Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Don Y Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design Subject: State of the Art engineering Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 18:29:07 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 34 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2024 01:29:09 +0100 (CET) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="b47fadff0c5d9c4ba64db7712cb69f48"; logging-data="662536"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/gb9CQp0Em7EDMDeicONAq" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/102.2.2 Cancel-Lock: sha1:vaMRm4xt4MSS2Tf82d9vbkhLvQ4= Content-Language: en-US Bytes: 2238 A friend brought me a laptop that is beeping, annoyingly (like set volume to max). Continuously. Google tells me this means "CMOS battery failure". Wow! What idiot engineer thought this was such a significant event that the laptop should beep FOREVER (before and after boot) instead of just: "CMOS battery failure; Press F1 to continue" If having the correct time is so important, perhaps he should have inhibited the boot process UNTIL the battery had been replaced! Wouldn't want some poor slob to have to work with a laptop that is displaying the wrong time! OK, cheap laptop so lets see how to get it apart: TL;DR... completely disassemble the laptop to EXPOSE the battery for replacement. Likely the same idiot engineer who decided it should beep endlessly ALSO decided to locate the battery in such a place that it can only be accessed by complete disassembly (even though a little "access opening" BEHIND the removable service panel would have done the trick! Um, no. "Sorry, Bob. I don't plan on spending an hour just to replace a disposable battery! Maybe you can find the speaker wires and CUT those!" [Or, cut a hole through the case plastic so the battery IS exposed!]