Keep retro games alive.

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Cart with battery and capacitor replaced.

First revision OoT for anyone interested.

Its no longer original

Might as well throw it out

Autism:The Thread.

>>3105232
WOW

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>>3105094
I sold all my carts and discs because too expensive to buy now with everyone raping the market prices and fuck pawn shops, buy modchips and flashcarts. Replace caps and batteries in consoles only and don't waste my life repairing carts.

>>3105094
>happy gaming
Joey?

>>3105094
Where can I buy capacitors that are not cheap chinese shit?

Should I buy just the uF I need or a grabbag of different ones?

>>3105094
>Please do not sand contacts or use other abrasives

Are toothbrushes abrasive?

>>3105232
I'm really glad that game enthusiasts aren't like gun enthusiasts.

I have a Soul Blazer cart that I replaced the battery in and it still loses its save. Any idea why?

>>3105094
No.

>>3105326
Wat?

If you go through the work to desolder batteries, at least put in a battery holder so you can change it again in the future without a soldering iron.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYFXNEH_vvk

>>3105370
This, and the holders are cheap as hell.

>>3105370
>>3105376
OP here.

Holders aren't a very good option. They don't fit well in N64 carts. There's a very good chance if you drop a cart of the battery being dislodged also.

Easy to replace batteries and the time before another replacement is needed wont be for years.

>>3105391
>There's a very good chance if you drop a cart of the battery being dislodged also.
yep
>playing Mother
>several days into the game
>almost at the end boss
>drop cartridge pulling it off the shelf
>turn on
>no save files
still havent gotten around the re-playing it, god damn that was a huge annoyance albeit my own fault

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>>3105094
The replacement of capacitors is over stated. The whole reason people got worried about 'em was because of the time from 1999-2007 when there was a run of badly formulated electrolyte in these things (probably stolen between the companies). Caps from these years and from specific manufactures are very prone to fail. Caps from other years aren't nearly as faulty. Notice how this time line essentially falls outside the scope of retro as defined by this thread.

TL;DR replacing caps is (99% of the time) stupid.

>>3105423
Forgot to add:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

>>3105423
What about all the bad caps in Turbo Duos, Game Gears and Genesis consoles, though? All of those (save for the Majesco GG rerelease in 2000) stop being manufactured at least two years before your supposed 1999 start date. Turbo Duos are notoriously crippled by bad caps and caps are a frequent culprit of Game Gears with dead sound / Genesis consoles with sound issues.

There's a ton of stuff you could be screeching "not retro" about. Like the GBA threads that crop up every other day. At least the OP is highlighting an issue that's relevant to the board's topic scope.

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>>3105391
>don't fit well in N64 carts
They fit perfectly fine, at least in every cart I've put them in. I'll give you the potential battery dislodgement, though dropping carts isn't a common thing for me, and a decent clip shouldn't have that problem anyway.

>>3105391
>Holders aren't a very good option. They don't fit well in N64 carts.

These aren't gameboy carts. Coin cell holders fit rather well in N64 carts.

>>3105423

Electrolytic caps have a typical service life of 15 years. Old caps can and do wear out regardless of the faulty formula "capacitor plague" that caused certain runs of caps to fail much sooner than expected.

>>3105423
Electrolytic caps fail even if manufactured correctly. They might only last 10 years if you're unlucky, or they ran too hot, or the voltage headroom was low. "Capacitor plague" caps would fail within a year under the same conditions.

All of my games from the early 90s and late 90s run fine and save fine, etc.

>>3105423
Electrolytic caps have a lifespan. It's always a good idea to replace caps if that's the route you're going with vintage equipment.
>>3105447
Well I couldn't find a through hole one available on mouser or digikey that would work.

I assume you bought a smd one and bent the tabs?
And name brand cr2032 batteries with tabs are like a $2 a pop max. More likely around $1.

I have a lot of carts and I got factor money per cart in. Already about 50cents a cart for caps.

>>3105470
>bent the tabs
Yeah. You'll also need to trim the positive tab just a hair for it to fit through the PCB. You'll also notice that I had to shave the plastic down a bit on the corner nearest the resistor to make it fit. If I remember right, OoT is the only cart I've had to do that with though. They just pop right into everything else once you bend the tabs and trim the positive one.

I've got a decent amount of carts, but I just replace the batteries as they die, which isn't too terribly often. A few bucks here and there to repair a couple carts isn't that big a deal.

>>3105489
Oh ya for N64 the expense is nothing. It's pretty much OoT and 1080. Like 3 other games I think with batteries but I don't care about them.

When I do cap replacements I do them in bulk or at least try to. I got my Saturns up next when if ever the gdemu guy gets his Rhea and Phoebe out. I already replaced the caps in the two memory carts I have for them.

