[rescue] Dallas clock-chips, aka "NV"RAM chips

[JP Hindin]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2014, Carl R. Friend wrote:
>     G'day,
>
>     Does anybody know if the old-school Dallas NVRAM/clock chip is still
> being manufactured, or have they gone the way of the dinosaur?  NOS
> isn't good enough as the blasted batteries have a shelf-life in addition
> to their "life under load".
>
>     I've got a small farm of SGI Indys here, of which two need to be
> "reprogrammed" with the MAC address every time the power quits for
> more than several seconds.
>
>     Or is it time to buy myself a Dremel and start doing physical mods
> to the dead chips?  ("When one has a Dremel, *everything* becomes
> compatible.")
>
>     I want to find the guy who came up with the embedded battery and
> hurt him.  Why not have the expendable be a separate component?

>From a New Zealander - G'day, maaaaate;

And I hear you. I'm doing the same thing with a triplet of Ultra5s with
the newer NVRAM style (has an outer casing to hack through first) which
apparently no one has done (or, at least, admits to doing).

I was unable to find any of the Sun NVRAMs except from resellers of Sun
gear (they used to be listed at places like digikey and mouser, but no
longer are sold) - but lord knows how many minutes of useful life you'd
get out of a "resold" NVRAM.

Good luck to you sir;

 - JP