaps I can return them to them then))…
… nnnno. And now I’ve bent the headers! I think! My eyes are too weak for this stuff!!
I forgot! I’ve got a workbench now! And I got this lamp for the workbench last week! I’ve never used it before! Is it gonna be helpful!?
Yes!
Behold the embiggening! It’s amazing! I can see everything! And it’s so bright!
So using that, I was able to unbend the bent headers and then use my fingers to get the li’l plug down there, and now…
… it doesn’t complain any more but just reboots unattended!
That was totally worth it.
Thanks, BIOS makers of the world. A lot.