I have a 386dx as you know, and the bios is screwed, so i need to take out the cmos battery. the cmos battery is soldered in, so i need to rip it out, and resolder it back in, but i dont have a solder gun. will it hurt if i leave the battery out and not put it back in. because i just to solder it back in, i dont think it worth it to but a soldering gun. the bios is an ami 386 bios. for your info, my problem, is that the bios is sooooo slow. it takes it about 6 minutes to check the ram; 64kb at a time. it waits for about 2 minutes, and then the a: floppy lights up (3.5 inch) for about 1 minute. then it will take about 2 more minutes to blink. then finally, it will just load dos from the hard disk. its an ami 386 bios

Hello, from my exp. without the battery you will have to set your BIOS every time you start your putter. My 386sx/16 MHz also has 3712 KB ram and boots up in 50 seconds with 3.11. Your ram may be bad try changing it with newer ones.

Bought a 30 watt solder iron at sears today. Good solder will set you back another couple of bucks. Problem is finding a replacement battery and installing it. One way out is to fabricate a battery pack and clip or solder it to the mobo.

Where am I going to find old ram like that. these are 33-pin 1mb simms. these dont clip into place like newer ones, but you shove it into place, adn you cant get it out.

Hello, you may be able to find old ram from thrift stores, flee markets and new/used computer shops. If you live in the country side, try eBay, want-ads or asks around to your friends ( my former employer has about 10 486's in storage collecting two pounds of dust) Hope this helps

Many old motherboards have a socket to plug in a replacement battery. Did a quick search and these sound promising: http://www.cablesnmor.com/batteries.html http://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/ (Has USA Link) Type CMOS Battery or Batteries in a good search engine, However it does sound like its your memory that is at fault! Try the same with combinations of Memory, Simms ect. I do not know where you live, But here in the UK I would visit small computer dealers and workshops. Found things like this in the spares box or old systems ready for the dump in the past. Or ask around as Yellow Belt says.

Hi, I used to have a 386 as well and its cmos battery died too, but nothing of that sort happend. I think it could be your ram. To get ram try looking around for computers the same age of your's, at my school they are burstig at the seams with old 486's. They gave me a 486 computer, hard drives, cpu fan and screen, after that they were still offering me parts.