Previously, I had mostly repaired this i386-based PC but never gotten the BIOS battery to retain BIOS settings when disconnected from mains. Now, I had refound my interest towards the machine and I was determined to make it fully work. I also wanted to attempt installing an IDE DVD drive left over from the Vista prebuilt as a slightly anachronistic CD-ROM drive in this system.
I retraced my earlier steps under where the original Varta battery had leaked. I found a trace that seemed suspicious. There was momentary continuity between spots A and B, but then it cut out, and the trace looked visibly damaged. I soldered a jumper wire and installed a drop-in replacement, taking care that the battery jumper was set to 3.6 V and not 6 V. After this was done, the PC started retaining settings just fine. The momentary continuity before must've been the electricity going around the other way…
I also took a fresh image of the HDD when moving some driver files onto it. At this point, my only method of getting any data onto the machine was full disassembly and this rather janky IDE–USB adapter built out of a early-2000s external HDD case, pictured here connected to the Shitbox Server:
As I had acquired the CRT that had been with this PC the longest time, I now had a nice early 90s retro setup complete with delightfully crappy PC speakers from a flea market. Too bad I never got the optical drive working…
It is wild that, not only is this PC older than me, but the OS (DOS 6.22 & Windows 3.11) install on the HDD is as well! No reinstalls seem to have taken place since the machine was new.
Oh, and I obtained a way to move data to and from the PC without disassembly!
This post was retroactively compiled on 2024-01-05 from photos in my photo library.