Posts: 1,477
Threads: 71
Joined: Jan 2005
You can run it just fine with one cell, the cells are in parallel with no blocking diode. While 2 cells will last longer than one it's a bad arrangement when considering low battery replacement. When the low battery indicator comes on it means that both cells are near dead. One of them may indeed be completely dead and if that's not the one replaced first you're likely to lose memory when changing the cells.
Using one cell at a time will remedy this problem since you can put in a new cell in the other position then remove the one that's nearly dead.
I think it's preferable to only use one cell in the new 12C's with dual cr2032 cells -- whether it's ARM processor or the older one.
-Katie