Taito X2 CMOS battery replacement?

[jimmerd]

Hi,

Is there a known safe procedure for replacement of the battery on the Taito X2?

I understand that some Taito X2 motherboards keep security keys in the CMOS/BIOS.

I have a Darius Burst system and would like to keep it running the original drive/dongle if possible.

My fear is that the battery will run out of juice at some point as it's 10 years old.

I assume I can't just power up the system, unsolder the battery and add a new one and instead it may be more wise to to supply the correct voltages to the battery terminals
whilst the battery is swapped out.

Has anybody attempted this procedure?

Thanks!

 

[nem]

The battery should be in a holder.

I'm pretty sure Dariusburst doesn't have any keys on the motherboard.

Anyway, I think motherboards usually have a cap in parallel with the battery, so if you have it running for a while before (to charge the cap), then shut it down and change the battery, you should be good.

 

[Bruno]

Did you changed the battery by now? If so what was the result? Did you got some BIOS/CMOS messages during the first boot after replacing the battery?

 

[jimmerd]

I have not change my battery yet, I have a NOS Darius unit and the voltages remain okay.

If the battery dies or the CMOS is altered on it will give Error 901 and will not boot with an original drive and dongle, however a AGS restore kit can be used.

 

[Bruno]

I'm using an AGS setup (HDD+dongle), so I presume I should not to worry ...but I'm still wondering what will happens when battery will die. The best scenario would be no BIOS error message (or just displaying the calendar date error) and boot whatever this issue... or at worst the BIOS error message on screen, and then asking to press F2 to continue the boot, with no other impact?

 

[jimmerd]

I believe you would just need to press key to get past the date error each time , the system will set some default date and the game will work as normal with the AGS setup you have.

I've only had the BIOS fail on another X2 game cyber diver, it popped up the date error once and then did not occur again, The system would boot into windows fine, the game itself would not boot after that using the original drive.

 

[kazuo]

If the board has a battery holder, you could conceivably swap it while it is powered on, right? Just don't use metal tools to pry the battery out. But as nem pointed out, it sounds like there's a cap in circuit, so you should be okay if you quickly swap it out after powering down.