Mac 1956 Date Reasons

Date: Fri, 24 Mar 1995 07:39:30 -0500 (EST) From: Thomas Basil <basil@ward.nadn.navy.mil> Subject: Mac 1956 Date-Compilation of Answers Dear Info-Mac: Below is a compilation of answers received from an inquiry I posted to INFO-MAC. I'd asked: Can anyone shed light on why a Mac would always reset its date to 8/27/56 on start-up? I thought a bad battery would cause date to default to 1904. The 1956 date is popping up on two separate Macs. Both check out as clean under Disenfectant 3.5. Many thanks for any tips or suggestions. Thanks to everyone for clearing up a mystery. Tom Basil basil@ward.nadn.navy.mil ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Replies received... From: "Jingcai Zhu (Mizzou1.Missouri.edu)<SNRZHU@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu> When the battery is dead, not only the date will be reset to 8/27/56 at the start up, the color monitor setting will usually go back to B/W also. So, change a new battery will solve the problem. From: zeev fraenkel <FNFRANKL@WEIZMANN.weizmann.ac.il> you have a bad battery in both your computers. i have a classic II and when it reverts to the date of 1956 i know its time to replace the battery. for some reason this already happened to me twice despite the fact that the battery is supposed to last 6 years and my mac is barely 4 years old. something is wrong somewhere but it is not enough of a bother to do something about it, so i replace the battery and forget about it. i wonder how widespread this problem is. replacing the battery in a mac II takes 5 minutes. zeev fraenkel From: Matthew Damo Alverson <alverson@cs.unca.edu> I just recently had this problem myself but along with I also had all my presets changing, In particular my default printer was no longer coming up as the default, and my system beep was not what I had set it as. So everytime I turned on my mac I had to select chooser and select my printer again. Then I noticed that the documents I had worked on in the last week were dated 1956. I replaced the battery and that fixed both problems. From: Benjamin k Grossman <bgrossman@sparky.lkwash.wednet.edu> No, some newer Macs hit other dates, I think this is one of them. From: Roy Cruz <rcc@mozcom.com> I discovered the problem around two years ago and I even asked Apple support (through Applelink) but all they suggested was it could be the battery or a virus. This bug appears on different Mac models, System 7.x (I haven't tried using 7.5.1 on those Macs yet), and reformatting and installing System software from the CD won't help. Also, aside from the date and time other parameters are being reset on my old Mac like the 32 bit addressing and color. Last year, however, I noticed that it happens to me (and to others I know) when a certain SCSI device is connected. Do you have an external hard disk connected? If so, have you tried disconnecting it temporarily to see if the problem oc…