Hacking it actually worked

[redact]

background info: i got a ez 3in1 from DX but the battery was flat so i couldn't save

solution: break a copy of the "official" gba game "Pokemon: Frigo Returns"

ok so what i did was opened up this pokemon romhack cart that my friend gave me and de-soldered the very chunky battery, desoldered the flat battery from my 3in1, then put the (twic the size) other battery in there and screwed the case of my 3in1 closed. then i chucked it in my dsl and it works perfectly, i can now save my gba games and there is less chance of my 3in1 getting lost as it is now an extremely tight fit

pix:

(sorry for bad quality, but my camera got lost on holiday and my phone has no memory card slot so i had to put the 3in1 in my scanner to get a pic)

as you can see, there is now an extremely big bulge in my 3in1 but at least it works, that's the main thing

EDIT: i fiddled with the brightness and contrast a bit in photoshop and now it's a little easier to see

 

[granville]

So you can take a battery out of an official GBA cartridge and put it in the 3-in-1 and IT WORKS? Wow, that's nice!

 

[redact]

So you can take a battery out of an official GBA cartridge and put it in the 3-in-1 and IT WORKS? Wow, that's nice!

just as long as it's 3volts, oh and btw, the reason i wanted to fix the battery was so i could replay gs1&2

golden sun ftw

 

[Searinox]

You don't need to break an original. You can buy any 3V at a store. You can even insert a completly different type of battery inside if it fits. Mine hadn't run out but just to make sure I replaced it with a CR1620 which is double in capacity so should last twice as long as the one it came with. The only tricky part really is getting something thin under the solder points and weakening them without pulling hard enough to break the connector.

Scotch tape then works to hold the battery in place where the soldering once was. GBA carts and EZflashes are very battery-exchange friendly and will take up a lot of modding without complaining. Along with the battery swap I did a ton of other stuff, full story here. http://gbatemp.net/index.php?s=&showto...t&p=1001611

Cheers mate. I'm playing GS2 on mine right now.

EDIT: Btw... I notice your cart swole up only now. You should really try a smaller battery or making more space inside the cart. Apart from difficulty getting it into a phat DS or GBA(have you even tried?) that thing's gonna be unstable. By that I mean that pressing down on the GBA console or inside a DSL where the outside is exposed is very likely to cause the game to freeze. I speak from personal experience because my cart was swollen just like yours after a battery mod. And you will learn that unlike on original carts, freezing during operation very often corrupts SRAM. I suggest you flip the connectors the other way and migrate the battery into the space where the rumble motor usually stays, there's no PCB there hence plenty of space.

 

[Vague Rant]

On the subject of 3-in-1 hacking, does anyone know if it's possible to replace the 3-in-1's SRAM with FeRAM? Apparently it behaves exactly the same as SRAM, but doesn't require battery backup. This would essentially create an immortal 3-in-1, which I must say would be pretty awesome.

 

[Briankealing]

oh wow. that looks like it's gonna explode

 

[how_do_i_do_that]

you can't replace the SRAM with FeRAM without changing the controller chip. Or writiing new code to access the FeRAM.

radioshack online sells replacement batters with tabs if your in the states. you can also find them in some hobby stores that sell electronics if your not in the states.