The Dead Battery Society
The Dead Battery Society isn't really a society at all. It's just a web page.
Membership dues are not required. ;-)

You may have heard the term "suicide battery" used before and wondered what the heck it meant. Several arcade game manufacturers decided it would be a good idea to put a battery on their game boards that, when they die (and they will die), disable the game. Why they did this isn't exactly clear. Is it a way to artificially limit the lifespan of their games? Is it an anti-piracy measure? Do they want to assure that they will continue making money from the games by forcing you to send your boards to them for repair after a certain amount of time? Whatever their reasons, it sucks in a big way.

Usually the way suicide batteries work is, the batteries supply power to a bit of RAM that holds a decryption table. This table is the key to decrypting the encrypted program stored in the board's ROMs. When the battery dies, this table goes away and the program code can no longer be decrypted. The CPU no longer has valid code to execute. The board stops working.

There are several manufacturers that used these suicide batteries. Capcom and Sega are the two major ones. Capcom started using them right around 1989 with their pre-CPS games and have been using them on game after game, right on up to present day. Sega began using them around 1987 with their System 16 games.

Capcom
There are several variations on Capcom's suicide battery.

Pre-CPS games
The damage to their pre-CPS games can be completely reversed even if the battery has died, since the encryption on the code ROMs has been broken. They can be repaired by burning new program ROMs and doing a bit of hackery with a soldering iron. The games that can be completely revived are:

Mahjong Gakuen 2 Gakuen-chou no Fukushuu
Poker Ladies
Dokaben
Dokaben 2
Pang / Buster Bros / Pomping World
Capcom Baseball
Capcom World
Adventure Quiz 2 Hatena ? no Dai-Bouken
Super Pang
Super Buster Bros
Super Marukin-Ban
Quiz Tonosama no Yabou
Ashita Tenki ni Naare
Quiz Sangokushi
Block Block

They all use a single battery and a custom Z80 marked "Kabuki". (BTW, I understand that in Japan, a Kabuki is a type of theatre where men play the role of women.) The Kabuki has the RAM with the decryption table built right into it.

Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to revive the pre-CPS boards.

CPS-1 games
In 1991, Capcom started using an all-together different application of the suicide battery on their CPS-1 hardware games. This battery, located on the "C" board (a daughterboard on the "B" board), instead of powering a bit of RAM with a decryption table, powers a custom chip marked "C.P.S.-B-XX", that displays the graphics for the game. When this battery dies, the graphics will no longer display properly. Most of these games can also be completely revived even if the battery is dead.

Here are the games that I know of that have this type of battery:

Three Wonders
King of Dragons
Knights of the Round
Captain Commando
Quiz and Dragons
Capcom World 2
Varth (Japanese version only - US and ETC have no battery)
Warriors of Fate*
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs*
Punisher*
Saturday Night Slam Masters*
Muscle Bomber*
Muscle Bomber Duo*

*Enhanced with Q-Sound

If the battery on the "C" board dies on any of these games, the game can be revived by modifying the c-board to be reset it to it's default, battery-less settings and patching the game's program ROMs to use these default values.

NOTE: The files provided on this site are intended for use in repairing broken circuit boards. They are not games and are not useable with game emulators, so don't bother downloading them if that's what you're hoping for. All the games mentioned on this page are copyrighted works and property of thier respective companies. This information here is being provided free of charge and is intended for people who rightfully own these games and want to repair them or prevent them from failing.

Disclaimer: I take no responsibility if you hurt yourself or your hardware by performing this procedure. Don't do it if you don't know what you're doing.

