Reminder: Check your battery!! Your Amiga may be dying!!!

[redrumloa]

This should probably be the headlines of every Amiga site every day! Every single Amiga that I cross paths with, which is quite alot in recent times, has a fuzzy battery! Almost daily I see posts/emails from people who have damaged or destroyed motherboards.

[color=CC0000]Leaky batteries are the #1 killer of Amiga computers![/color] If you havn't checked your battery, chances are your Amiga will simply DIE very soon :-(

[Framiga]

@ redrumloa

FYI 90% of electronics items, die or need repairs, due faulty or cheap capacitors.

Battery, in some Amiga model, was fault on arrival.

Good new auction :-D

[redrumloa]

Good new auction

Naah not really, I'm just about sold out :-D

Faulty capacitors? Possible in general electronics, but with Amigas I have seen so many leaky batteries it isn't funny

[Lo]

This condition is exacerbated if you don't power on your miggy very often to cycle the batteries strength.  :-(

[KennyR]

Lo wrote:
This condition is exacerbated if you don't power on your miggy very often to cycle the batteries strength.

I hear this a lot - that keeping your machine on recharges the battery. It doesn't; the electrochemical reaction is irreversible. All that keeping the computer on does is keeps a potential across the battery and stops the electrolyte eating the casing and getting out all over your motherboard.

[Silvanus]

How easy is this to check? are there any on-line Pics showing? If the battery is bad, what is the replacement?

Figure i would ask, i have a Amiga 1200 i havent fired up in like 3 years. But i will check it.

Silvanus

[alx]

Welcome to A.org :-D

I believe that this problem only affects the big-box Amigas - though it would be good if someone could confirm this :-)

[amigamad]

Very important more and more amigas are dying now due to this .Dont forget its not just the a4000 which most people seemed to have battery problems with ,but amiga,s such as the a500+ a1500+ a3000? and also some ram expansions have these batterys the + versions of amiga,s have a battery for the onboard clock they have .For more info and some pictures try this site .leaky clock batteries :-)

[that_punk_guy]

EVERY computer with a battery is at risk of damage once the battery dies and leaks. The actual model of the computer is not that important except that the placement of the battery in some models may be more prone to seriously damaging critical components, yes I am trying to scare you!
 ;-)

[DoomMaster]

Hi fellow Amiga fans,

You do not have to buy a new battery from redrumloa, just do the following mod:

First, carefully de-solder the original battery from the mother board.  Then solder a red wire and a black wire to the motherboard, where the battery use to be. Drill a hole in one of the rear slot covers for a mono sub-mini jack. Then mount the jack onto that cover. Next solder the other ends of the red and black wires to the jack. Get a 2-AA battery holder and solder on a mono sub-mini plug to the wires coming out of the battery holder. Install rechargeable batteries and plug it in. The batteries should last about one year. The battery holder sits behide your Amiga 2000, so it is not seen. This is how I have mine set up. It works great and you do not have to worry about battery-acid leakage because the 2 AA batteries sit outside your Amiga. I got the idea from my Atari Mega ST4 computer. It takes 2 AA batteries for it's clock.  IMPORTANT: When you solder the red wire to the positive pad on the motherboard, make sure that the temperature of your iron is NOT hotter then 650F and that you do NOT leave the iron on that solder-pad for more then 4 seconds. The positive solder-pad for the battery is very small and is easily burned off if you are not careful. When you solder the black wire to the ground-plain on the motherboard, you may have to increase the temperature of the iron to 800F to 1000F in order to get the solder to flow properly. Do not leave the iron on the ground-plain for more then 10 seconds. If you do, the ground plain may bubble or discolor.  This is a very simple mod and it works great.  You never again have to worry about battery acid corroding your motherboard.  Enjoy!     :-D

[Lando]

I killed an A4000 by removing a battery.  It was working fine, then I read a story "Leaky battery can kill your Amiga" so I thought I would remove it as a precaution.  After I desoldered it, it wouldn't power up any more so I had killed the A4000 for no reason and had to buy a new one.

I would say don't bother removing the battery unless it has actually started to leak - if it looks ok then just leave it instead of doing something that could potentialy kill your Amiga for no good reason.

[amigamad]

@DoomMaster

The idea is good but without a diode fitted to positive lead the amiga will be trying to charge batterys that might not be rechargable .

besides i thought you would have militry grade batterys in your amiga. :-D  :-D  :-)

[Piru]

Figure i would ask, i have a Amiga 1200 i havent fired up in like 3 years. But i will check it.

Like alx said, A1200 doesn't have battery on board. A500, A600, CD32 and CDTV don't have it either. A500+ (with Rev 8A motherboard) has a battery (and probably the RTC also) on board.

With A1200 the accelerator typically provide the real time clock (RTC). At least phase5/dce accelerators use battery that doesn't leak.

[redrumloa]

Get a 2-AA battery holder and solder on a mono sub-mini plug to the wires coming out of the battery holder.

Hmm the last time I checked 2 AAs in series would be 3V not 3.6V.  I guess with tolerances it would probably work, but you'd better install a diode inline:-)

[aardvark]

A triple AA holder would work, if you then used NiCd or preferably NiMH rechargables.  Anyone know if lithium batteries are rechargable and if they are 1.2 or 1.5V per cell? :-?