eMachine won't keep time

On 9/22/2011 1:27 AM, Menno Hershberger wrote:
if there was any more room... :-) It was going where the yellow line is at
http://mewnlite.com/plink.jpg - you can see how hard it would be to read
the 50 scale. I can't afford one of those fancy digital meters for no more
use than I would get out of it.

Really using an analog multimeter on a computer isn't the best thing.
The analog meter isn't going to be as accurate and will place a small
load on the circuit you're testing which could throw off your readings.
You can find some good digital meters at reasonable prices, like this
one he

http://vnnphim.ws/products_info.php?i=B000EVYGZA

For $11 that's not a bad deal, and it does get some good reviews too.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Friday, September 23, 2011 11:14:03 AM

Roy Smith wrote:
On 9/22/2011 1:27 AM, Menno Hershberger wrote:
if there was any more room... :-) It was going where the yellow line is
at
http://mewnlite.com/plink.jpg - you can see how hard it would be to read
the 50 scale. I can't afford one of those fancy digital meters for no
more
use than I would get out of it.

Really using an analog multimeter on a computer isn't the best thing.
The analog meter isn't going to be as accurate

That's true, but then again, how accurate does it really need to be?? If
you have an analog voltmeter with a 5VFS setting, reading 3v on it is just
fine. :-)

and will place a small
load on the circuit you're testing which could throw off your readings.

Actually, seeing it under load is better. Oftentimes a battery will show a
good open circuit voltage, but when placed under load, the terminal voltage
drops (due to high internal resistance when a battery is weak or old).
(You can check that out yourself, with some old flashlight cells).

I oftentimes prefer using the analog ones, except for the cases where the 3
digit or more accuracy is warranted. (Checking out a flashlight cell, a car
battery, or a CR2032 BIOS battery doesn't really need a DVM. :-)

You can find some good digital meters at reasonable prices, like this
one he

http://vnnphim.ws/products_info.php?i=B000EVYGZA

For $11 that's not a bad deal, and it does get some good reviews too.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 6.0.2
Friday, September 23, 2011 11:14:03 AM

Bill in Co wrote:
Roy Smith wrote:

and will place a small
load on the circuit you're testing which could throw off your readings.

Actually, seeing it under load is better.

It depends on whether your purpose in using the multimeter, is to
debug the circuit or not. For debugging, you want to "observe" the
circuit, without changing circuit conditions. In this case, the
question we want answered is "is the power source delivering at
least 2.3V at the moment, so that our Southbridge sees 2.0V (or more)".
For that, a high impedance measurement is what we're after (and
what Menno will get, with his new meter).

If, on the other hand, the circuit is working fine, and all you
want to do, is predict remaining battery life, then perhaps a
load test is appropriate to do. But in that case, you also
have to figure out what an appropriate value of load is.
Is it 1 milliamp ? Is it 1 ampere ? Some of those values
are silly and pointless, while others might make sense.
Some batteries have significant internal resistance and
take some time to recover after being abused, and the
mere process of doing the load measurement, disturbs things.
If you wanted to repeat the test a second time, it might
pay in that case, to wait until the next day for when the
battery diffusion has recovered things enough for another
test.

*******

One of my favorite stress tests, is the one my mechanic uses. I
take in the car, to have a hose replaced in the cooling system.
The mechanic "pressure tests" the cooling system, and comes
back to report the radiator just burst, the water pump is leaking,
and will that be Amex or Visa. I'm sure anyone who's owned a car,
has run into that thoughtful and careful stress testing. It's
almost as much fun, as jamming the field coil winding, making the
alternator dump 70 amps into the battery, as a test the
alternator works :-)

The only things they won't stress test, are the things that could
explode and kill them :-)

Paul

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
Roy Smith wrote:

and will place a small
load on the circuit you're testing which could throw off your readings.

Actually, seeing it under load is better.

It depends on whether your purpose in using the multimeter, is to
debug the circuit or not. For debugging, you want to "observe" the
circuit, without changing circuit conditions.

Fair point. :-) Although even an analog voltmeter doesn't present all
that much of a load (in directly measuring battery voltages). (For other
in-circuit measurements, it's quite a different story, however)

In this case, the
question we want answered is "is the power source delivering at
least 2.3V at the moment, so that our Southbridge sees 2.0V (or more)".
For that, a high impedance measurement is what we're after (and
what Menno will get, with his new meter).

If, on the other hand, the circuit is working fine, and all you
want to do, is predict remaining battery life, then perhaps a
load test is appropriate to do. But in that case, you also
have to figure out what an appropriate value of load is.
Is it 1 milliamp ? Is it 1 ampere ? Some of those values
are silly and pointless, while others might make sense.

