viktweee! Only not really in the broader sense.

[freckles_and_doubt]

A worrying cultural truth has been vouchsafed to me, by due process of trekking through five separate shops in Cavendish in search of a CMOS battery worth R10. None of the computer shops in Cavendish keep batteries in stock, although it's a perfectly standard motherboard component: after trying photographic shops (they stock them, although not the exact one I needed) and two separate chemists, I finally unearthed one in a display next to a bunch of little-old-lady hairnets. This leads me to conclude that computer shops don't, in fact, actually expect anyone to ever replace their motherboard battery. Is this because:
1) the bulk of computer users don't ever open up their computer, or
2) computer manufacturers expect you to simply replace the motherboard if the CMOS battery dies, because it's easier, or because
(3) by the time the battery dies, the motherboard is probably obseolete anyway?

I don't like any of these possibilities. They say worrying things about the state of human culture, and the increasing levels of alienation which separate us from any real relationship with the technology we use, not to mention the incredibly negative effects of a throw-away philosophy of development and manufacture.

Then again, I may be influenced by the fact that I'm halfway through Jeremy Leggett's Half Gone: Oil, Gas, Hot Air and the Global Energy Crisis, which is
(a) very accessibly written by an oil-industry guru of considerable authority,
(b) persuasively terrifying, and
(c) doesn't really tell me anything over which I wasn't already losing sleep.

On the not quite as suicidally depressing side, I did manage to replace the battery in my motherboard, and subsequently to reset all the CMOS settings (which default to incredibly unlikely and pointless defaults, presumably as a gesture of defiance and protest at premature battery death, or alternatively as a sort of dadaist artistic statement), all by my own self and without having to actually consult any form of uber-geek. I am consequently typing this on my very own computer and keyboard with considerable smugness. Viktwee!

Comments

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

Replacing CMOS battery = serious geek cred.

I think part of the problem is that computer shops are basically there for people who need hand-holding through the whole fairly obscure dealing-with-computers thing. They don't stock CMOS batteries because the number of people who know enough to replace them, and do not have access to computer wholesalers or actual batteries through work/hobby/osmosis, is vanishingly small. You are a rare specimen :)

Nonetheless, there is the assumption that once the CMOS battery has died your computer is on a pair with ENIAC and should be replaced.

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yup, I more or less figured that I fell neatly between two stools, as it were: enough knowledge, not enough geek contacts. (On account of how mine have all buggered off overseas). The looks I got from the guys in the computer shops were very expressive, a sort of down-the-nose incredulity, as though I'd asked for a small steam engine or something.

My computers are always very old because I'm too broke to buy new ones and consequently exist on the Evil Landlord's hand-me-downs. These, however, generally work perfectly well. The cutting edge discard system is horribly wasteful.

[bumpycat.livejournal.com]

My current system (which has just borked) is comprised of 50% inherited hardware. I'm going to patch it together again, of course :)

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

I've put together many a computer, but I've never had to change the cmos battery. It's a combination of
1) Even if you can open up your PC, you probably don't know about the mysteries of the cmos battery
2) Yeah. Obsolete by then.

[mac1235.livejournal.com]

I have 3 on my desk, but I deal with older hardware a lot.