system battery

[agar]

I set the time it keeps track and all that but then the computer goes off and back on 20 minutes later and the times 20 minutes slow. Would this be a dead battery? its just on a 133 that I'm using as a file server and indeed to keep it on all the time but if the battery dies will I lose my bios settings? Also are these just standard watch batterys? IT would be nice to have a systems clock thats not wrong

[ph34r]

Bad battery. New one is about $5, take your old one with you to get a proper replacement.

And yes, you could loose your cmos settings when you take it out. If you've done any funky bios settings, write them all down.

[Schotty]

I really cant say if this is the safest way, but I have always taken the battery out while the system is up and replaced it then.

That may be bad though. **I** have had no problems.

[agar]

The system clocks off but why am I loosing no bios settings? Maybe the bios settings were reset but the defaults worked right

[civ1492]

if the defaults settings are ok for you , you could set up rdate as a cron job or put it in /etc/rc.d/rc.local and sync the time with a time server..

rdate -s <timeserver>
should be the syntax

[Schotty]

Your mainboard's crystal is probably bad. There is a timing crystal onboard for determinig timing. Since it is a set frequency, the time can be easily calculated.

I would do as civ1492 said, setup your pc do go out and check the time. There are lots of utilities out there that will go online and goto the nuclear atomic clocks to grab the date and time.

[agar]

The battery tested as having 1 volt. So I got a new one and I haven't turned this old comptuer off yet cause i'm backing up files but I think its working now. Anyways I'd like all the computers on my network to have times that are exact as possible. What are some of the best utilities to do this?