Another way would be to find a good spot on the board for positive battery voltage and ground and connect a bench supply, or even a cheap wall wart, in parallel to the existing battery. At this point you can swap the batteries. That way you keep all saves.
Not everyone really owns bench supply, while if you own a Gameboy game that needs battery replacement its natural that you own a Gameboy. But I agree, that was the first thing I thought about too!
I've been telling people to do this for a long time, but they always fear they'll scorch something and break it. Which couuuld happen, but if you have a tiny bit of experience it'll be fine.
This isn't the kind of thing I'd recommend to someone who isn't already pretty solid and experienced with soldering. Easy way to not only blow up a game, but a non-zero chance of blowing up the console, too.
@@Darxide23 If you're clumsy, but really its easy. On GBA cartridges it's a bit more tricky, you'll have to remove the back of the console and the battery is placed on top of a chip. It's all managable though, if you don't feel skilled enough then don't do it.
@@MilkerMurphy But shorting the contacts of the cartridge while being powered can be damaging for the game, I guess. I'm not that concerned about the battery, it'll be fine.
It'll wipe the save game, ironically I tried this method a year ago on Yellow and must have touched something shorting the battery. Oh well, I can always redo the save. But use a ceramic non conductive tweezer like I learned.
I have not, i imagine the process would be the same, but you need to be careful as the cart will be sitting vertically, so just be aware of any excess solder which could fall and short something
Or you can just buy a cart dumper for like $30 and dump the save. Change the battery on the cart and throw the save back on it. Although I think Joey Jrs cost a little more than they used to since the chip shortages. So they might be more like $50. This is also fun as you can swap saves between emulators and real carts.
How fiddly would it be to just replace the chip with some nvram? I reckon you could pull the battery and jump the + lead to vcc, but I don't know the board layout.
Weird idea but do they make rechargeable versions of that battery and if so, could you wire something up inside the cartridge that recharges the save battery while you play the game?
I dunno about rechargeable battery, but there's a project to replace the SRAM with a FRAM www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/fe3tec/non_volatile_fram_replacement_for_game_boy_with/
There are rechargeable batteries similar to this. I believe the Sega CD used them, but they still fail and eventually need replacing As the other person gets responded, a FRAM reprehensible is probably the best solution.
hello i have a sapphire . that got water damage. the SRAM chip is destroyed and the C2 C4 R5 also. any its what the values of those are so i can replave them . and if the ram exists somewhere to replace?
Here in Sweden, I've bought 99.5% IsoPropyl Alcohol (IPA) from drug stores (really expensive 0.1L glass bottle), Kjell&Co (electronics store, 1L similar to what Adam ts using) and CarCare (car cleaning products store, 4L plastic jug)
Seriously good tip. Simple is always best. Obviously you could save it onto an external card, but this is something anyone can do. I had always thought about rigging a connection to a benchtop power supply. I can’t believe I never thought of this. Great video.
GBA games typically don't need a battery to maintain the save state. Most of the ones I'm aware of that require a battery such as pokemon, only used the battery for clock events. So there would be no need to do this.
@@thepthepthep cause lead-free is banned in air and space industry. For lacking properties needed to work. Cracking under vibration was the first of the reasons.
I would never recommend this, primarily because the fear to permanently damage the cart and shell is a very real thing. I would recommend Getting a Mega Memory Card/Monster Brain or one of those tools to dump the cart and Save first if you really wanted to retain the save and change the battery
