On May 10, 2004, at 1:22 AM, Sean Davis wrote:
> Okay. And it's not dead yet - I don't plan to replace it until it's
> dead, but according to DalSemi, the battery is only supposed to last
> somewhere around 6 years, and it's been longer than that since the box
> was made.

   Gotcha.

> It's legal to ship beer. But if/when I do decide to replace the chip,
> I'd like to do it myself - valuable experience and what not. Not that
> I wouldn't buy you a beer for providing very helpful advice, however
> :-)

   Sounds good to me. :-)

> The only soldering iron I have right now is one of the gun-type, gets
> extremely hot and is not variable-temp. So I would need a better one,
> flush cutters, and a socket. I'm assuming I could find the right
> socket either at radio shack or from DalSemi.

   Never ever ever use a soldering gun on this type of stuff.  Even a 
cheapie non-temp-controlled Radio Shack iron will be better than that.  
If you overheat the traces (which *will* happen with a gun) they will 
lift right up off the board.

   As far as sockets...DalSemi doesn't sell them, and Radio Shack may no 
longer carry them these days, but check there first.  If you strike out 
there, you can get them from Mouser Electronics 
(http://www.mouser.com/, very good online ordering system).  If you 
have trouble finding the right thing, drop me a note and I will get you 
the right part number to plug into an order form.  The socket should be 
about $1 for a good quality one, or ~$0.40 for a cheapie.

> Thanks for the advice. The reason I asked is because (apparently) the
> timeserver I use is out, and my Alpha was two minutes off, compared to
> my Ultra 5 and my PC. They all run the same version of NetBSD, and all
> use the same ntp.conf. When that chip dies (or more accurately, it's
> battery dies) I know what to do now.

   Good luck.  As an interesting coincidence, my stratum-1 NTP server 
stopped syncing to my GPS receiver this morning, for reasons unknown.  
Sigh.

   And to drag *that* back to being on-topic, that machine is an AS500 
5/500 running NetBSD/alpha v1.6.1. :-)

   G'night, all.

        -Dave

--
Dave McGuire          "PC users only know two 'solutions'...
Cape Coral, FL          reboot and upgrade."    -Jonathan Patschke