[X] My Assistant

[Gati]

Okay, I posted this in another thread as a reply. However, since the Second Generation forums are not all that active I have decided to put this as a thread.

First of all, 2nd generation games' Internal Battery dies sooner than the first gen. because of the clock and among other things, and it drops the Internal Battery's life for a couple of years.

You can send your game(s) to Nintendo and they'll fix it for $10 here - No longer available (repairs for GCN and GBA still available).

However the games' battery can be recharged By following this instructions that I found. The game being fix is Silver, but it is the same thing with Gold and Crystal, and maybe with the 1st gen. games.
Note: Instead of colouring important text, I decided to put them in *'s because of the different colour skins in the site.

**Basic soldering skills required**

Materials:
Soldering iron
New 3 Volt Coin Cell Battery - CR2025 (165mAh) or CR2032 (220mAh)
Adhesive tape
Fine tipped hemostat or needle-nosed pliers

Flip over your cartridge.

Locate Screw

Using a hemostat, needle-nosed pliers, or anything else that you can grip it with, unscrew this little screw by turning counter-clockwise.


Once the screw has been removed, turn cartridge over, slide the front cover downwards, and pull it off.

Now you can see the circuit board, and the battery that allows one of the chips to retain the game save data.


You can see that both Pokemon Red and Silver cartridges look very similar, except that the Silver circuit board has a crystal oscillator in the upper left-hand corner to control the passing of time in the game.

Now that you have the cartridge open before you, take a look at the battery.


You can see that the type of battery used is printed on the board above the battery. For my Pokemon Red and Silver games, the CR2025 coin cell was used. I went to a Radio Shack store to buy my replacement battery. Instead of using a CR2025 battery, I chose to install a CR2032.

The cartridge needs to use a 3 volt battery that fits in this position. The CR2025 has a storage capacity of 165 milliamps per hour (mAh). The CR2032 is also 3 volts, but is 220 mAh so it will last longer. It is 0.7 mm thicker than the CR2025, but since there is some extra room inside the cartridge it still fits.

Take note of the polarities of the battery. The wider side, which is facing the board, is positive (as specified by the + on the board). The side that is less wide, which is facing you, is negative (as specified by the - on the board). Remember this, as you will need to make sure you connect the new battery the same way.

Remove the Old Battery:

**Warning: Use caution when working with a soldering iron! If you touch any metal that is connected to or touching the tip, you will be burned. Only hold the iron by its handle. Do not touch the battery's tabs right after you unsolder them, as they may still be hot. The battery itself may also be hot if it is in contact with the soldering iron for an extended period of time.**

Basicaly, use common sense. If you aren't confident in your ability to handle a soldering iron, find someone else who is.

To remove old battery, you will need to unsolder the contacts where the battery's tabs connect to the circuit board.

**Warning: Do not allow solder to touch any parts of the circuit board other than the pad where the tab is connected. If you create a connection between any of the traces on the board, you may end up ruining your game.**

Once the soldering iron has heated up, touch it to one of the mounds of solder where the battery's tabs are connected to the board. When the solder melts, use some pliers to pull the battery up so that the tab pulls away from, and is not in contact with the board. Then repeat the process with the other tab to fully remove the battery and its tabs from the board.

Inserting the New Battery:

If your new battery does not have tabs in the same positions as the original battery, you will need to reuse the original tabs. By gripping the tab with some pliers (use ones with small or no teeth so you don't destroy the tab) you can pull it off of the old battery. Once you have removed both tabs, straighten or flatten them so that they are in the same shape as they originally were.

To save yourself a lot of wasted time and effort, don't try soldering the tabs onto the new battery. My Dad and I both tried to do that with the new battery I got, but whatever kind of metal or coating it had, the solder would not stick. It may just be that the metal battery dissipates heat too quickly for it to heat to the temperature that the solder will bond to it. If you did try to heat it to that point, it would most likely explode. The one that I had looked like it was starting to bulge from the heat.

Take the flat tab, and solder it to the board's positive (+) contact in the position that it was in when it was connected to the first battery. As you can see in the picture of my Silver cartridge's battery, I placed the battery in place (wider side downwards) and brought the solder up against the side of the battery to make better contact.

Next, place a piece of tape on the side of the battery near the negative (-) contact. You should probably do this before putting it in place. This will keep the negative tab from touching the wrong contact as the bend allows it to lay on top of the battery.

Now solder the negative tab to the pad on the board so that it bends upward and lays flat across the top of the battery, making electrical contact (the tab's metal touching the metal top of the battery).

Place a piece of tape over the top of the negative tab to hold it to the top of the battery.

When you place the cover back onto the cartridge, you want it to press on the battery to hold it in place so that the pressure keeps the tabs pressed against the battery. If you use a CR2025, it will be thinner then the CR2032, so you will need to add a kind of spacer (such as some more tape or folded up paper) on top of the battery until you can feel the cover pressing tightly when you put it back on.

