HD Install :: Am i totally screwed?

I think I know what you have on that mobo. I've seen similar machines before.

The fact that you don't find any battery on the mobo makes me think that you have one of those stupid bios/battery combo chips installed. Basically this is a bios chip with a battery inside. The way to fix this is to crack open the top part of the chip and solder a socket for a battery to the correct pins. If you can find the bios chip, try to look up on its specs on the internet. Maybe you can find the pinouts and solder the + and - to a battery socket. Or just order another bios chip altogether if possible.

Just some ideas. Use it or don't...

Good luck
(I've seen this done before and it worked!)

Over old motherboard i found clock batteries into a package like a electrolytic capacitor because was a difficult search

If its running windows, perhaps you can get a loadlin install working by pressing F8 when it starts to boot:

http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/index.php/Loadlin_Install

does the computer boot.?.test ram?, offer setup entry?<del,fkey>, boot to an existing os..if the computer does not boot at all..check the power supply..if you know its the board..save your pennys and hit a yardsale. if it boots but will not switch from c,a maby a boot manager will work...not enough info ..good luck...as example below

http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Well..
You dont need a working battery for changing the boot order to A,C.. !!

Just start the machine, go to bios and change the booting order to whatever you want. Then exit the bios setup and it boots from wherever you wanted it to boot.

Without the battery BIOS setting are lost when you shutdown your computer completely ie. lose power. But from BIOS setup to booting the current is not lost, so the setting stay.

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