All orders have been delivered, time to replace the the RTC chip on the #PentiumPro motherboard.

Removing the chip went well with the desoldering gun and a bit of help with hot air for the GND pin.

I soldered a socket and used a nwX287 by Necroware. It feels slightly wrong to use a Varta battery in there but I guess that one will be fine.

#retrocomputing

There were no picture of the AOpen AX65 #PentiumPro board on #TheRetroWeb, so I did my best with my #fp5 and it turned out OK.

I then proceeded to remove the BIOS chip and dump its content with the #minipro.

Now, when dealing with motherboards where the BIOS has a sticker with its version on it, I never know if I should update it in place and make the sticker lie, or replace the EEPROM with a freshly flashed one instead and store the original.

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/aopen-ax65

#retrocomputing

The next problem with the #PentiumPro is more serious: the disk drive sometimes makes loud repeated clicks, as if it was trying to imitate an old alarm clock.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was the reason why the computer ended up in the trash.

Also, I couldn't get the the PS/2 mouse to work despite the jumper being set correctly. It could be caused by the RTC battery being dead (there is an option in the BIOS about PS/2 mouse), but I'll need to investigate a bit more.

#retrocomputing

@outofcreativity Thanks for the nice comment.

I know 16 bit code is not where the #PentiumPro shines, but it should still be at least as fast as a #Pentium running at the same clock speed, which is fine with me.

I will most likely reinstall it with a dual-boot #os2warp and #windows95