Why a soldered battery?

[MikMac]

I recently acquired a Macintosh SE (1 MB RAM, 2 800k Disk Drives when shipped). It is in fantastic condition. No yellowing!

I has been upgraded with 4MB RAM and a Brainstorm accelerator. I installed system 6.0.8 and it runs like a champ.

I noticed the the battery has been soldered to the motherboard. (see pics)

Is that the case? Am I mistaken? Why would this be done?

It seems to work as the system is able to keep time and PRAM settings.

 

[8bitbubsy]

Only a very new revision of the Macintosh SE motherboard contains a battery socket. I'm not sure why it's not socketed, but it just isn't. Maybe to save production costs?

I advice you to desolder the battery then try to find a battery socket from another broken motherboard (all kinds of Macintosh motherboards that have this 3.6V PRAM battery). You should buy a brand new 3.6V PRAM battery from ebay, these old PRAM batteries are supposedly dead by now (if it holds the settings, it's still gonna be dead very soon).

Soldering leads to a battery is generally a very risky and bad idea, but if it's your only solution then it's worth a try. Be very quick when you heat up the battery pads and apply solder. The longer you heat the battery up the more risky it gets.

Also, congratulations with your finding. I've also got myself a Macintosh SE with 1MB of RAM and a 40MB SCSI HDD. It'll arrive at the post office in a couple of days. :b&w:

 

[MikMac]

thanks for the answer. I was confused, I have 3 SE's and this is the only one I have seen with a soldered battery.

 

[Mk.558]

Better bet is to get a battery with soldered tabs.

 

[zuiko21]

By keeping the leads from the previously soldered battery, I was able to install SMD battery sockets (from DigiKey) on my Macintosh II. Ugly, but works:

 

[krye]

Yeah. my SE battery is soldered too. When the day comes, I'm going to just clip the leads and solder them to some wires that I'll run to a a battery pack of my own making.

 

[Some_Person]

Yep, my SE's battery is soldered too. Still works, but probably not for long. It was, after all, "Made in West Germany", a place that ceased to exist before I was born

 

[trag]

The last time I checked, Frys was stocking the 1/2AA batteries with leads already attached.

As Zulko21 mentions, Frys has the 1/2AA battery holder.

I also sell them with capacitor purchases in Trading Post.