>There's a lot more to the PRAM than just
>the default boot point and AppleTalk's port.
According to Apple the following may be stored in PRAM (exact features
vary between machines and OS versions)
* Status of AppleTalk
* Serial Port Configuration and Port definition
* Alarm clock setting
* Application font
* Serial printer location
* Autokey rate
* Autokey delay
* Speaker volume
* Attention (beep) sound
* Double-click time
* Caret blink time (insertion point rate)
* Mouse scaling (mouse speed)
* Startup disk
* Menu blink count
* Monitor depth
* 32-bit addressing
* Virtual memory
* RAM disk
* Disk cache
As you can see, none of the above will result in lost or damaged data if
the setting becomes changed or unreadable. Some of the above MAY keep the
Mac from booting if the setting is unreadable (resetting the PRAM will
fix that, although lack of knowing what startup disk to use could still
cause the Mac to fail to boot or take a very long time to decide to boot)
>Unreliable boots make
>for crashes that occur in mid-write on your HD. And that causes data
>corruptions...
For sake of argument, I checked Apple's TIL, I was unable to find any
tech notes that indicate a dead battery as being something other than an
annoyance to the user. The exception is a listing of the models that
won't turn on their video without a working battery.
If it was such a lethal thing to not have a good battery, do you not
think Apple would make mention of it in at least one of the various tech
notes that talk about dead or dying PRAM batteries?!? At no time do they
issue any kind of warning that you had best not run your machine with a
dying or dead battery.
>I've seen it on two different Macs in the past year... People that
>lost all their data for want of a $6 battery. Yea, I griefed 'em
>about doing backups. sigh.
If they lost all their data, there was something else wrong beyond a dead
battery.
>Another issue: Dead batteries sometimes leak. Get that stuff on
>your motherboard and the physical damage spreads. Saw that just last
>week in a 7300.
Humm... this should not be the case. The mac in question that started
this thread I *think* was said to be an iMac. It uses a 3.6 volt 1/2 AA
Lithium battery. According to Apple so does the 7300.
Lithium batteries of this kind do not have liquid electrolytes. They have
a solid polymer core instead. They should not leak. There is nothing in
them to leak. If you have one of these macs and it has battery acid
damage, I'd look really carefully to see if the wrong battery was used,
or I'd question what the user did to the Mac (I suppose, you could heat
the battery to a high enough temp to melt the polymer, which will then
leak when the battery ruptures from the heat expansion... but I'd think
that would be a high enough temp to damage the Mac on its own).
This is NOT the case with the Macs that use the square black batteries.
Those are actually 3 Alkaline cells inside a plastic case. Those cells do
have a liquid electrolyte and those can leak. I personally have never
seen one that has done so. But I suspect that is not because the cells
didn't leak, but rather because the plastic used in the case is resistant
to the acid and failed to allow it to escape from the case. However, I'd
venture to say that such has happened in the past despite the fact that I
have neither seen it, nor heard it reported (yet!)
-chris
<http://www.mythtech.net>
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