Have you seen this before (system clock error)

mzfire said:

Hello
We had a power outage last night and when we came in this morning we booted the two G4's it gave a system clock error, something like "the system clock is set before March 21, 2001 this may cause problems with other applications" we were concern that the battery may have failed in both Macs. Has anyone else had this problem? Or have any suggestion if we should be looking at the battery or something else?
Thanks

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This happens when the PRAM has been zapped. It's nothing to be concerned with unless this happens everytime you restart the Mac (which would indeed indicated that the button battery was failing).

Yes, it's 99.9% likely that it's your PRAM batteries. They're not expensive and very easy to fit.

While the system is running it will update the internal clock from Apple's time server, but with a flat battery it won't hold that info when you shut down. If you leave your systems running, it ain't a big deal, but otherwise it's probably worth getting replacements.

You don't mention which G4 you have, but IIRC most, if not all, use a 3.6v lithium half-AA sized battery. A quick google should find several suppliers.