CMOS checksum fails

How can it shine the light on you if it doesn't know where you are? ;)

It's already bright enough to get the job done.

The accumulation of dust in your machine is a fairly good indication of what you are breathing. You might try finding the source and eliminating it. Over the years, I've found fiberglass ceiling insulation sucked into the HVAC system and collected by the computer fan to be a major problem for both the user and the computah. This is what I use to find sources of dust and smoke:

Don't use a vacuum cleaner. It doesn't remove the dust very well. Much more effective is an air compressor to blow the dust out. I have three small (1HP) compressors (home, office, and car) for cleaning machines. I clean literally everything outdoors before it is dragged into my office, which has drastically reduces my office cleaning chores.

Also, you might want to measure the voltage between the vacuum cleaner hose and a nearby ground. The rotating rubber belt is very close to a Van deGraff generator. I've seen a few generate some rather high voltages. Fortunately, the problem seems to be known and modern vacuum cleaners don't seem to have the problem.

Unless you have some rather highly conductive material in your dust, it will not discharge a battery. You can test it easily by collecting some of the dust out of the vacuum cleaner bag, and measuring its conductivity with an ohms-guesser.

If your dust is full of iron filing, maybe. Otherwise, it's mostly ground down dirt and whatever your carpet, drapes, and clothes are made from. If your HVAC system is improperly sealed, some fiberglass. If you live next to freeway, some finely ground rubber and soot. None of these are sufficiently conductive to do anything to a battery.

Take an ohms-guesser and measure the resistance between your fingers. I just did mine and by pressing the probes really hard, I was able to get it down to about 2Meg. With a common CR2032 cell of 3V, that's

1.5 microamps. The battery is rated at 225 ma-hrs. It would take: 225 ma-hr / 0.0015 ma = 150,000 hrs to discharge the battery between your fingers.

Right. Two bad batteries make a good battery.

Try not to think too hard. Measuring is much easier. Morph your ohms-guesser into a volts-guesser and measure the battery voltage. I usually replace them below 2.9VDC.

After measuring the battery out of the motherboard, plug it in, and measure it in the circuit. If there's a substantial drop in voltage, you have a motherboard problem.

I've seen quite a few CR2032 sockets on motherboards, where someone has tried to replace the battery and mangled the contacts. That was extremely common with the older holders that had a contact arm over the top. Todays don't have this arm, but rely on spring pressure from below to make the connection. Check the spring.

Recently, I bought 50 no-name 2032 cells on eBay. They were all garbage when I tested a few on a West Mtn Radio CBA-II analyzer.

Varta is a good brand and July 2022 is probably the expiration date. It's likely to be a good battery.

Congrats. Now, please go away.

Use an air compressor to blow it out. Ummm... do it outside.

It takes me about 2-5 minutes to completely clean a PC with an air compressor and a decent blow gun.

Oiled it where? If on the surface, the oil will collect the dust and produce a tar like goo that produce fan drag. Clean off the oil. If you must oil the fan, peel off the label on the back side, inject ONE drop of oil into the bushing, and put the label back.

Like I mentioned previously, you're breathing that dust. Find the source and clean it up.

The small high RPM fans are a maintenance nightmare and have a very short life. The ones in my security camera DVR and a few NAS boxes need to be replaced about once a year. A post mortem shows that the plastic around the center bushing is cracked from overheating.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558