[GTALUG] war story: CMOS battery AKA Real Time Clock (RTC) battery in a notebook

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 2022-10-19 19:58, D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
> 
> And the coin cell assembly is not generic -- no Dollarama battery.

I've seen that heat-shrink-on-a-flying-lead type battery on some single 
board computers and even some particularly enlightened microcontroller 
boards. The Radxa boards (like the x86 Rock Pi X, and the upcoming 
"Raspberry Pi Killer" ROCK 4) use them for sure. Guess your future holds 
Dollarama, some careful soldering plus a couple of wraps of Super 88.

I guess there isn't room for the chunky half-AA size Li-SoCl2 cell that 
older machines used to use. There was one of these soldered into a 
late-80s Apple IIgs I received recently. It was still keeping the NVRAM 
and clock ticking despite being 25 years past its use-by date. Also, 
lithium–thionyl chloride batteries are now considered hazardous, so 
maybe it's best if they are left in the past.

cheers,
  Stewart