need CMOS battery

[lwhitaker18]

I have old 75 Mhz Pentium; the system date was 1-1-80. I used the DATE command to change it to todays' date. The hard drive crashed and I cannot boot from it. I have to use a DOS system disk to boot it. A message tells me that my CMOS Battery is dead on this old computer. What should I do?

 

[USAFRet]

I have old 75 Mhz Pentium; the system date was 1-1-80. I used the DATE command to change it to todays' date. The hard drive crashed and I cannot boot from it. I have to use a DOS system disk to boot it. A message tells me that my CMOS Battery is dead on this old computer. What should I do?

You should buy a new CMOS battery.
CS2032, available at any drug store, grocery store, Walmart, Amazon.
Maybe a dollar each.

 

[USAFRet]

MERGED QUESTION
Question from lwhitaker18 : "need CMOS battery"

I have old 75 Mhz Pentium; the system date was 1-1-80. I used the DATE command to change it to todays' date. The had drive crashed and I cannot boot from it. I have to use a DOS system disk to boot it.
Lawson

The battery is most likely a CR2032.

I have a lot of old systems like that running and here's what I find happens a lot.

When the battery goes....the BIOS loses the HD parameters and you have to manually enter them each time to get it to boot.

 

[reedo_43]

HD parameters will be on the HD lable if the bios doesn't have an auto option. Really old school stuff!

 

[canadianvice]

Also, keep in mind for the battery it is a watch battery and the letter prefix depends on branding typically.

You can use any <XX>2032 battery (roughly the size of a quarter). just so you don't get stuck up on the model I thought I'd elaborate that. So like Duracell ones are DL2032, etc.

 

[jay32267]

HD parameters will be on the HD lable if the bios doesn't have an auto option. Really old school stuff!

They are not always on the HD table.
Sometimes you need to enter them in manually.
Old school yes.....but still relevant.
I am using four 386 and 486 machines to keep four assembly lines running.
These machines have been running since the early 90s.