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Nintendo GameBoy cartridge battery problem

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First post, by Strahssis

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Hi everyone,

I'm not sure if it is allowed to ask questions on VOGONS about old Nintendo hardware, but today I encountered a problem with two game cartridges that I have never seen before.

The situation is as follows. Most of my game cartridges that use RAM + battery in order to save games no longer held the save, so I replaced all the batteries today. This worked great on all cartridges except two. Whenever a new battery is installed into these two games, the game stops working. They will cause a bootloop or crash within a minute of starting the game. Whenever the new battery is removed, the game will work again like normal. The following things I have already tried to fix the issue:

1) Clean the contacts of the cartridge.
2) Check whether the battery is causing a short (it is not).
3) Try a different battery type and brand.
4) Reflow everything: resistors, IC's, condensators, just everything.
5) Check whether there are any shorts caused by reflowing (there are none).

The only thing I can think of is that the RAM chip has gone bad on these two game, but I can't imagine that would stop the game from playing at all. Do any of you guys have an idea what is the issue here and what could be done to fix it? I'm at a point that I'm considering just buying other cartridges and swapping the boards, because I can't figure it out. Thanks in advance and hopefully you have some suggestions.

All the best,

Miko

Mimi: AMD K6-2/266, S3 Trio64, Diamond Monster 3D II, Sound Blaster CT2800, 32MB RAM
Satellite 220CS: Pentium 133, SVGA DSTN, Sound Blaster Pro, 64MB RAM
Contura 420CX: 486DX4 75, VGA TFT, Roland Serial MIDI, 16MB RAM

Reply 1 of 7, by Greywolf1

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Could it be a reverse positive/negative situation (abnormal battery holder)

Reply 2 of 7, by andrea

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Maybe connecting the battery causes the ram to "save" whatever garbage data it contains, then the game crashes while trying to parse this data?
What if you connect the battery with the game already running?

Reply 3 of 7, by Strahssis

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Thank you for your help first of all.

@Greywolf1 I did check whether the polarity is correct on the board when the battery is installed and it is.

@andrea That sounds plausible. I wanted to test this, but the situation changed for both cartridges after desoldering the battery.

Update (after desoldering the battery for the third time):
*Pokemon Red: Will bootloop and once started up. When it started up it showed a partially normal Pokemon start screen. The text and trainer show correctly, but the Pokemon are garbled. I wanted to take a picture of this, but the game crashed and started bootlooping again before I could take a picture. Starting up hasn't occurred again after this one time. My guess is that the ROM chip is bad and that it is a done deal, but maybe you guys have a different idea.
*Pokemon Gold: Will show a garbled Nintendo logo on the bootscreen. This normally means that the game is dirty (makes bad contact), but the contacts are clean. On a different GameBoy it shows the same symptoms.

Mimi: AMD K6-2/266, S3 Trio64, Diamond Monster 3D II, Sound Blaster CT2800, 32MB RAM
Satellite 220CS: Pentium 133, SVGA DSTN, Sound Blaster Pro, 64MB RAM
Contura 420CX: 486DX4 75, VGA TFT, Roland Serial MIDI, 16MB RAM

Reply 4 of 7, by Greywolf1

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Check some of the other forums one of them mentioned the pins on a capacitor shorting 5v and ground.
Does the game work perfectly fine with out battery?

Reply 5 of 7, by Strahssis

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I took a look and I think I found the thread you mentioned, but it seems to be about a GameBoy Advance console and not the game. Other threads mentioning shorts propose reflowing as the solution, but that I already tried.

The games worked fine without a battery this afternoon, but now not anymore.

Mimi: AMD K6-2/266, S3 Trio64, Diamond Monster 3D II, Sound Blaster CT2800, 32MB RAM
Satellite 220CS: Pentium 133, SVGA DSTN, Sound Blaster Pro, 64MB RAM
Contura 420CX: 486DX4 75, VGA TFT, Roland Serial MIDI, 16MB RAM

Reply 6 of 7, by Greywolf1

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The cartridges work in a similar manner

Guess you’re gonna have to do systematic testing to see if all the capacitors,resistors, diodes and chips are ok could be something under the chips causing problems.

Reply 7 of 7, by jmarsh

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IIRC those are both games with an internal RTC (included in the MBC), so that's possibly related.
After the battery is first connected power the cart on, then off, then back on again before playtesting to make sure the IC that controls the battery's current is in a sane state.

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