Once the battery is being held tightly, slide the cover back up along the grooves in the sides, so it stays closed, and screw the screw back into the hole to hold everything together.

**Warning: If you open the cartridge again after you have saved a game, you may lose your save file since the pressure of the cover is what was keeping the tabs in contact with the battery. If that contact is lost, the game will be reset.**

Congratulations!

If you followed these instructions correctly, and didn't solder on the wrong places, you should have a working game that can now store a save file while it is turned off! Now when you play, you don't always have to start at the beginning again!

***

All credit and thanks goes to Master Kirby for his helpful post on pokemasters.net

Hope this helps.

This post has been edited by Gati: Jun 21 2009, 04:23 PM

[GuardianEarth]

this should be a sticky! I have needed to knowthis for so long!
I thought all hope was lost for my silver TT____TT
I play crystal adn am so worried waiting for it to die

[Sarge]

My Crystal game will probably need it's battery replaced soon, as the internal clock has stopped working. For the time being I'm still able to save. Luckily, this is the first game where I've managed to catch both Suicune and the red Gyarados, so even if this is my last play through I feel like I've done pretty good so far. ^^

I'll keep this in mind. Most likely I won't go thorugh the trouble when my game does die, but it is nice to know that you can do this yourself.

This should definately be stickied.

[GuardianEarth]

mwahahahh I safely multiplied all my important pokemon from crystal adn placed their back ups on stadium 2 for when the tragic time does come

it was like 80-90 pokemon too O___O oy

[KingTheory]

Woah this is useful! Imma gonna bookmark this. ^^

[PrincessHoshina]

Thank you!

I've been dying to play my Pokemon Silver for a long time. I'm too afraid to play on my crystal and gold for loosing the save files...

[Wastelander]

I read a similar thread on a different site before, but, it wasn't as detailed as this one. Thanks for the info.

[paLe]

This would mean fixing the "not being able to save and turn back on" thing, right?

[PuppyToast]

I'm a little worried about my Pokemon games dying
I still have my first Gold game from when I was like 6. The battery works, everything still works great after ten years.
Hopefully I will never have to do this. If I do I'll probably just end up getting it fixed by Nintendo xD

Thanks for posting this though c:

--

Oh nevermind
I looked through the website and they no longer fix anything before Gamecube anymore. That bites :C
Guess if they die I'll have to learn how to fix these xD

[Carefactorzero]

Wow. I must try this for myself when the time comes.

Thankfully, I reset all my games beforehand, so I ain't losing anything.

Ah, the joys of being a pokénub back in the day of the second generation...

[Gati]

Oh nevermind
I looked through the website and they no longer fix anything before Gamecube anymore. That bites :C
Guess if they die I'll have to learn how to fix these xD

Oh that sucks
I didn't realize that... Edited first post.

[Vixian]

man i cried when mine died .. for days litterally I wish i had known this at that time. ^^ but now i have three of like each game lol.

[Vanilla Villa]

Wha? I've had my Pokemon Yellow for years.

What's the internal battery?

[Gati]

Wha? I've had my Pokemon Yellow for years.

What's the internal battery?

Just looks at the images, and if you have either Ruby, Sapphire or Emerald, you can also see the battery.

[nukke]

o: I so should have known about this when my Crystal died (there went 3 shinies, if not counting Gyarados D : !)

I didn't even know this could happen until it did. First, the clock died, then I asked my friend (who knows everything about these), if he could replace the battery. But before I had time to move my pokemon away it just died ): Aww life's hard

Ah well, my friend got it done, and now it has some kind of old battery of a thinkpad's laptop, looked exactly similar to the red version's battery o: Wonder how long it will last..


But thank you I shall get this to my favourites and change battery for Silver, too. Or then I'll just make my friend do that again


By the way: How long does the blue/fire's battery keep the (blue/red) game playing? Do any of you know if they need replacement yet?

[Koakuma]

Might as well give this a try, the game's worthless in the state it is in right now anyways =w=

[Usagi Zakura]

I'm not sure if it even runs out on the gen 1 games does it? I've had my Red version for years. I had Gold too but I sold it so I have no way of knowing whether it still works or not... (kind of regret that I did...it was awesome) If I still had it and it ran out maybe I could ask my dad to help me fix it:B

[Gati]

By the way: How long does the blue/fire's battery keep the (blue/red) game playing? Do any of you know if they need replacement yet?

Who knows... But I wouldn't worry about it. Green, Red, and Blue still have plenty of life in them
Especially if you don't often play them.

[Koakuma]

Sorry for bumping up this topic, but I've just replaced the internal battery of my Crystal copy this afternoon and it works perfectly fine again. I've made it so that in future cases I can easely replace the battery too, with a simple battery holder construction.

[Kari ShadowWolf]

Thanks I'm going to have to try this out.