Now I'm not sure about the state of the (by now) working chip. Buying to chinese traders via ebay has its risks :). On the other hand, I have improvised a testbench for the chips using an arduino, and I see the "damaged" ones _can_ keep the time-of-day, even if them are reporting as "faulty" (VRT bit in register D reads as zero). It's a lot easier to grind your way in to the potted battery and replace it with something accessible in a holder _before_ you put the chip into the machine. :) I have one of those blasted chips soldered to the nigh-unreplaceable CPU board of a Prime 5340. Dead battery of course. Now how you get the "valid" bit to come back on I dunno. De