GBA Cartridge Battery

[MooglePeru]

Topic. My Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga and my (shock! horror!) Final Fantasy IV Advance can't save now. How can I change the Casrtridge Battery?

I want to beat Zeromus in the bathroom again, so please help me, thanks.

[Mig]

I thought GBA catridges had a permanent storage device built in after the problems thay had with GB and GBC games.. well, I remember the same thing happened with my old pokemon GBC games and I have to say replacing the batteries is not easy. In fact I just gave up on my GBC cartridges, but I know it's possible.

First of all you need to prise open your cartridge and find out what type of battery your game is using. You then need to find somewhere to buy a battery of the same model. The batteries are soldered onto two parts of the game chip via the use of two metal tabs. I -REALLY- suggest buying a new battery that comes WITH new tabs, because it saves you so much bother, you wouldn't believe it.

if you got new tabs, carefully un-solder the battery and tabs from the chip and throw them away, then solder on a new battery. (You'll need a soldering iron, duh :P) If you can't find any new tabs, you have to re-use the old ones. Which, believe me, is amazingly complicated.

First of all, you need to pull the tabs off the battery (they're spot-welded on, so it's quite difficult to do without breaking the tabs) and attach them to new battery somehow. I found some guy on another forum who managed to use the capacitor from a disposable camera to make his own little spot-welder, but I tried it with 3 different cameras and the capacitors just weren't big enough to deliver enough heat. Actually, let me explain how it works first incase you're a little confused. =]

If you've ever used a disposable camera you know that you have to charge the flash up before you can use it. This is done by transferring electricity to a capacitor which is capable of releasing the entire charge at once into the flash making it flash incredibly brightly, instead of just glow a little bit for a while. If you wrap two wires around the base of the capacitor and charge it, as soon as you complete the circuit it will discharge and create a spark at the end of one of the wires. This spark is just enough to melt the metal tab a tiny bit, meaning it's theoretically possible to fuse it to the battery. IF you have a large enough capacitor. Mine was too weak so it just didn't melt enough of the tab to work. The reason this is more useful than, say, superglue is because it provides maximum contact between the battery and the tab. If glue was to get in between the tab and the battery, there's a higher likelyhood of problems ocurring.

You could also try replacing the battery with one from a newer GBA game that you dont really want, as I'm pretty sure they all use a standard size and type of battery.

[MooglePeru]

Hmm, thanks Esp. I'm going to kill my Link to the Past cartridge, so I can beat Cackletta again. But, I ask you: How much it cost a new battery (GBA games use a tiny circle-like battery)?

[Mig]

You'll have to shop around, I suppose it's around 1-2 british pounds over here (quite expensive) but I don't know how much it would cost you in Peru.

But yeah, let me know how it goes. =]