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Batteries again !!

carl lawrence

carl lawrence

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10 Years
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Jul 31, 2011
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Sandbach
Ok! There is a thread somewhere where we talked about batteries ,and how crap Duracell. I have tried the all now ! ,the ones you buy in shops ,markets, professional ones and still crap ! .so I managed to get hold of some industrial ones .......IMG_0445.JPG

Switch on tonight ,now what could of coursed this .....IMG_0448.JPG

That's after 8 months,so glad that are off the board !
So chaps , just don't bother with Duracell at all and start using lithium batteries much safer I think !!
 
Those Duracell industrial batteries could well be fakes! There apparently a frequently copied battery, I use them for work, opened a new box to find them a significant colour difference to others I had, I always check battery voltage when fitting and have also had a 'Duracell industrial' totally dead out the box! Other things to note apart from the colour difference is the weight, the fake ones can be really light in comparison.

Iv'e since found a reputable seller and buy from them only now.

I agree with the NVRAM by the way.
 
NVRAM not a trivial thing to install though is it? Granted cheaper than board damage but if you have off board battery holder then that will suffice in most cases won't it?
 
astyy said:
I read that when batteries leak alkaline it releases in a vapour form too. "If" that's correct you don't want them anywhere near the boards.
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Yeah I read that too. :(

Are lithium batteries a decent enough stopgap fix as an alternative to NVRAM?

Dumb question but how do you replace them? Machine on? Machine off but connected to mains?
 
Durzel said:
Yeah I read that too. :(

Are lithium batteries a decent enough stopgap fix as an alternative to NVRAM?

Dumb question but how do you replace them? Machine on? Machine off but connected to mains?
Click to expand...
Thats a very good question as a new pinball owner id like to know just that ?
 
Durzel said:
Yeah I read that too. :(

Are lithium batteries a decent enough stopgap fix as an alternative to NVRAM?

Dumb question but how do you replace them? Machine on? Machine off but connected to mains?
Click to expand...
Most of my games have remote holders - I use Lithium and never had them leak.

Change batteries with power on - with care of course - otherwise you will lose settings and high scores.

Sent from my D5833 using Tapatalk
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
Most of my games have remote holders - I use Lithium and never had them leak.

Change batteries with power on - with care of course - otherwise you will lose settings and high scores.

Sent from my D5833 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
the machine i bought has a remote holder but one of the wires has snapped the solder connection to the board - not worried about high scores etc but what else is likely to have been lost ?
 
Hi,

Apart from the Highest Score entries, any difference from the 'Factory Settings' will be lost, and all auditing data and any error reports. With many games, the language used for text on the displays may be different from that preferred, if the Free Play adjustment was On, it'll default to Off, and games with a real-time clock will lose that too
 
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Anyone had experience of rechargable batteries leaking ?

Curious if the leaking issues are to do with voltage feedback to the batteries and they can't cope with it.
 
Moonbus said:
Anyone had experience of rechargable batteries leaking ?

Curious if the leaking issues are to do with voltage feedback to the batteries and they can't cope with it.
Click to expand...

They can just like any other battery.

Personally, I'm a great fan of memory Capacitors... :thumbs:
 
NVRAM the gold-plated solution and not worth it IMO but it has its fans and is pretty much the ideal solution. If you can source a supercapacitor for cheap I much prefer that for a game that will get played at least once a month. http://pinballhelp.com/how-to-install-a-memory-capacitor-to-replace-a-battery-pack/

If it's going to be stored just get a coin-cell holder, they're also good choices.

Above all though, whatever you do just get rid of the nasty-ass alkalines. Selected originally only to encourage operators to actually replace them, they're not fit for purpose beyond that. Lithium-chemical AAs if you aren't happy modding the machine, or you highly value the stored scores + audits and don't want to lose them and therefore cannot modify the game. Lithium batteries can and do fail, they're not immune - but they don't have a high tendency to leak acid everywhere. Capacitors leak as well when abused enough or old enough as well, but it's a question of frequency and with lithiums and capacitors, in real terms you are simply not going to be worrying about it any more.

On many machines (in the exact same way you can use the supercapacitor) you can remove the blocking diode to charge your battery source, so you could use rechargeable AA lithiums in the same place.

Many options, many ways to skin this cat, just don't leave it with literally the worst option of alkaline batteries on board.

Even at NLP last weekend I helped to scrub down a machine with old acid on the board to bring it back to life. They do very real damage and are a b*tch to clean up afterwards.
 
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I'm probably going mad but I booted my TZ this morning to check something, and when it started up I noticed that the GC score was right, but the other ones were the factory defaults. There was no "Factory Settings Restored" on boot, or any other error, and it had remembered the score for the last game played, but nevertheless I'm almost certain I had other scores on there (getting a GC score without getting any of the others would be rather fantastical).

New Energizer Ltihium Ultimate batteries were installed about this time last year.

Thoughts?
 
Durzel said:
I'm probably going mad but I booted my TZ this morning to check something, and when it started up I noticed that the GC score was right, but the other ones were the factory defaults. There was no "Factory Settings Restored" on boot, or any other error, and it had remembered the score for the last game played, but nevertheless I'm almost certain I had other scores on there (getting a GC score without getting any of the others would be rather fantastical).

New Energizer Ltihium Ultimate batteries were installed about this time last year.

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
There's built-in setting to nuke the low-end high-score tables after they get old enough - this setting retain the grand champion high score. Super-common feature on a lot of pinballs and it's on every WPC. Though it's usually off by default... either way, it sounds normal to me.
highscore.jpg
 
Ughhh really? I guess that's something that can be turned off? Wish I'd known that, as I haven't been able to get close to those scores for a long time - and they were a motivating factor to playing :)

EDIT: Thanks for showing the setting :(
 
Good thing to have in a routed game - gives a few more people a chance to get that dopamine hit of claiming a high score without your usual suspects preventing anyone from getting a high score ever; while leaving the grand champion score forever etched in the arcade's history. (Forever; until the sodding batteries ran out)

At home though? More likely to just be a mild ****er.
 
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