August 14th, 2026

Replacing the Time Battery on an Alpha R1.

Dell, you didn't have to do this to us...

Fixing the Semi-Bricked Alienware Alpha R1.

I finally got mad enough about not having my super-convenient Alien around. Thanks to its small size, it’s very useful for tasks where I don’t want to hog my laptop, but need something that’s quiet. The reason it was in a coma was simply because the CMOS battery had died, and Dell had done this thing a misfavor by not allowing you to turn it on without a CMOS battery. So I did a preliminary surgery on it, finding that you need to buy a little battery attached to a wire to replace it. Disgusted, I put the Alien back together and shelved it once more.

See, I had already spent $30 or so on a bag of 150 CR2032 batteries, which just so happen to be the kind the Alien would need, had Dell not tried to make it hard. And, rather than spend the $1.50 or whatever to get one nicely done, I decided to spend an hour of my time doing it my way.

The first thing I did was remove the battery from the Alien. Not hard. Just disconnect the cable. Of course, that's after you take the thing apart and remove the logic board from the chassis.

Then, I cut the plastic open. Also not hard.

The CMOS battery, plastic cut open.

Then, I snipped the leads off of the battery as close to the battery as I could.

From there, I got the new battery, and connected the leads using scotch tape. I made certain as much flat lead was making contact.

The mess. Notice the taped battery.

Some multimeter measuring and fidgeting later, and a wrap-up in tape, I had reconnected the battery, attached the well-designed cooling fans to the Alien, and put the logic board on the side. Then, I shorted the pins that you need to short to turn it on, and it did! Finally, it was awakened from its long coma.

Look! It's up!

The BIOS.

Yes, it's standing on its side...

I then set the date and time, and threw it all back into its shell. The Alien is now happy once more. All I had to do was re-set the boot order (Ubuntu/Linux Mint FIRST), go into Windows 8.1 to change the colors on the lights to green once more, and it was back up and running like it should be.

Quite frankly, I’m not happy that I had to do this, as Dell presumably could have made this easier, or done something so that one could use it without a CMOS battery. It’s a shame that many of these have been abducted by the ewaste planet to be disposed of forever, simply because of a part that WILL eventually die, and that isn’t really necessary for the operation of the device.

Chickens!

Well, Agathae is back to laying eggs. She seems to have gotten the memo on the broody thing. The others are fine, as normal.

Thanks for reading this post.