To fix your game, download one of the patched sets below and take a look at the file names. Find the EPROMs on your board that correspond to the file names and burn the new data onto an EPROM that is the same size as the original. Remove the original EPROM(s) and put the freshly programmed EPROM in thier place. Now you'll need to make some modifications to your c-board. First remove the battery. Next, locate pins 45 and 46 on the CPS-B-21 chip. You'll notice there are tiny traces connecting these two pins to ground. Carefully cut these traces with an exact-o knife or whatever works. Don't cut the nearby traces. After cutting, it would be a good idea to measure resistance from ground to these pins with a volt meter's ohms setting. If there's still a connection, you'll get a reading of near zero ohms resistance to ground. However, once severed, the pins still won't read open because of the CPS-B chip's internal connections. You should read a few mega-ohms of resistance to ground. If you are working on 3 Wonders, or a similar c-board, you may think there are no traces connected to pins 45 and 46 to cut. They are still there, they are just connected to the pins from under the chip where you can't see them. You will have to snip the bottoms off those pins, leaving enough to solder to. Do not connect +5v to these pins until you are sure they're no longer connected to ground or you will be making a very short path from +5v to ground and smoke and fire will be sure to follow if you apply power. Once these pins are cut, add a blob of solder to the two pins and run a wire to a nearby source of +5v to pull them high. Here's a picture. If your game works but the graphics drop out and disappear at certain points, you might want to test pin 40 to make sure it's also being pulled high. This is the pin that formerly was supplied power by the suicide battery. It should normally be pulled high when the game is on, but you may have a bad diode or something causing it to not get pulled high.

 

Game	Status	Notes
Warriors of Fate (US 921031)	Tested, working.
Tenchi Wo Kurau II (Japanese Warriors of Fate) (JP 921031)	Tested, working.	Thanks to James Greenhalgh
Captain Commando (US 910928)	Tested, working.
King of Dragons (ETC 910711)	Tested working.	You can use this file and burn one 27c4096 in socket 34 and eliminate the four 27c010's in 30, 31, 37 and 38, if you like. This will turn your game into the World version.
King of Dragons (US 910910) - (16bit, 40 pin EPROM)	Tested, working.	You can use this file and burn one 27c4096 in socket 34 and eliminate the four 27c010's in 30, 31, 37 and 38, if you like. If you're repairing a Japanese version, you'll need to replace the ROM at location 33 with the US data. You can do this either by removing ROM 33 and burning four 1 megabit EPROMs with the US files and putting them in sockets 28, 29, 35 and 36, or by properly merging that data into one file and burning a new 4 megabit EPROM for socket 33.
Saturday Night Slam Masters (US 930713)	Tested, working.
Three Wonders (US 910520)	Tested, working.
Knights of the Round (US 911127)	Tested, working.
Punisher (US 930422) (with 8bit, 32 pin EPROMs)	Tested, working.	If your board has any 32 pin EPROMs in sockets 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, and 31, use this set.
Punisher (US 930422) (with 16bit, 40 pin EPROMs)	Tested, working.	If your board has 40 pin EPROMs in sockets 21, 22 and 23, use this set. 21 may be identical to your existing set.
Cadillacs & Dinosaurs (ETC 930201)	Tested, working.	This is the "World" ROM set. This will also work on the US version, but will turn it into the World version.

Thanks to Dr. Nicola Salmoria for explaining so logically what would need to be done to create these fixes.

If your game still doesn't work, and it is one of the Q-Sound games, you may need to do the fix for the second battery (see below). If it is not a Q-Sound game, double check your work. Make sure the new EPROMs you used are good. Make sure you didn't plug them in backwards or bend any pins. Your c-board might be bad. You can test it on a Street Fighter 2 CE or Turbo, UN Squadron/Area 88 or a Strider (c-boards from these games are interchangable, mostly (UN Squadron/Area 88 and Strider won't have the connector for the kick buttons on SF2 but work otherwise)). Reseat all connections. If everything checks out, then something other than a dead battery is wrong and you're on your own.

CPS-1 games with Q-Sound
In 1992, Capcom released an enhanced version of the CPS-1 hardware that featured Q-Sound. With these boards they actually used two suicide batteries. In addition to the one on the C-board like regular CPS-1 games, there's also one on the Q-Sound board. (They really, really wanted to make sure these stop working.) =P

The battery on the Q-Sound board powers our old friend, the Kabuki, and can be repaired in nearly the same way as the pre-CPS games.

Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to repair a dead battery on the Q-Sound board.

If you do not have the tools to perform the fixes, you can still replace the batteries for longer board life. (Make sure you maintain power to the battery contact points at all times when replacing the battery)
***WARNING*** These batteries may contain lithium, which is an extremely volitile substance. If you puncture the battery, it will spray nasty liquid on you, your board and the surrounding area. In a matter of seconds, it will start eating whatever it landed on. Skin, PCB, clothes, eyes, whatever! That said, just be careful not to cut the battery off the board too close to the battery and you'll be fine.

Click here for a list of all CPS-1 games. (Please email me with any CPS-B chip and PAL numbers I'm missing.)

CPS-2 games
In 1993 Capcom came out with their CPS-2 hardware which incorporated another suicide battery. It uses a custom 68000 with some RAM with another decryption table used to decrypt the main program ROMs. If your battery dies, you'll be greeted with a solid green or blue screen and that's it. Some folks have had success decrypting the program ROMs to make them playable in emulators, but this has not yet translated into a fix for the real hardware. The CPS-2 games are a bit more complex than CPS-1 games. Replacing the custom CPU may not be possible, since the CPU is surface-mounted, soldered directly to the PCB. My guess is that a PROM containing the decryption key will have to be added to the board and used in place of the battery-backed RAM. It'll probably be a ways off before we see a viable fix.

Your only recourse at this time is to change the battery before it dies.

Click here for CPS2Shock's page with instructions on how to change the CPS-2 battery.
***WARNING*** These batteries may contain lithium, which is an extremely volitile substance. If you puncture the battery, it will spray nasty liquid on you, your board and the surrounding area. In a matter of seconds, it will start eating whatever it landed on. Skin, PCB, clothes, eyes, whatever! That said, just be careful not to cut the battery off the board too close to the battery and you'll be fine.

CPS-3 games
In 1996 Capcom released their CPS-3 hardware. The arcade game industry was starting to slump by then and, up to now, there have only been three or four games released on the system. The system contains a suicide battery in the security cart. I don't know of anyone who's come up with a way to revive them after they're dead, but John from John's Jukes in Vancouver, BC kindly sent some details about how to replace the battery before it dies for longer life (he also offers the service for a small fee to anyone who wants an expert to do theirs).

It is a 3VDC Lithium cell. John reports that this battery must be changed with the power on using an isolated soldering iron (perhaps a battery or propane soldering tool). Picture 1. Picture 2. (large pictures)

Sega
Sega also made use of suicide batteries on a great deal of their games starting around 1987. They, too, use their battery to back up a bit of RAM that holds a table for decrypting the program ROMs. They implemented them a little bit differently, however. They encased both the battery and the CPU in a little black epoxy block that plugs right into the CPU socket. They had two versions: a Z80 block and a 68000 block. The Z80 CPU is usually the sound CPU, so when it died, the game would still work, but you'd get no sound. The 68000 is usually the main CPU and when it's dead, the game doesn't work at all.

If you're curious to see what's inside one of these blocks, click here and here.

The good news is that it should be possible to revive about half of the Sega boards equiped with suicide batteries from the dead. For whatever reason, on a lot of their games, Sega released two versions of their games. One with the battery (encrypted program ROMs) and one without (unencryped program ROMs). For many of the rest, bootleggers succeeded in breaking the encryption.

The way to fix Sega boards is to replace the epoxy block with a regular CPU (a 68000 or a Z80B) and burn a new set of unencrypted program ROMs.

Unfortunately, some of the bootleg sets, like Moonwalker, won't work on an original board as-is, since the bootleg board was made from scratch, and doesn't match the original 100%. Someone with a better knowledge of 68000 assembly and the System 16/18 hardware might be able to make them work, but it's over my head.

