Berzerk battery install leads to disaster

KidVidiot

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It's been one of those weeks where for every one positive repair accomplishment I achieve, two or three new problems surface in its place.

Today I've been working on Berzerk. I actually fixed the speech problem (there was no speech when I bought it) and then decided to tackle the battery install. The original battery was already gone from my board when I bought it and I decided to put in a rechargeable cordless phone battery and mount it far away from the boards as shown in several online tutorials.

I'd picked up some red and black wires crimp to the new battery so it could be mounted further away. The wire was a little bit bigger gauge than the ones coming out of the new battery, but the home depot guy assured me that was fine. I desoldered the battery holes area on the board, stuck the stripped wires through, soldered them in, etc.

I turned on the game and everything seemed normal, but the credits were still FF. I hit the bookkeeping button on the board and it brought up the Credits in the lower left and I hit the fire button to clear the credits to zero. I wasn't sure what to do at this point and couldn't seem to get out of this menu, so I hit the reset button on the board hoping it would now boot up in proper credits/high score save mode.

Instead I got one beep, light turns off, and all of a sudden there is garbage on the screen. I turn it off and then back on in horror and again it stops at one flash, one beep, and a garbage screen. Could I have damaged the roms doing something along the way? I've never had a problem with this berzerk before.
 
am going to remove the battery and see what happens. maybe reseat some roms...i guess the board just couldn't take the battery? is there anything in my narrative that would hint at what happened?
 
A battery is a battery is a battery... For the most part.

As long as the voltage in the rechargeable battery is similar to the voltage in the rechargeable battery you are replacing then you are fine.

You can replace NiCd with NiMH in almost all instances. You CANNOT replace a lithium with a NiCd or NiMH and vice versa as they have different charge cycles and characteristics.

Also, you CANNOT put a non-rechargeable battery into a circuit to replace a rechargeable one unless you kill the charging circuit. If you don't, the non-rechargeable battery WILL leak or burst.

As long as the battery is a NiCd or NiMH and you are replacing it with a similar one then you are OK. It will only power the backup memory.

If the ROMs died then you have something else going on... unless you dripped a bunch of solder somewhere. ;)
 
If the ROMs died then you have something else going on... unless you dripped a bunch of solder somewhere. ;)
that's why im perplexed because as i detailed above, all i did was solder in a new rechargeable battery. could i have soldered or burned through a trace around the battery area? i dont know why some roms would just die like that, if that's what happened
 
Well, hopefully you used a grounded soldering iron and not something like a "cold heat" iron.
 
You didn't accidently short anything perhaps?

I make a battery replacement pcb that plugs into the two ram sockets. It uses a Dallas 1220 nvram. $20 shipped.
I could ship one out to you but I don't think that would help you. Or you could send me your ZPU and I'll get it working and install my pcb.
 
You didn't accidently short anything perhaps?

I make a battery replacement pcb that plugs into the two ram sockets. It uses a Dallas 1220 nvram. $20 shipped.
I could ship one out to you but I don't think that would help you. Or you could send me your ZPU and I'll get it working and install my pcb.
thanks for the offer, I'm going to tackle this thing again on monday and then may take you up on it.
 
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