Enhanced board green battery testing. Interesting.

[SlotMechanic]

Well guys...i think i have a bad board.....i replaced my green battery on my enhanced board....worked great the first day....after that...i no longer get the 3.6 or 3.7 volts on the green battery, but insted i get 0.0 volts......


The interesting part is the board still boots up with a dead battery....i don't understand it....the only thing i've noticed is every time i turn the machine on now, the sound settings are reset....but the game plays normal....every other setting is intact....i just go into settings..change them...and wala....back to normal..till i shut it down again....


Anyone else experience this...?


Tom

[SolidSilver]

Yessir, while you do not mention what kind of machine you have, the "dead battery" symptoms you describe are appropriate.
Battery power is only to keep volatile RAM alive in case of facility power failure, and the only things that go into that kind of memory are temporary running data.
No basic machine functions are ever in volatile RAM, that's what EPROMS are for. RAM typically carries things like specific setup parameters
that can be changed as desired, game history in case of customer disputes, and accumulated credits. Thus, many machines will boot & run
just fine with dead batteries, they just "forget" what happened recently. For instance My CEI poker machines don't care if the batteries are dead.

Only two things will cause bootup problems with a dead battery:
1. Critical setup info, if the system does not have defaults (unlikely; it's clear that yours does have defaults)
2. Manufacturer's specific programming in the actual game software that demands historical and
credit data be maintained. How off-pissed would a player be if a 10-second casino power failure erased his $10,000 credits?

[Buzz]

I have never had this problem so what I say here take it with a grain of salt.
 
Just a idea that even though you have a new battery, you don't know for sure it's good. What if you turn on the machine and let the battery charge up then de-solder the Neg leg of the battery and let it sit over night. If the next day the battery stayed charged, the board must be draining the battery. If the battery checks out dead, it must be a bad battery. ( the reason I said NEG leg is because only one NEG and Two POS. I'm lazy )

[SlotMechanic]

After putting my old battery back in that read 3.6 volts, it read 0 after i soldered it in.... weird...i ordered two new batterys but i think my board is shot......i will try one more battery......this time i will solder some wire leads that will be soldered to the battery......that way i can desolder the neg and check the drain without heating the board.....maybe i put too much heat towards those tiny black components thats right next to the positive terminals.....anyone know what those tiny things i for...? every single one had a different number on it, even they look the same....

[foster]

The green battery is not used to maintain CMOS RAM data, that is what the large coin battery is for.
That being said it is possible that the battery being low could cause the tattle tale circuits to corrupt some other cmos data.
The Green battery is used to run tattle tale circuits, so casino security can tell if any of the machine doors were opened while it was off.
They will know by the casino cameras before the machine is powered on and starts communicating with the back room systems.

[SlotMechanic]

Well....this entire week...the machine boots up with no problems the first time with a DEAD green battery...I have 2 new ones sitting at home..i'll leave it like this until it starts acting up again.

Tom

[brianfink]

I removed the green battery frome mine, probly about a year ago, and jumped both positives to the negative and haven't had any problems. 

[therockinelvis]

I have jumped the positives on 502 boards but not to neg. also. He has the enhanced board which needs the green battery

[SlotMechanic]

We'll I am leaning towards I don't need a green battery... Right now it's just soldered in the board and has 0 volts. It's been booting up fine all week with no problems.