Well, the battery has been replaced this afternoon. It took between 2 and 2 1/2 hours.
The system seems to be functioning ok so far, but I haven't yet booted up in
windows-7, and I haven't yet tried a "dnf upgrade".
Before I took the system apart, I checked the CMOS clock and the voltages reported by the
motherboard in the UEFI BIOS display:
* CPU voltage varied, but was 0.98 +/- less than 0.01 volts.
* "3.3V Voltage" was 3.392 volts.
* "5V Voltage" was 5.040 volts.
* "12V Voltage" was 12.096 volts.
The CMOS clock seemed slightly slow compared to my "atomic" clock, but by less
than 1 second.
I gather none of the voltages displayed was the battery's voltage; I could not find a
battery state indication in any of the BIOS displays. After the battery change was done,
I checked the old battery with a battery tester. It was well in the "green
range".
I agree with the criticisms about ASUS making the battery so difficult to access on this
motherboard. I also found the USB 3.0 connector to be a problem. The pins were too
crowded, too close to the socket wall, and too easily bent. I had to straighten out two
of them, and it was difficult. Getting the plug into the socket took very careful and
delicate alignment.
I hope to try the smartctl long test on the hard drive tomorrow.
thanks,
Bill.