Diskette drive A error

[Tearose]

I've been upgrading an old Thinkpad (more memory, Windows XP), and it was almost ready to put into use. When I startted it up I got a message:
ERROR 02B0: Diskette drive A error.
There was no diskette in Drive A, and putting a boot disk in there didn't make any difference.
When I've entered BIOS after this (the only thing I can do), It's had a date in 1980. When I fixed it to the correct date, it kept time the rest of the day, but this morning it was back to 1980 when I started it up. There were several other error messages, but they were only on a second. After I fixed the date and time, I was back to the 02B0 message.
Any ideas? Do I need a new CMOS battery? Is there something wrong with the HDD that I can't boot to it?

 

[technome]

You need a new battery, without it most of your bios setting will be incorrect, thus the floppy and disk drive issues.



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[Tearose]

Thanks. I got it to boot yesterday after disabling the floppy drive in BIOS and moving it down the startup list, but again this morning it won't boot. It lists the floppy error and a date and time error. At least the CMOS battery is easily accessible.