Actually, not so unique. A lot of DECs of that era (Pentium (I)s (60 to
120 Mhz)) had from 2 to 8 Mb of RAM on the board. If you added SIMM memory
you could go as high as 128 Mb, but you had to disable the onboard memory.
A small trick that caused a lot of grief for later upgraders who didn't know
about the "Disable Onboard RAM" requirement. Not doing so mad for some very
interesting errors.

KC

"Rick" wrote in message ...
DEJ57 wrote:

The wired on batteries were an alternetive not seen much outside of
Compaqs that I know of. I should have mentioned that the majority of
my
experience has been with non-Compaq machines. The lates and greatest
battery solution is the socketed NiCAD or lithium battery. Actually
when
the change came to the socket, you could occasionally find a board that
had
the socket, but all documentation would still show the old soldered
battery.
Cost wise I have no idea. Also with the newer machines, the battery
will
last longer because the newer motherboards place less demand on them.

What you have described may in fact explain battery history in many
clones,
but, unless I missed it, you haven't explained why Compaq did what they
did
over the past. It still remains a mystery that only God and Compaq
understand.

Dale

God and Compaq also need to explain why they soldered the first 2MB of
RAM onto a lot of motherboards in their circa 1993 - 1994 systems as
well. Can't recall the specific model numbers but I cracked a few cases
in the "pre Win 95" anticipation when people were looking to upgrade in
advance of Win 95 being released. No memory in the SIMM sockets? Gee,
that's strange... They did a lot of "unconventional" things.