Indeed. A bit of prudence is called for in these tests. :-)
One test I will do on a flashlight cell that I've had for a bit of time is
to give it a *very brief* short circuit test (directly through an analog
ammeter). I can judge the condition of the cell quite well that way, in
contrast to an open circuit (or even minimally loaded) voltage check, which
is almost meaningless in those cases. :-) As I recall, most of the time I
can get upwards of an amp here; if I get 100 ma (or something like that),
that flashlight cell is pretty worthless (and yet it still may read 1.4V or
more open circuit).

Some batteries have significant internal resistance and
take some time to recover after being abused, and the
mere process of doing the load measurement, disturbs things.
If you wanted to repeat the test a second time, it might
pay in that case, to wait until the next day for when the
battery diffusion has recovered things enough for another
test.

*******

One of my favorite stress tests, is the one my mechanic uses. I
take in the car, to have a hose replaced in the cooling system.
The mechanic "pressure tests" the cooling system, and comes
back to report the radiator just burst, the water pump is leaking,
and will that be Amex or Visa. I'm sure anyone who's owned a car,
has run into that thoughtful and careful stress testing. It's
almost as much fun, as jamming the field coil winding, making the
alternator dump 70 amps into the battery, as a test the
alternator works :-)

The only things they won't stress test, are the things that could
explode and kill them :-)

Paul

"larry moe 'n curly" wrote in
:



Menno Hershberger wrote:

I put a new battery in it way back in the game. It ain't that.

How way back?

Right after I took the side off, before I tried anything else. Maybe
half an hour... :-)

Because I've had motherboard batteries run down in at
little as a year when they were located right next to the north bridge
chip and kept hot by it because of bad circuit board design.

I've read that one of the diodes that isolates the battery can go bad
and start leaking. Another clock problem is that its 32 KHz quartz
crystal can go into an unstable state and need to be reset by shutting
it off completely, meaning the computer power supply has to be
unplugged from the AC outlet and the motherboard battery removed and
left out for several minutes or even an hour to completely stop the
crystal.

It's got a PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0 Rev 1.04. eMachine support
says no updates available. Phoenix led me off to a link at
biosagentplus.com which eventually led me to downloading
biosagentplus_752.exe. That eventually winds you up at
http://mewnlite.com/biosagentplus.jpg which leads to
http://mewnlite.com/register.jpg . I did have enough good sense to
stop at that point. Personally I don't believe there *is* a bios
update and even if there was I doubt seriously it would correct the
time thing. Is there any sense in pursuing it any further?

I'm a sucker for punishment so I went ahead and filled out that
registration screen just to see what would happen.
Sure enough, http://mewnlite.com/shurnuf.jpg
$29.95. No thanks.

When I registered but refused to pay to update the BIOS of my
450-466MHz Socket 370 motherboard, they later sent me an e-mail
offering the update for half price. I think they offered a money-back
guarantee. The new BIOS would have added support for newer CPUs (had
to be hardware compatible) and 48-bit LBA for hard disks bigger than
137GB. However any motherboard with SATA ports already has 48-bit
LBA, and the only other major upgrade I can imagine, other than for
new CPUs, would be to convert the BIOS to UEFI, to get around the 2TB
limit of BIOS.







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-- I'm out of white ink --

Hello,
just by coincidence I fixed a Dell Dimension 2350 computer, which didn't
keep time although I had put in a new battery, by downloading a BIOS update
from Dell.
HTH (Hope This Helps or Happy To Help.

Petrus

"Menno Hershberger" wrote in message
news:Xns9F67D7EBF715butter@wefb973cbe498...
I have an eMachine here with Windows XP SP3 that has a severe time problem.
For instance, it lost 57 minutes in the time it took me to run defrag on
it
which was about an hour and a half. I just rebooted it and it lost 10
minutes. There doesn't seem to be any set pattern. I just rebooted it
again
and it only lost one minute. It seems to lose or gain randomly whether it
is rebooted or not.
Now I've discovered that in BIOS you can set the time but it does not
move.
Presently set at 20:01:01. If you save and reboot to Windows the time
shows
8:01PM. If you *don't* save then in Windows the time (like right now)
showed 8:25 PM. Go back into BIOS and it still shows 20:01:01. Actual time
as I post is 8:50 PM.
I put a new battery in it way back in the game. It ain't that. It's got a
PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Rlease 6.0 Rev 1.04. eMachine support says no updates
available. Phoenix led me off to a link at biosagentplus.com which
eventually led me to downloading biosagentplus_752.exe. That eventually
winds you up at http://mewnlite.com/biosagentplus.jpg which leads to
http://mewnlite.com/register.jpg . I did have enough good sense to stop at
that point.
Personally I don't believe there *is* a bios update and even if there was
I
doubt seriously it would correct the time thing.
Is there any sense in pursuing it any further?
For what it's worth, it was loaded with MyWebSearch, Hotbar, and a few
more
similar adware items, but no other types of malware. I doubt if that has
anything to do with it.

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-- I'm out of white ink --