Pokemon Ruby battery run dry in hours

[duduqaz]

Hi,
I have a problem with a copy of ruby than the battery just run dry in hours, even after i install a new battery it keeps saying the battery run dry instantly, when i try a battery working in another game it still says it run dry.
I did a basic reflow in the board just to make sure but no luck, it just solved a problem while the game has not booting, but about the battery it still remains same. I will attach some photos.
The videos shows two different batteries and how it measures in the pcb

 

[JuanMena]

I don't see any diode in there, so I'm assuming (assuming!) the voltage drop between Battery and Game is either handled by one of those resistors, the RTC chip or the SRAM chip.

Schematics could really help here.

Quick check, look for shorted resistors, if none are shorted, check ground pin in SRAM and RTC chip against "VDD" (pin 1) and look if you have a ridiculously low reading, if yes, the chip you're measuring might be faulty.

 

[RAHelllord]

You gotta reset the clock in-game to stop the error from showing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/dt47s4/guide_pokémon_gen_3_clock_restart_after_battery/

But also consider ensuring the solder connection is a little better flowed on the legs, in your photos the left one looks like it could have done with a little more heat for another second for a more reliable connection long-term.

 

[duduqaz]

You gotta reset the clock in-game to stop the error from showing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/dt47s4/guide_pokémon_gen_3_clock_restart_after_battery/

But also consider ensuring the solder connection is a little better flowed on the legs, in your photos the left one looks like it could have done with a little more heat for another second for a more reliable connection long-term.

Isnt the error suposed to stop right after a battery swap? Because I swapped about 15 batteries from pokemon cartridges or so and it aways goes right after swap a new one.
And it even goes when i swapped the first battery, but like i said some hours later it back.

Looks like is a hardware issue, i gonna try find shorts like @JuanMena told me

Post automatically merged: Jul 16, 2025

Oh, i cant send videos here right? I did two videos showing both batteries, one just goes up the number slowly and another just goes down slowly

 

[JuanMena]

Isnt the error suposed to stop right after a battery swap? Because I swapped about 15 batteries from pokemon cartridges or so and it aways goes right after swap a new one.
And it even goes when i swapped the first battery, but like i said some hours later it back.

Looks like is a hardware issue, i gonna try find shorts like @JuanMena told me

Post automatically merged: Jul 16, 2025

Oh, i cant send videos here right? I did two videos showing both batteries, one just goes up the number slowly and another just goes down slowly

You can upload videos less than 50MB in size via "Attach Files" button below, or click the "MEDIA" icon and paste a URL from an accepted site, then it'll embed the video.

 

[duduqaz]

There is

 

[JuanMena]

There is

You're measuring voltage in the Battery, which is 3v.
You say it's draining "fast" but to me this seems normal behaviour when measuring with multimeter.

 

[duduqaz]

You're measuring voltage in the Battery, which is 3v.
You say it's draining "fast" but to me this seems normal behaviour when measuring with multimeter.

Yeah, these videos i made before, i just find it strange the change in values so fast, when i measure another games it stays same value.
About the dry, i just assumed it since two *working* batteries (removed from other games) drained in about 4-5 hours, since when i installed both it showed no battery dry error, but hours later it appeared

I will do the videos about continuity later today

 

[Deleted member 702243]

there is no sram on these games so you can rule that out

anyway you have several known good boards, if you cant find schematics then you can probably compare both boards by trial and error to see if certain components measure differently, or if certain components don't make a connection to where they should on a known good board

you could check the battery voltage on a brand new battery at the point where the cartridge recognizes it and the time works properly, and then take a measurement right away once it claims the battery is dry. these can read between 3.2-3.3v when new (maybe more?) and don't actually go down to 0v. 3v should be functional though, so the only reason I can see why it wouldnt work is that something is causing the current to be lower than it should be given the battery voltage, and that causes the game to think that the battery is dry much earlier than on other boards

the device you're using it in can't get enough power anymore once the battery voltage drops low enough that the battery doesn't provide enough current to run what it needs anymore. if there is a bad resistor that 'resists' more than it should (or any other component introducing more resistance where there shouldn't be) then that could cause the current to become too low too quickly, and would explain why newer batteries are fine (higher voltages are able to power through the additional resistance to deliver just enough current), and then they read as dead pretty quickly because the current drops just below what the rtc needs to run, despite the voltage still being high enough that it should be good

measuring the battery itself is useful because it tells you that the batteries are not the problem, and it tells you that your board isn't actually killing batteries. but you're not going to be able to measure current going through components just by probing them with a multimeter. you're not going to get a proper reading with a multimeter in parallel. although I guess if the differences in readings between the bad board and a good board are significant then it could still be helpful in figuring out if certain components might not be receiving enough current

