alt Hacker NewsI'm just looking at an old Dell laptop refusing to boot without manual intervention because it looses its time setting since I removed its main battery. If I can fix that it'll become a very capable server for my home setup. Not sure it'll work though, as the bios can't be configured to ignore the time reset.
All old office laptops I had so far still had the good old CMOS/RTC battery... So if indeed the RTC is solely powered by the main battery, I would guess there's at least a backup capacitor somewhere so that it survives at least a short disconnect? If you can find that one, you can probably connect power there, but that's just me guessing...