Non-leaky Mac Plus and SE/30 battery options

[PacificState]

So I dug out a Mac Plus and SE/30 that had been sat in storage for a while, and apart from a failing hard drive in the SE/30 they booted fine - while, more importantly, there was no evidence of battery leakage (that said, the SMT caps were leaking and needed a cleanup - I'll get around to recapping soon).

I know this is more for the SE, but are there any options to replace the batteries with something that is guaranteed not to leak? Or, given that I'd sooner keep them preserved and occasionally turn them on, would I be better leaving the batteries out entirely?

 

[cheesestraws]

No battery is going to be totally immune from leakage or decomposition of some kind. That said, most batteries do take quite a long time to leak, so unless you're planning to leave them unattended for 20 years or so, you can probably get away with it.

Personally I run mine batteryless, but that's more because I'm neurotic rather than because of any real serious level of risk. Getting brand new batteries and keeping an eye on them is probably, realistically, fine.

 

[davidg5678]

I have replaced some of my computer's clock batteries with CR2032 coin-cell batteries. I have never seen this variety of batteries have problems with leaking before, and I couldn't find any evidence of them leaking online either. They are way cheaper than the 1/2 AA batteries that these computers normally take, especially if you buy many of them in bulk.

 

[Crutch]

I’ve done the same as @davidg5678 . If you really want you can thread the leads of the coin-cell battery outside the security slot and mount the coin cell outside the case with a Velcro dot. Little coin-cell holders available on digikey etc. will also entirely encase your coin cell in plastic (see photo) in the one-in-a-billion chance one actually leaks. I think this is essentially a riskless solution.

I’ve posted this before somewhere but don’t recall where so excuse the repost — here’s my setup.

I prefer to use a battery to keep my PRAM settings etc. handy but @cheesestraws has a nice tool to force 32-bit mode on startup which combined with something like the PRAM Auto Restore cdev does rendering running batteryless just fine, provided you’re on a network and can get network time.