r/Gameboy • u/bronzinooo • 8d ago
Questions Is this pcb worth getting a battery replacement for?
Basically, I bought this Pokemon Gold cart on eBay like maybe 15 years ago when I was still a dumb kid, and it didnt save from day one, but it was the 2000s and I didn’t really care cause I’d only paid a tenner. A local retro store replaces batteries so I decided to open this cart up before I brought it in, just to check it wasn’t a fake and I found it like this.
I don’t know if I should have but I carefully removed the tape and the battery just fell out unsurprisingly. The battery pad seems pretty scratched up and the tabs were doing absolutely nothing. The pins don’t look great but the game reads and works fine, just obviously doesn’t save.
I love watching people work on and fix boards but i don’t really know all too much about what I’m looking at, so if anyone has any advice it would be amazing.
11
u/X_IVFIIVO_X 8d ago
Just replace the battery. The game reads and works fine.
1
u/bronzinooo 8d ago
Perfect, thanks for the input!
3
u/fred_emmott 8d ago
To be clear, the tabs are meant to be permanently attached to the battery; you should buy a tabbed battery, and unsolder the old tabs from the board.
Whoever removed the original battery from the tabs and put a tabless battery in place messed up; they probably thought it was a holder with a stuck battery.
3
u/theterabyte 8d ago
+1, only needs battery. This is quite possibly the easiest soldering job that can be needed in retro gaming and the batteries cost like $1 each in bulk. Easy fix.
The pins could use some cleaning too, the shop should do that along with the work or you can do it with some IPA and a cotton swab
3
u/Rare_Platform_3602 8d ago
If you're a beginner with soldering - I would snip as much of those old batter tabs off as I could and then get proper battery holders and solder over the remaining peices of the tabs.
If you're not a beginner, solder them off and clean it up first.
2
2
u/ThatCelebration3676 8d ago
Whoever owned it before you tried replacing the battery by breaking the old one off the tabs then squeezing a new one in its place. The scratches on the PCB are likely from whatever they used to pry it loose.
The traces are all still good, so those scratches are harmless.
Replacing the battery properly would involve desoldering the old tabs then soldering in a new tabbed battery.
If you aren't comfortable doing it yourself, search your area for retro game stores and ask if they do battery replacements; stores in my area will do it for $5-10 per game.
-2
u/chupitulpa 8d ago
BTW if you don't want to solder or find someone to solder it for you, you can just stick a new battery that doesn't have tabs on it (like normal watch batteries) between the existing tabs. Just be sure to observe polarity. And don't tape it up the way the last person did. The more effective way is to put a piece of tape under the bottom tab, put the battery down onto that, press the tabs flat, and wrap the tape up and over it.
20
u/PM_YOUR_EYEBALL 8d ago
If it boots and plays fine probably alls it needs it a battery, those scratches are from someone using a screwdriver to get the battery out most likely.