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Raiden II Backup battery/ Hi-Score Save

twistedsymphony

twistedsymphony

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I recently picked up a Raiden II PCB, it has a location on the PCB for a backup battery, I've seen picture of other Raiden II PCBs equipped with this battery. Though on my board there's no indication that it ever had one; the solder points where one would be installed are perfectly clean.

41983236_302184783914969_1974839025997489769_n.jpg

High scores aren't saved. Does anyone know if this battery is responsible for saving high scores? If so does anyone know of a suitable replacement battery or if any other components are needed to make it work? Searching around I've found conflicting information as to whether adding a battery will allow high scores to be saved and no information on the actual battery specs.
 
Mine has a perfect working battery, removing the battery has no effect on the scores whatsoever. Scores are simply not saved.

I actually doubt that the battery has a real function in RaidenII, I just removed it to avoid potential issues, everything works as it should without the battery as well.

Battery is a Maxell ER6C 3.6V

It doesn't plug in with solder points, but with the standard ER6C battery connector.

qHFoHdd.jpg
 
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damn... Whats the purpose of the battery if it runs without it and it's not for the scores?

games that don't save high scores aggravate me. X(
 
As far as i know, a bit of code in a custom device is lost when the battery dies, and then the game never saves scores after that. Even if you add the battery back. Sorta like CPS2, but less dramatic, as the game still works.
 
Mmm I have read about that feature in some other forum, but until I see (at least) one Raiden II PCB able to save scores, Im going to consider this an urban legend (call me skeptical) :)
 
Asure said:
As far as i know, a bit of code in a custom device is lost when the battery dies, and then the game never saves scores after that
Click to expand...
any idea if that device is dumped or could be restored?
 
deibit said:
Nope, I meant that mine never saved scores.
Click to expand...
If what Asure said is true, it's possible that your battery died or was replaced at some point before you took posession of the PCB and thats why the scores didn't save.

How do they build those High Score save kits for games like Pac Man and Donkey Kong? maybe we can implement similar solutions on these newer PCBs that have no excuse for needing a battery, or simply don't save at all.
 
it's very possible that someone disconnected the battery before I got the PCB. I only know that the battery is of the original type and it was in good working order before I unplugged it.

The battery is connected to the PCB with a simple connector, it's very easy to unplug it. It's a little bit strange that there is some kind of self destructive mechanism built around something that can be easily unplugged (but I've seen worse)

I have never seen (or heard of) a RaidenII PCB able to save HiScores anyway (but it could be, of course)
 
deibit said:
Mmm I have read about that feature in some other forum, but until I see (at least) one Raiden II PCB able to save scores, Im going to consider this an urban legend (call me skeptical) :)
Click to expand...
I fully agree with you but remembered this nugget from back when we got perfect Raiden 2 emulation because of the Seibu COP work being nearly completely emulated. If i recall, the custom holding the key was also on Zero Team, and a hack set exists to reprogram the key if you have a replaced a dead with a good battery on board.

For Raiden 2 it seems to be lost forever. As batteries died, so did the code in the SEI 251 (sram?)
Problem is i never saw the actual code/key(?), so not sure if this is the stuff of urban legends. But still, many people recall the game saving scores.

https://github.com/mamedev/mame/blob/master/src/mame/drivers/raiden2.cpp contains no details on this rumour.

Perhaps @rtw might know more, his name is mentioned in connection to this in the great halls of shmups.org forums :)
 
my simplistic interpretation. is that Seibu shared the same pcb platform between different games. Some used the battery to save the keys (Zero Team for instance) and in some games the battery wasn't used for anything (Raiden II)

But of course I have no scientific evidence, that's why I'm agnostic and not atheist, in this case :)
 
Has anyone ever investigated how to restore the hi score saving function on Raiden II?
There is a Zero Team revival kit which restore the key on the SEI251 used to decrypt the encrypted program roms

Maybe something similar can be done for Raiden 2...
 
Should I replace this battery on my board or just remove it? I'm leaning towards replacing but not sure where to get a reputable battery.
 
If you remove it, the board won’t save high scores any longer. Putting a new battery won’t change that. Once the original battery is gone, you will no longer be able to save high scores.
 
kikaso said:
If you remove it, the board won’t save high scores any longer. Putting a new battery won’t change that. Once the original battery is gone, you will no longer be able to save high scores.
Click to expand...
Aaahhh I see. In that case the battery is either dead or been replaced then.

I guess I'll just remove it then.
 
I think the hi-score saving is an urban legend. If you look in the MAME drivers you can see that the same PCB was shared between:

Raiden 2
Raiden DX
Zero Team
X Se Dae Quiz

Zero Team had a slightly earlier version of the PCB where the battery stored decryption tables for the sei251. However this was a brittle design and forced SEIBU to release the key updater so people could replace the battery and use the "injector" patch to insert the new keys.
 
I sort of agree with this, but never looked at score saving code in the Raiden game roms, i don't even know if it's there or not, or indeed if it goes away from battery backed ram when the battery dies. It's like a bit of schrodinger code.

There's the conflict of batteries on Raiden boards, from a cost effective point of view they would not have been installed with no purpose.
Then there's the regions, stored in ROM instead of battery backed RAM.
And then there's boards with no trace of a battery even being there in the first place.
And none of the games on this hardware ever saved scores, right?
Plus, we've found older cps2 / cps1 / system16/18 boards with intact, lower-mAh batteries still keeping keys stored for ages.

After reviewing my post i must agree with the urban legend part, unless a score-saving board is ever found that proves otherwise.
 
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