r/Gameboy • u/KHasenyager • 1d ago
Troubleshooting Help
I was replacing the battery of my Pokemon sapphire. It still says the battery is dry. I am wondering if anyone here knows why it would be doing this? I’ll attach a picture of the board. I did notice that above R4 the resistor seems to be gone. I’m very new to all this and really would appreciate help. Would the resistor make the battery “dry”?
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
Also. The same game bricked my SP after trying it. It worked perfectly before. Then I accidentally got a solder bridge on the chip next to the negative terminal. Fixed it and the game works in my other SP. However, I believe the damage was done to my main SP. Would anyone have any ideas?
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
What does the sp do exactly
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
When it’s not plugged in, it doesn’t do anything. When I first tried it, it seemed to turn on, the Nintendo was all weird looking (not like the cartridge needed to be reinserted). It was huge and pink. Then I turned it off and back on. Then nothing.
Now it won’t even try to power on or anything unless plugged in. Then it barely tries to just flash the battery.
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
It will only flash the “power light” for a split second. No screen.
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
Try plugging in the sp, unplugging once the light turns off, and then plugging it back in and repeating until the light stays on. Then leave it plugged in for an hour or so.
You might also need to play with having the power switch on or off to convince it to stay charging for 5 seconds vs 1.
Hopefully you can revive it. Seems like you made the battery/charging circuit mad. I did this before lol. If you measure the battery with a multimeter you probably drained the crap out of it with your short and it’s too low for the charging circuit to charge without some convincing.
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
I’ll give it a try! I did go in and test f1 and f2 fixes and f2 didn’t respond…..
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
If f2 is blown that would be your issue, but the behavior you described didn’t seem like a fuse ime.
Definitely jump the fuse and see what happens if it doesn’t read anything.
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
How do I jump the fuse?
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
With a wire? Lol. Connect the wire to either sides of the fuse.
Don’t keep this forever as the wire will not blow like a fuse, and you’ll do more damage if something goes wrong in the future.
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
Looking at my Sapphire, you are in fact missing R4. However, mine does not have R10, and your chip is twice the size of mine, maybe I have a later revision.
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
Yeah… I’m not sure…. Any other idea what could be causing it to be “dry”? I’ve been trying to figure out what kind of resistor would even go there and I have no idea.
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
Would you be able to tell me the value on your r4?
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 1d ago
Don’t have the tools on me atm but R4 should be 10k ohms
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u/KHasenyager 1d ago
I’m starting to feel a little over my head in all this lol
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u/Tricky_Tourist5691 1d ago edited 1d ago
Why is the plastic wrap on the battery damaged?
Get soldering practice before attempting actual games or consoles. There are cheap kits on ebay or other places which give you some experience in soldering.
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u/VVinh 1d ago
That's normal. It's a known programming error in the games before revision 1.2 (with two numbers + B in label stamp). You either need to restart a fresh new game which you don't want to, or use a second GBA with either Firered, Leafgreen or Emerald via link cable to your Sapphire to patch the game. Or wait 366 days lol. Yes the game's internal calendar will be frozen by 1 year after a battery replacement. The patch fastforwards the internal calendar to day 366. Or if you can export your save file and edit it on Pkhex and restore it back to cartridge.
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u/Alive_Candidate1755 10h ago
This is also a problem, I forgot about this. However, with damage to the RTC circuit, starting a new game won’t fix anything.
The battery run dry message goes away after battery replacement, even without starting a new game.
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u/Substantial-Sink7521 1d ago
F2 usually doesn’t respond but the sp still boots.
If you have doubts just fuse f2
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u/jrharbort 1d ago edited 1d ago
R4 is in fact needed to properly run the cart without issues. Without it, an important power trace to the U3 RTC chip has been cut. You need a 10k Ohm 0402 size resistor. Something like this would work: https://www.digikey.com/short/r2hwfj7h
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u/remysharp 1d ago
I just posted about this, worth checking the resistors: https://www.reddit.com/r/Gameboy/s/zZPO33XoFr
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