Captain Napalm sez:
> At an auction this past Saturday, I picked up a Zenith Z386-20 (okay, it
>might, just might, be 10 years old). It looks to be a decent system, and
>today is the first day I've been able to play around with it, as I had to
>scrape up some 72-pin SIMMS for memory.
Wow. 72 pin? Are you certain? In any case, ISTR older Zeniths taking proprietary
memory.
> Upon turning the unit on, I get (if I recall - it doesn't stay very long
>on the screen):
> Bad CMOS configuration blah blah yada yada
> Then the screen goes blank and the system just sits there, fans spinning.
How long? I mean, how long have you let it wait? If it's mis-configured on the
hard disk, it could take simply ages to time out.
> I have some questions about the unit I figure I'd through out here before
>going to alt.folklore.computers.
> 1. It doesn't seem to even look at the keyboard. Do Zeniths use
> a proprietary keyboard, or is the POST routine not getting past
> the bad CMOS?
Zeniths were, ISTR, slightly touchy about keyboards, but they didn't have to be
proprietary. Odds are something else is hanging it.
> 2. The computer itself has a daughter board that contains the
> ROMs, a SmartBattery (DALLAS - DS1260-100 / 9816 / 3V
> Lithium battery), an Intel 8742 (Universal Peripheral Interface
> 8-bit Slave uController) and other neat features (the 8 LEDs
> are a nice touch). The Smart battery can be removed, but I'm
> wondering if it's a common item and is easily replaced.
Depends on how you define "common" and "easily," but yeah, you should be able to
find it and replace it. They last a long time, though; I'd resolve the config
issue before replacing it.
--
Christopher D. Heer ORACLE Corporation
Network Engineer III 203 N. La Salle Avenue #2000
Work: (312) 704-1676 Chicago, IL 60601
Fax: (312) 726-4635
Email: cheer_at_us.oracle.com Visualize Whirled Peas
Received on Thu Mar 20 1997 - 15:57:17 GMT