You gotta reset the clock in-game to stop the error from showing up: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/comments/dt47s4/guide_pokémon_gen_3_clock_restart_after_battery/

But also consider ensuring the solder connection is a little better flowed on the legs, in your photos the left one looks like it could have done with a little more heat for another second for a more reliable connection long-term.

it's 2 different things, battery has run dry means the battery physically doesn't have a high enough charge anymore (or otherwise doesn't read as such)
the other thing you are referring to doesn't make the dry battery message show up anymore and time will advance normally and be properly kept when the power is off, it's just that some time-based events don't work until the internal rtc catches up with the save file

 

[duduqaz]

there is no sram on these games so you can rule that out

anyway you have several known good boards, if you cant find schematics then you can probably compare both boards by trial and error to see if certain components measure differently, or if certain components don't make a connection to where they should on a known good board

you could check the battery voltage on a brand new battery at the point where the cartridge recognizes it and the time works properly, and then take a measurement right away once it claims the battery is dry. these can read between 3.2-3.3v when new (maybe more?) and don't actually go down to 0v. 3v should be functional though, so the only reason I can see why it wouldnt work is that something is causing the current to be lower than it should be given the battery voltage, and that causes the game to think that the battery is dry much earlier than on other boards

the device you're using it in can't get enough power anymore once the battery voltage drops low enough that the battery doesn't provide enough current to run what it needs anymore. if there is a bad resistor that 'resists' more than it should (or any other component introducing more resistance where there shouldn't be) then that could cause the current to become too low too quickly, and would explain why newer batteries are fine (higher voltages are able to power through the additional resistance to deliver just enough current), and then they read as dead pretty quickly because the current drops just below what the rtc needs to run, despite the voltage still being high enough that it should be good

measuring the battery itself is useful because it tells you that the batteries are not the problem, and it tells you that your board isn't actually killing batteries. but you're not going to be able to measure current going through components just by probing them with a multimeter. you're not going to get a proper reading with a multimeter in parallel. although I guess if the differences in readings between the bad board and a good board are significant then it could still be helpful in figuring out if certain components might not be receiving enough current


it's 2 different things, battery has run dry means the battery physically doesn't have a high enough charge anymore (or otherwise doesn't read as such)
the other thing you are referring to doesn't make the dry battery message show up anymore and time will advance normally and be properly kept when the power is off, it's just that some time-based events don't work until the internal rtc catches up with the save file

Dude u are so right in ur statements!!!!
All u said are right and fits perfectly the problem.
All 5 batteries i tried stopped working on ruby in about 2.950v and they still works in another games.
Newer batteries are a lucky shot, some works and some doesnt an dright away give “battery dry”.

I just think theres a short or a bad contact pin in black chips but i doesnt have knowledge sufficient to test and repair it, i think i gonna try what u said about compare two american rubys (i have another one) with multimeter and check for different values.

Thank you so much, already helped alot!

Post automatically merged: Jul 17, 2025

Btw there i find a scheme : https://github.com/HDR/NintendoPCBs/tree/master/AGB-E05-01

 

[Deleted member 702243]

I'm not an expert but a short being the problem isnt necessarily impossible either. I guess it depends on where the short is. it just needs to take enough current away from the rtc to make it so the battery doesn't give enough current anymore after 2.950v. but you would be lucky that it's somewhere where the components can handle the current without getting damaged, and without interfering with other functions. maybe if it's shorting to ground instead of sending current through components, but I imagine the console wouldnt be very happy with the extra current on ground. a short to ground is easy to test for and rule out though

if you're not able to find any differences in readings between boards then I guess it's still possible to take the chips off and put them on a known good board, if the problem happens on a good board with the 'bad' chips then it's likely the chip is the problem. although I'd be surprised if the rom chip would fail in a way where the rtc only works at high currents, but the rest of the game functions fine. I guess you could try to dump the rom and see if the chip reads fine, if the checksums don't match with known good roms then you know something somewhere is wrong and preventing the rom chip from working correctly, but it's not a guaranteed that the chip itself is the problem even then

the flash is probably fine because the game uses checksums to make sure the save data is good. if the flash chip was bad and bytes weren't being read or written correctly then I would think the game would notice that the checksum is bad and give an error about corrupted save file, if saving even worked in the first place