If anyone should find that their IBM Personal AT has gone amnesiac and forgotten who and what it is, and keeps trying to boot itself from a non-existent floppy before loading Basic in despair, Claire Gooding at SAS has the explanation: there’s a little battery in there that powers the chip that tells the machine what it is and what is expected of it, and if that battery runs down, the machine exhibits all the symptoms of a nervous breakdown – and no, replacing it isn’t simple – Tsss, can’t get you one of those inside a couple of months… no call for them you see… funny, you’re the fifth one this week… take one out of one the machines in stock? More’n me job’s worth…
