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    PRAM battery - do I REALLY need to replace it?

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by fisherdmin, Oct 5, 2007.

  1. fisherdmin

    fisherdmin Notebook Consultant

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    Quick question re: my old Pismo .... My PRAM battery is apparently shot - if my battery dies, my system reverts to a 1969 date.

    As a PRAM battery is more than I want to spend on my old friend, I wondered if there were issues other than the date/time reverting to 1969 that I should be aware of. If that's the extent of the problem, I'm inclined to simply reset the date/time periodically if I let my battery totally drain.

    Thanks for indulging me and my old friend.
     
    fisherdmin, Oct 5, 2007
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  2. Eleison

    Eleison Thanatos Eleison

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    I know from experience that a notebook can run for quite some time with the PRAM battery out of comission. My father has an ancient Gateway system (circa 2000), and it still boots just fine, even though we end up having to reset the date and time on every boot. Granted, he got annoyed with it and decided to just yank the HD out and use it as an external for his Vaio notebook, but it was working up until then.
     
    Eleison, Oct 5, 2007
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  3. arikol

    arikol Notebook Geek

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    You probably have longer boot times and some chance of stuff not being detected correctly. Not neccessarily very scary thoughts. I would back up anything important as such an old machine probably has more components close to failure. Maybe not, though.
     
    arikol, Oct 5, 2007
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  4. fisherdmin

    fisherdmin Notebook Consultant

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    OK- thx for all who replied. I'm going to gut it out and NOT replace it.
     
    fisherdmin, Oct 5, 2007
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