pram battery

[mareska]

Greetings! I have a question about replacing the pram battery on a beige G3 300mhz A/V computer (king at the time it was bought). Acutally, it's my mom's, and her clock keeps resetting to Augus t 1956. Sounds to me like the pram battery is dead.

I was able to walk her through (on long distance) taking off the side panel and lifting up the hard drive rack. However, from there I was lost and did not know where the battery was on the mother board. Mom thought she found it underneath a "silver card" that is responsible for the A/V ports on the back of the Mac. It's my understanding that this silver card is fastened firmly to the board.

I looked on Apple's web site and found technical manuals, though none for the beige G3 tower. I looked on xlr8yourmac and could not find pictures that adequately illustrated the area of concern.

Could you help me as to where I can find instructions/pictures to changing the pram battery in the beige G3 tower? These are the last of it's kind 'cause about 3-4 months later I bought a RevA/1 B&W (if that helps at all)

I thank you, my mom thanks you and my long distance phone company curses you.  

-Spiff

[kelly]

Hi Spiff. A Desktop? If so, it's pretty much the same as the 7200.

http://www.academ.com/info/macintosh/thanks_rob.shtml

http://www.academ.com/info/macintosh/

[Bernie]

So why do different Macs reset to different dates?

Most Macs reset to Aug 27th, 1956. As it turns out, this is the birthdate of one of the designers, Ray Montagne, who apparently designed the CUDA microcontroller. This chip controls the PRAM and ADB on many models.

By the way, Steve Jobs was born in 1955, so the date is not his birthday. Other Macs reset to the default date - the date that the clock shows when the clock registers are filled with zeros. The date is Jan 1, 1904.  Here's info on your Beige G3 MT.  PDF doc below    
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50019

[Paddy]

Er nope...believe Spiff said tower Kelly!

Here ya go:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=50019

Download 034-0282 and look on page 51-52 for instructions on how to get at the mother board, which is where she needs to look. Most of the batteries were purple - 1/2 the size (length) of a regular AA. Don't know if it's inside a little black plastic cage or not - some are.

[mareska]

HEy TS-oholic, thanks for the link! Yup, that's exactly what I told my mom to do.  She thought she found the battery, but was not sure. After we got off the phone, my dad took a look at it. Apparently, there was a plastic cover over the battery in addition to the brackets holding it in. He took a small screw driver (cringe one) and pried it up to gain access to the battery. He then took a smaller screw driver (cringe two) and pried out the battery. They will go to radio shack tomorrow to get the replacement.

Sure hope the computer starts in the morning and that static did not fry the electronics. heh.  

-Spiff

[Barticus]

If it helps any mareska, it turns out the screwdriver is the best way to get that little cover off.  Trying to force it will only lead to it snapping one side or the other off.

B