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Bondwell 386SL/F Basic info/help

Glacy

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Joined
Apr 15, 2022
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Hiya,
I'm completely new here but thought this would be the best place to ask. I got a Bondwell 386SL/F a while back and recently decided to plug it in with an adapter I have and it surprisingly sprung to life, that being to the BIOS. I would be interested in getting this thing running but have no idea what kind of CMOS battery I should get for it. (Don't wanna dig around in the insides too much, bit of a klutz)
Thanks for any replies in advance!
 

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Welcome to the forums.

I understand your point about being a klutz, I have Tourette syndrome myself so I totally get what you're saying but the reality is you're going to have to open it up to at least have a look at the internals. While some of these systems have regular coin-cell CMOS batteries (CR2032 seems to be the most common type used), sometimes the CMOS batteries are specialized and in some systems integrated into Dallas RTC chips. Also a good idea to have a look inside the system anyway to make sure nothing is leaking onto the motherboard, there are many silent killers that us vintage computer folk are all too familiar with.

There are also a crap-ton of off-brand or flat out generic systems from around this time period, most of them are really just re-badged Compal systems. Not saying that's definitely the case with this one, but it could be and that could explain why it's nearly impossible to find much info on this system based on the name "Bondwell 386SL/F" (also of note is that the 386SL is just the processor type in this laptop, again a very common processor used in laptops during that time, so doesn't help to narrow down to this particular system.)

Does this machine already have a hard drive installed? My T3100e/40's doesn't have a good CMOS battery, you have to go into the BIOS every time to boot from the hard drive, but it works otherwise.
 
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