1998 Legacy Outback alarm confusion

[jeryst]

I have a 1998 Legacy Outback wagon. The other day, I got in to go to work as usual. When I turned the key, all of the dash indicator lights came on for a second, and then everything went dead. Assuming that my battery had just died, I jumped the car, and it started. Then I let it run for about 10 minutes to charge the battery, but when I shut it off and tried to restart, it just acted like everything was dead. So I replaced the battery with one that I pulled from another vehicle.

 

The car started immediately, so, thinking that my problem was solved, I got out to shut the hood. It was then that I noticed my parking lights were blinking on and off. I checked all of my light switches, including the 4way switch, but none of them were on. My signal indicators on the dash were also not coming on. I turned on the 4way switch and my 4ways came on, including the dash indicators, so I turned them back off since that didnt seem to be the problem.

 

Fearing that my battery would go dead again, I got in touch with the person I got the car from. He told me to push the alarm reset button under the dash, which I did, and the lights stopped blinking.

 

So here are my questions:

 

01. If the alarm was going off, why wasnt the horn blowing? The horn works fine otherwise.

 

02. Why didnt the alarm reset after a few minutes instead of going until it killed my battery?

 

03. Is there a fuse for the alarm system? I've looked through the owners manual and cant seem to find one.

 

Since the horn didnt blow, I was not alerted to the fact that the alarm had been triggered. I dont want this to happen again, and wind up with another dead battery and being late or missing work again because of it.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

NOTE: Somehow this got posted twice, and I cant figure out how to delete one of them. Can a mod please delete this one?

Edited April 5, 2018 by jeryst

[1 Lucky Texan]

there's a little info on the different alarm systems at www.cars101.com

 

did you get an owner's manual?

 

that's all I got, others here will probably have details.