Racore sidecar battery type?

[geoffdaddy]

I've got a Racore expansion with a HDD, but the sidecar was missing the battery and the manual doesn't indicate the size. I bought one thinking I had the right number and it's way too fat to fit. A normal CR2032 seems too small a diameter. Any ideas?

[NTEPB]

I was just going through all my vintage computer equipment today, and after reading your question, I decided to take apart the double-high sidecar on my Racore 1501 (should be similar to yours).

Inside the sidecar, I noticed that there's a CR2032 battery in there. And as you've stated, it is a bit small for that battery holder. I then decided to take a closer look at the Racore manual. Sure enough, it states that the battery should be replaced with a CR2032.

I'm not 100% sure that the battery fully works. That's because I use another program to get the current time from my server every time the vintage computers boot up. Since I'm testing some other bits of software on these 8088s, I'll let you know if the CR2032 works or not.

Hope that helps!

Jon

[jharre]

Don't have anything from Racore (unfortunately), but I did need to replace the battery in my wife's rice cooker recently - how's that for a segue!

It used a CR2450 which is a little bigger and fatter, but still in the familiar "coin battery" shape. The one I used had solder tabs welded on but it is available without them.

Jim

[MikeModified]

A rice cooker with a battery??? Does it have Bluetooth?

Mike

[geoffdaddy]

I was just going through all my vintage computer equipment today, and after reading your question, I decided to take apart the double-high sidecar on my Racore 1501 (should be similar to yours).

Inside the sidecar, I noticed that there's a CR2032 battery in there. And as you've stated, it is a bit small for that battery holder. I then decided to take a closer look at the Racore manual. Sure enough, it states that the battery should be replaced with a CR2032.

I'm not 100% sure that the battery fully works. That's because I use another program to get the current time from my server every time the vintage computers boot up. Since I'm testing some other bits of software on these 8088s, I'll let you know if the CR2032 works or not.

Hope that helps!

Jon

Hmmm... maybe that's a better idea than putting a battery back in the thing. Does the program you're using do NTP? The jr is connected to our home network via the Xircom parallel port adapter.

[geoffdaddy]

Don't have anything from Racore (unfortunately), but I did need to replace the battery in my wife's rice cooker recently - how's that for a segue!

It used a CR2450 which is a little bigger and fatter, but still in the familiar "coin battery" shape. The one I used had solder tabs welded on but it is available without them.

Jim

Now's your chance... there's one on eBay right now.

[jharre]

Now's your chance... there's one on eBay right now.

Right you are! Looks like I own one now. Thanks for the tip.

Jim

[jharre]

A rice cooker with a battery??? Does it have Bluetooth?

Mike

No Bluetooth - it's got a clock so you can set it up for later cooking.

I love Zojirushi appliances, but this one was a royal pain to get the circuit board out of the case to replace the battery. They probably didn't intend for anyone to service it. But it went back together, works, and that makes my wife happy.

Jim

[jharre]

Now's your chance... there's one on eBay right now.

Right you are! Looks like I own one now. Thanks for the tip.

The box arrived today and it turns out to be a model 1501 with the DMA chip installed. Not sure how useful that is.

Can anyone point me to a copy of the "Racore Software Diskette"? It appears that I'll need one of those.

The PCjr counts up to 576K of mem and then throws an "Error H". So I did some disassembly this afternoon and it looks like the the floppy controller in the base unit has problems. That's a tomorrow project. Also, this base unit didn't have the guides on the back for the connectors and a couple of pins are broken off the keyboard connector. Has anyone had success reparing something like that?

Oh yeah, to keep this on topic , there is a sticker on the sidecar circuit board that says to replace the battery with a CR2032.

Jim

[MikeModified]

Jim:

ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/misc/Hardwar ... resources/

Mike