> Does anybody has a way to tell what info is stored in the clock chip?
The info stored in the clock chip is time/date, adjust (e.g. vdp(19)/set adjust), some screen mode related stuff using set screen, like screen mode (0/1), screen width, key status (key on/off) and I believe also the color settings. Furthermore you can also set one of the following three settings: title screen color & text (set title), the logon password (set password), and erm... erm... I forgot the third ^_^. Aside from that there is still a very little room left for other information, it isn't much though. Some hardware and a few games use it.... Actually the only hardware I know is the Novaxis, I've had a Bert interface and I wasn't aware it used that space... My previous system's battery has been empty for a long time (hence it always started in 40-column mode - I used bascom width 80 in my autoexec.bat), but I haven't had any problems with my harddisks back then (well, at least not related to the clock chip thing). I also know of some games which use it - although I don't think I can name one of those right now, I don't remember very well. > I still am unable to set the default screen width to 80 colums. > The problems indeed were caused by dropped out batteries after coming home > from a fair. As I said above, that is also stored in the clock chip, so it's logical that setting gets erased when the clock chip's ram is cleared. I understand it is an MSX with seperate batteries? I've got an MSX 2+ (Sanyo Wavy FD) which also has that... Anyways, just, make sure the batteries are full and in place (or if you have a nonremovable internal accu - replace it), then make the settings you want in basic, for example type WIDTH 80 to select a screen width of 80, and then SET SCREEN to permanently save that setting. > As a result of all this I also lost contents of a complete harddisk. I would > like to prevent this on my other harddisks and ZIPs. It seems highly unlikely that you lost the contents of an entire hard disk ( or even that you lost anything at all, aside from some screen settings) because the clock chip's sram got erased. It's got fairly little to do with eachother. True, the Novaxis interface uses that sram, but although I still don't know exactly what it saves in there, it can't possible be vital information which, when corrupted, causes a harddisk failure. It won't contain information vital enough to corrupt your data either, it's too vurnerable a spot for that. Essential information is stored on the harddisk itself. A more likely cause for that harddisk to fail is because you -for example- dropped it, or that you touched it with statically charged hands (because you removed the static from your monitor), or that you tried to connect the power connector upside down, or that the harddisk's lifetime was simply worn out. All those were situations I encountered in my life as a harddisk's-worst-nightmare, but I've never seen software which *destroyed* a harddisk, and it's very very very hard (if not impossible) to do that either. ~Grauw -- For info, see http://www.stack.nl/~wynke/MSX/listinfo.html
