A friend called me the other day about his desktop computer. The computer I recommended he didn't by 2 years ago.

Its not booting up anymore and wanted to know if I would help fix it as its no longer under warantee.

He described the problem and before I got off the phone I knew it needed a new CMOS battery

I went over to help him. Needless to say the battery was soldiered to the motherboard and no indications of pins for an external battery.

I had to cut the battery off the board being careful to leave enough of the lugs to soldier a pair of wires onto. What a pain! Who designed that? While I was in there I also noticed that the memory appears do be proprietary. I didn't like compaq before. Now I really don't like them at all.

Fixed it. It works now. The new battery is in a battery case velcroed to the chassis.