Battery mod woes. My DC keeps time only for a few days

[Hook]

Like many people, I took out the old rechargeable battery, soldered on a battery holder, added a regular CR-2032. removed the resistor and put a 1N4007 1A 1000V diode to prevent the system from charging the battery.

It works great for roughly 5 days, then my battery goes dead. What's the general consesus on this? Should I simply put back the resistor and purchase rechargeable ML2032?

[poopidoop]

i would put the resistor back in it and get ml2032 batteries, thats what i use. i dont know why you would even want to do it the way you did sounds like a pain in the butt.

[Hook]

No pain in the butt, it's basic soldering. It will take longer to heat up the iron than putting back the resistor. Anyway, I wanted to go the disposable CR2032 route because I have a rather large reserve of them here, but somehow the DC seems to go through them like candy.

No worries, I'll order the rechargeable one.

[Nz17]

If I recall correctly, then the Dreamcast doesn't recharge the battery during certain functions. It might be either while it is running or while it isn't running. Either way, part of the time it will always be keeping the clock's time via battery power so even if you always leave it running on A/C, the battery will still get depleted with normal usage.

You know, you could just use up the reserve of CR-2032's by exchanging for a new one every few days. I wonder how many weeks all of those little button batteries would last... Only once they were all depleted would you then have to spend time and money on the other kind of battery.

[poopidoop]

No pain in the butt, it's basic soldering. It will take longer to heat up the iron than putting back the resistor. Anyway, I wanted to go the disposable CR2032 route because I have a rather large reserve of them here, but somehow the DC seems to go through them like candy.

No worries, I'll order the rechargeable one.

oh i didnt mean a pain in the butt as far as soldering go, its an easy job. i meant having to open ur dc and swap that battery all the time. although i dont remember if i can do that without opening the case with my GDEMU. I am surprised that the batteries dont last longer to be honest but maybe its because theyre old or something?

[Anthony817]

It has to recharge it over time lol. Still though, the fact that you have a brand new battery should last a little while at least. Hell the typical CMOS batteries last years on computers. But yes, using a CR2032 is generally a bad idea. I think maybe the DC uses more power over time than those regular coin cell batteries would normally? I don't know, it should have been replaced with the rechargeable type though.

I really need to redo the one on mine. The person I got the console from had bought it premodded. The battery mod never rally worked, and I tried resoldering it again to get a better connection but didn't see any improvement. Maybe since my soldering skills are a bit better now I should give it another go?

[Hook]

oh i didnt mean a pain in the butt as far as soldering go, its an easy job. i meant having to open ur dc and swap that battery all the time. although i dont remember if i can do that without opening the case with my GDEMU. I am surprised that the batteries dont last longer to be honest but maybe its because theyre old or something?

Haha yes, totally a pain to open the case up every week to replace the battery. And I thought VMUs were hard on batteries! Lol!

So I went ahead and ordered an ML2032 and resoldered the resistor. Will report back later to tell you how the new battery is behaving.

Also, I noticed that my stash of CR2032 have been expired since 2015! That might be my issue!

[beanboy]

Also, I noticed that my stash of CR2032 have been expired since 2015! That might be my issue!

Wow!

[fafadou]

Yeah change your CR-2032 but for dreamcast the best is LIR2032 rechargeable model.

[NightBreeze]

A LIR2032 is not compatible with the Dreamcast. The LIR should be charged at 4.2V but the Dreamcast circuit uses 3.3V which is the maximum for the ML-series of batteries, a perfect fit. Actually a ML2430 might be more suitable (100mAh vs 65mAh) than ML2032 but those are hard to come by, so ML2032 is a good compromise.