Hardware Internal battery (Pokemon Sapphire) not working? Fix?

[bobfacemoo]

I've had a pokemon sapphire (genuine cart) for a while now. I bought it without a battery installed at all (though tabs were soldered to the terminals on the PCB) and have tried to get an internal battery to work.

First thing I tried was desoldering the tabs and replacing with a battery. No luck, still give the "Internal battery is dead" message.
Tried a new battery in case the battery I used was no good (the batteries I have are brand new, not used) but still same result.
Next thing I tried was completely cleaning the terminals on the PCB by removing all the solder, applying a generous amount of IPA and a real good scrub before re-soldering a battery (with new solder) in case the solder on the terminal had oxidised, but still no luck. Same thing.

I don't know if the cart RTC is completely done for or not, does anyone have any suggestions? I'm starting to think it's a broken trace to the RTC chip or something but I'm a novice with detailed electronics so I have no idea what the cause of this game refusing to recognize a battery could be.

 

[DrMat]

If you can take a photo of the pcb of the gamecart, it may be visually seen what is the issue (though unlikely), if there is an issue with the traces or if the oxidization was not fully removed you may need to look into wicking solder up, though if you have a multimeter (around £10 on amazon) you may be able to find the issue via continuity testing (there are some general guides on youtube on how check if a current can get through paths in electronics)

Another option depending on what hardware you have available to you, if you have a save on the cartridge and wish to copy it off, you may be able to copy the save off via a multitude of methods to put onto another cart/flashcart or emulator with rtc support to have time events occur which would also allow then a transfer back to the cartridge if you wished or not.

Sorry I could not be of more help, I wish you the very best of luck with it

 

[ghjfdtg]

Possibly the game is confused about the RTC date and time being behind the last saved date and time. You can check this backing up the savegame using a DS (lite) and then deleting it from the cart. Solder in the new battery and start a new game + save. If the game still detects a problem with the RTC battery after powering it off for about 10 seconds and powering on again there is something else going on.

 

[DD1024]

Possibly the game is confused about the RTC date and time being behind the last saved date and time. You can check this backing up the savegame using a DS (lite) and then deleting it from the cart. Solder in the new battery and start a new game + save. If the game still detects a problem with the RTC battery after powering it off for about 10 seconds and powering on again there is something else going on.

Typically if the RTC has been replaced but the time is behind the save, you don't continue to receive the dead internal battery message. Since it's been a couple months, I hope OP has solved their issue, but absent of a picture of the PCB to disprove it, I'm going to guess it's something to do with the hardware.

 

[ghjfdtg]

Could be. But then again properly resetting hardware helps in so many cases. It's worth a shot. The Pokémon games reset the RTC if you start a new save.