I'm not saying the cr2032 holder option is terrible. It has its pros. I just prefer buying the CR2032s with tabs.

>>3105502
Yeah. I mainly just use these clips for NES and SNES, so I'm not having to replace an insane amount constantly. I don't have the money or space to collect for something like the Saturn, though I'd love to.

Don't get me wrong, I have no issue with you or anyone else using tabbed batteries. I just wanted to put it out there that they do actually fit, and quite well at that. I'll admit that the clips are effectively useless since batteries in carts last so long.

>>3105391
The big things about battery holders is that you can retain your save files forever. Because the residual energy in the SRAM lasts for a short while, it's very easy to swap batteries before the charge drops below volatile levels. You can pull this off while soldering, but often you'll end up corrupting the data at best, losing it at worst.

That means if you make it a 5 or 10 (non-pokemon) cycle that you replace batteries, you don't wipe or corrupt saves.

>>3105452
On a related note, I found battery holders that work in original gameboy, gameboy color, and gameboy advanced. I personally was able to install them in the various zelda games without any issue.

> http://www aliexpress com/item/free-ship10pcs-lot-CR1616-battery-holder-patch-battery-holder-3V-button-batteries-environmental-seat/32217904991.html
Add the 2 periods back in the start

>>3105510
The only reason I have Saturn shit is I've had it for years. Forget getting into it now.

I have question out of curiosity. Have you noticed cracks along the hole for the battery tabs on your games? They seems really common almost all my games have them. Same with random scrapes usually under the battery.

>>3105232

Literally shut this whole thread down with this post.

>>3105535
Not that I've noticed. I haven't replaced the batteries in every cart yet, so I guess it could be likely.

>>3105539
The cracks are on the top side with the chips and they're very small. So not really worried. Just thought it was odd. That with the scrapes I figured it was some machine just jamming the battery in and fucking the top coat up.

>>3105351
Chances are you put the battery in backwards.

>>3105470

If you're replacing caps you should opt for non-polymer solid ones. Liquid evaporates and polymers degrade.

eg: NbO/MnO2 caps have a MTBF somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years.

>>3105557
Ceramic caps and the like may work. It depends. They're not really designed to be direct replacement for these caps.
Have to deal with shit like DC bias. I'm not figuring that shit out. If someone else does and they show it to work then I'll follow their lead.

They're also not cheap.

>>3105564

Niobium-manganese and tantalum-manganese caps are solid electrolytic and are direct replacements for aluminum liquid caps.

Niobium caps are much cheaper than tantalum and almost as good.

>>3105571
You're talking about shit that's like $5+ a pop...
Just to buy caps for the carts I did would be just under $2 per.

And no they aren't direct replacements. Plus you have the headache of trying to solder SMD parts to through hole.

>>3105094
Are the capacitors that necessary on old cartridges? Ideally they help smooth out the current, but is there really a danger of noisy bus lines without the caps?

>>3105592
Probably not. Not like they're low quality either. I just wanted them replaced since I did the consoles a little while back.

>>3105551
I don't think so because I put the same type in other carts and it worked. I might just try another in case that one was a dud.

>>3105606
Does the game persist the save as you play it? That is, you can save it, close the menu, and see the save file when you re-save? If so, the only other cause would be a broken trace from the battery to the SRAM. If you're in that situation, it should be visible where the broken trace is. If you can find it, just run some solder to connect the line.

>>3105094
>>3105109
You're only prolonging the inevitable.

>>3105571
>>3105584

Aluminum polymer is more than sufficient. You should be fine with any suitable dry capacitor. Your cartridges spend nearly all of their life powered off, so the MTBF under load is not so important, while the unpowered shelf life is.

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>>3105614

>>3105610
yeah, actually it will even save a few times only to be gone upon resuming eventually. I've looked it over for cracked solder joints and can't really see any. How do I know which is the sram?

>>3105679
>How do I know which is the sram?

Take a look at the PCB itself, and look for "SRAM". Generally it's next to the data size of the SRAM, and will say something like "64K SRAM" or similar.

If it's not printed on the PCB, what game/system is it? They all follow a pattern, and I could tell you where it is.

I don't want to buy capacitors individually.
Where is the best website to buy capacitor assortments that aren't chink trash that will fail in a year?

>>3107706
Mouser and digikey.

blah

>>3105423
Bullshit. Especially for Amigas those caps are a disaster. So many boards are already lost because of it.
If you have an Amiga which hasn't changed caps yet it's very likely that they have leaked badly.

>>3110082
It all depends on what type of caps did the hardware use.

Amigas, Laseractives, Mega CD 1s are for example well known for leaking.

But none of my Megadrives or Saturns have ever had such a problem.