Change battery and recapping?

trycoon

New member
Aug 30, 2021
10
0
1
Sweden
Hi, I own a Octane that I start up every five years or so. :)
I have noted that its getting increasingly more difficult to get a sync signal to my VGA monitor, and now I'm wondering what effect does the RTC-battery have on a SGI system? On a old PC-system the clock and BIOS-settings would be reset, but how does a faulty battery effect a SGI-system, are there any other settings saved except time and date?

My O2 computer also have problem starting up, once I press the power button, the system starts firing up for one second, then powers down. I need to remove the power cord and press the power button once more for it to successfully start up. It's like the capacitors needs to charge up to manage a full power on.
Old Amiga 600 are notorious for needing recapping because of their SMD-capacitors are of bad quality. Is it common to need to recap SGI-computers, and are there any certain capacitors on O2/Octance systems that often need to be replaced? Are there any recap-kits being sold out there? Like https://amigakit.amiga.store/a600-capacitor-pack-professional-recapping-p-12643.html

Thanks!
 

Elf

Storybook / Retired, ex-staff
Feb 4, 2019
792
252
63
Mountain West (US)
  • PROM variables (which can be viewed before boot using printenv) will be lost when the battery goes
  • Other people have experienced similar issues with O2 power on (which are not capacitor related), see: https://gainos.org/~elf/sgi/nekonomicon/forum/10/16400/1.html
  • I have not seen any recap kits, but pretty much all these machines are getting to the age where it could be helpful, particularly in the power supplies
 
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