Homemade replacent SNES cart battery leaking!!

I don't know how well you can see it in the photo, but that white stuff is where the electrolyte is leaking out of the battery, if it gets down on the circuit board it's bound to wreak havok (that is afterall KOH, quite caustic shit really).

SNES game carts store the game saves in volatile memory and must have power to maintain the data, therefore they have a 3V CR2032 lithium battery, but being as these game carts are probly close to 20 years old, the battery ran out of juice, and I couldn't save my games anymore, and lost the saves that were on the cart (had to start the whole game from the beginning after this)

Now why didn't I just replace it with another CR2032? Because I tried that, the battery has to be soldered to the board, and before I got it soldered in the battery exploded, BOOM, which is when I put on safety glasses, and sprayed solder all over the board, shorting some pins on a few chips and a few resistors. It got too hot, soldering batteries is difficult because its steel which doesn't solder very well.

I got all the solder cleaned up, and the fix actually required that I removed one resistor, clean the traces underneath, and resolder it back.

So what am I gonna do for a battery? I was trying to figure out something that would be small enough to fit inside the game cart case so I think...OK, i'll open up a 9v battery which has six alkaline cells and use two of them to get a 3v battery which should be small enough.

I was expecting the small cylindrical cells, but apparently they don't make em like that anymore, at least not this brand. So once I peel the metal I find that instead of the individual cylindrical cells which could be easily separated and rewired, it's a stack of cells inside a touch plastic case, separated by I don't really know what to call it but it was all one piece, so I had to cut through that plastic shit with a pair of dikes tryin' not to get hurt, and separate the cells tryin' not to fuck it up. I got it down to just two of the cells , and I soldered wires to it which I soldered to the board, then I encased the whole battery in epoxy resin and wrapped with electrical tape.

It turned out to be too big to fit in the case so I had to cut a hole in the back to make room for it, but it fuckin worked, and still does, I can save my games now.

But seriously, I don't understand how it could leak being totally encased in epoxy!? It should be like a solid rock! How can it still leak?!

I don't know what to do...if I replace the battery I'll lose my game, and I'm already on like the 5th or 6th dungeon of the dark world (it's Zelda a link to the past by the way)

Next time, Ill figure something else out, use 2 AAA batteries, or a 9v and the correct value resistor to drop the voltage down (black boys rape our young girls, but violet gives willingly...that's how you remember the color bands lol) or just try again with the CR2032 and try not to get it so hot.

 

go on ebay and buy a new one.

 

I'd still lose my saved game, I'd have to solder a new battery in, without disconnecting the present one until that one was connected, basically have 2 connected in parallel, then get rid of the fucked up one.

 

make sure the soldering iron is super hot...use flux and silver solder..has to be silver

and you have to be quick

 

and if you dont have the special screw tool...just dremel a small slot in the security screw then use a regular flat screwdriver before the screw cools off

 

I was using 60/40 solder, I think 63/37 might be a bit better, but I thought the silver lead free solders were just created because of environmental laws banning lead in electronics, but maybe you do know what your're talking about. I've used silver alloy solder before, but didn't think it looked as nice when it solidified as the lead solders I was used to.

And yea, I had to drill out some screws....remind me to purchase an electronics toolkit that includes those drivers.

 

I'm not a genius on this kind of stuff, but another approach might be to buy a lithium cell holder. Solder the holder into the board. Then slip the lithium cell into the holder.

 

That sounds genius

 

silver solder is lower temp melt range

also makes a cleaner stronger weld quicker with less heat


genius would be doing it right...not rigging it up like a redneck

 

So what about people that hang clothes out their window, with a string they can use to pull them inside. You don't think that's a clever way to not use the dryer? ;-). Every time I see that I think that they must not have very many clothes because I know I have way too many to do that, when I go to do laundry I sometimes use like 3 washing machines and 2 dryers and it costs like 8 bucks!

I think this thing is gonna end up bein more expensive than buying a new game cart but w/e.

I feel kinda bad about doing this to something that old...they don't make em anymore.

 

There's some other shit, I forget what its called but it turns into a plastic shell when you dip something into it...maybe I should dip it in molten lead, as long as I don't keep it in the molten lead too long it shouldn't explode right?

Maybe encase it in concrete...possibly my soldering iron wasn't a high enough wattage to get hot enough to make the solder stick to the CR2032 battery, maybe next time I should use an oxyacetylene torch to solder the battery to the board

 

Cut a battery holder out of a dead PS3 or PC and solder some wires to it in parallel with your current monstrosity and then clip it off once new battery is installed.

Last time I played that game was on a PC emulator, save states to the HD, FTW!

 

I got an SNES emulator on my phone, with Zelda and I'm further in that one, but it got too difficult to play on the touch screen gamepad without having a bunch of cheatcodes turned on.

If computers still had parallel ports I would run an snes emulator and adapt the controller for the pc....I think you can get snes controllers that have a usb connction though, I have an xbox 360 controller and the official headset that I use on my pc...gamestop sells them.