Battery replacement?  Sounds like the problem.
I would send it back if it's still under waranty.  Replacing the battery is
really simple but may void the waranty.  Best just to let Apple fix it
then.  If not just go buy a battery and see if that helps.  Couldn't hurt.
:-)
Maybe theres a way to set the clock in the Open Firmware (Open Firmware
rocks)?  Haven't looked into it though.

spencer at sihope.com wrote:

> I finally got my airport nic up and running under Linux yesterday. It
> was a nice break to the double eth situation I am still working. So I
> boot trusty ol' Linux today on the notebook and it hangs on setting up
> the cmos clock. It boots into OS x and 9 without any problem.
> However, now that I look at the time (osX) it is 12/31/69. I know I set
> the time. I also recall yesterday Kde was giving me trouble setting the
> time.
> I did boot into single user mode and ran clock. The output was 1902 or
> something. The notebook is under warranty. Is there a work around to the
> cmos clock hang? Maybe running a script to envoke ntp prior to the cmos
> clock? I did clear the PRAM, to no avail.

sim