#Pokemon Emerald+Sapphire X2 - Not acknowledging newly soldered batteries - Solved

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

misty delta
#

Was doing some battery swaps for a friend of a friend, since I have done them on a dozen of my own games with no incident. When I swapped on my own R/S/E, the battery messages went away. On all 3 of these carts I was met with the following error; ""The internal Battery has run Dry. The game can be played""However, clock-based events will no longer occur""

In rtcread, running from an r4 card on my DS;"Power flag raised! The battery is probably dead."Attempts to change Date/Time data do not work, defaults to the following;Date - 45/165/20165 wkd:165Time 45:165:165

Per the advice of some users on reddit, I learned I could dump saves using my R4 and made a backup to my PC. Started a new game, same error persists. Have attempted with multiple known-good batteries from previously used batches, confirmed 3+ volts with my multimeter, solder joins on the board indicate continuity and I made sure + and - matched on the board just in case. Scrubbed down with 99% IPA but I cannot find any corrosion with my naked eye. I only have basic tools, so no microscope or heat gun for fancy surface-mount mass reflow.

slate oracle
#

Could you post some pics of the installed batteries?

misty delta
#

Last one was a test to confirm the battery itself wasn't shorting on something because I was out of ideas

#

I didn't buy this phone for the camera and I'm a moleman who doesn't have great lighting where I work because I seldom need it, let me know if I need to retake or anything

#

Someone suggested a shot without the battery attached, so here's that as well.

crystal agate
#

R9 is missing

#

Yep, R9 was floated off on both games.

#

R9 connects the battery to RTC

misty delta
#

Well sure enough, 3/3 of the games with the issue are missing that bit whereas my good ones aren't. Because I can't guarantee no one else has been in these I'd like to think I didn't do it, but at this point who knows.

crystal agate
#

I’ve seen it happen a bunch.

#

Thankfully it’s a cheap and easy repair.

#

Didn’t realize that the link was 0 in stock. Just find one with the same value and size and you’ll be good.

#

I just copied a link from my email when I ordered a bunch to repair cartridges with the same issue.

misty delta
#

I'll have to watch for that next time I do one of these. And yeah I saw the 43 week lead time and got a headache lol

#

So to make sure I'm looking for the right thing, it' s10 kOhm resistor, rated for .1 watts?

crystal agate
misty delta
#

I take it the wattage rating difference won't make much difference? Sorry for the dumb questions, my electronics knowledge is purely "attach the thing this guide tells you to and don't think about it too hard"

crystal agate
#

Nah, you’ll be fine. Order spares just in case you lose some.

misty delta
#

Yeah those things look to be dirt cheap... even buying 1k shipping costs more than these do. Do you know if FedEx or UPS either one have a reputation when using this vendor? I don't honestly trust either of them as far as I could throw one of the trucks.

#

Also out of curiosity and more than a little impatience from someone who doesn't know better, is that such a light amount of current being resisted that I could simply bridge the connection with solder or a piece of copper wire and still have it work? Or would that kill it dead?

crystal agate
#

I just used USPS first class. If you want to go between FedEx / UPS I’d always go UPS.

#

That’s beyond me, but I would not bridge those 2 pads together for the sake of getting it working. It wouldn’t be worth the risk of ruining a game that sells for more than $100 right now for the sake of funzies.

misty delta
#

Fair. Sometimes there's "The right way" and then there's "The bootleg way that works just as well", wanted to make sure this wasn't one of those.

crystal agate
#

Man, I’ve seen so much carnage from people using the bootleg way to replace batteries. You want to see a copy of Emerald with a hole in the board?

misty delta
#

Kicking myself for staring at 2 carts and not seeing the difference, but I always bad at "Where's Waldo" too.

#

lol sure, I'm always down for learning from mistakes I didn't make

crystal agate
#

R9 missing, solder on the cart pins, mangled legs on the ROM

IMG_0009.jpg
#

I just went through a marathon on buying up botched battery replacement games, repairing them, and trading them for other games I actually wanted.

misty delta
#

That's nuts, I'm not even sure how you could mangle a cart like that.

#

In the future, if I needed something to reference when searching a board for missing parts, is there a quick reference guide for GBA carts?

#

I must have searched for fixes for this specific error for 6 hours and not found anything referencing a missing resistor, so if possible I want to add anything to my knowledge base I can