You can also replace the battery in these. Just peel the top thin metal cover off the epoxy block to expose the battery. Be carefull that any extra adheasive doesn't stick to the battery and pull it loose. If you lose power, it's over. (Make sure you maintain power to the battery contact points at all times when replacing the battery) ***WARNING*** These batteries may contain lithium, which is an extremely volitile substance. If you puncture the battery, it will spray nasty liquid on you, your board and the surrounding area. In a matter of seconds, it will start eating whatever it landed on. Skin, PCB, clothes, eyes, whatever! That said, just be careful not to cut the battery off the board too close to the battery and you'll be fine.

Here's a list of the games I know of that have suicide batteries:

Bootleg = Bootleg ROMs available, but they may not work on an original board.
No = Not Available. If you have a game who's unencrypted ROMs are listed as No, and your game does not have a big black epoxy block in one of the CPU sockets. Please, please read your ROMs or send your board to someone who can read the ROMs.
Yes = Unencrypted ROMs available. This means the ROMs are available and work with emulators, but it is not known if they will work on an original board.
If it says Tested then either I or someone I know has sucessfully used the unencrypted ROMs to eliminate the suicide battery.

If you have a Sega game not on this list with a big black epoxy block, please email me.

In order to tell which ROMs you should use as replacements, you'll have to take a look at the sourcecode for the MAME System 16 driver (download the latest source from www.mame.net). It'll have ROM loading tables with a map of where in memory the ROMs get loaded. Look at the entry for the encrypted ROMs, note their location in the memory map, then look at the entry for the bootleg or unencrypted set and find the corresponding set. If you are having trouble identifying which ROMs on your board correspond to the files in MAME, there are several tools available for identifiing ROMs. Romident by Theirry Lescot will usually tell you, or you can enter the checksum that your EPROM reader gives you into Juergen Buchmueller's excellent MAME and ROM database (enter the number in the "Search ROM by chksum (16 bit)" field).

I hear there's a dude you can pay to fix your dead Sega boards now but I don't agree with extortion. I think the concept of self-destructing products is wrong. I think the concept of being forced to pay someone, whether it be Sega, Capcom or some guy in his garage, to fix them, is wrong. I don't believe in monopolies. I don't believe in hoarding information for profit. I don't believe in profiting from people's misfortunes. I believe the information and data you would need to fix your suicided game yourself should be free so you can fix your own stuff, and if you want to pay someone else to do it, you should be free to pick whoever you want to do the repair for you for a price that is set by supply and demand, not by having a monopoly on the market. If you don't care about any of that and just want your game fixed, I'm sure you can find who does it with a search engine.

Sega/Nihon System
There was another smaller company called Nihon System that developed a couple of games for Sega. Free Kick and Counter Run. Sega must have told them they needed to use a suicide battery on their games, bless them. They developed an earlier game on nearly the same hardware, Perfect Billiard, and it has some kind of Sega custom thingy on it, but it's not clear whether it's a suicide device. I also noticed from a picture on eBay that Gigas looks like the same boardset as Perfect Billiard. The picture was not clear enough to see if there was a custom CPU.
Free Kick and Counter Run have big black potted modules that contain the main CPU and the main program code within them. The program is probably held inside a RAM chip powered by the batteries and there's probably a 74245 on the data bus blocking access to the RAM from outside the module.
At least they made it easy to change the battery on these. The Counter Run I have actually has three batteries. One is mounted outside the module near the sound section. This is the backup battery. There are two additional batteries inside the module under the top cover. If the batteries inside the module still have power, it should be safe to change the one on the outside without worrying about keeping power to the module at all times.
I bought a bootleg version of Free Kick from an eBay'er in Canada. The bootleg didn't have the potted module and the code from inside was on a regular EPROM. I dumped that and so you can check it out in MAME. I still don't see an easy way to revive a dead one with this code, though, since there's no socket to put the main CPU or EPROM into. I suppose if you were handy with such things, you could dissolve the module with fuming nitric acid, leaving the bare circuit and then just replace the RAM with an EPROM containing the code from the bootleg. I'd rather not get into that myself however. If you do it, take pics! ;-)

Orca
Orca was a smaller company that also used a suicide battery on their games inside a potted module, similar to Sega's method. Almost all of these can be fixed by burning a new ROM that contains the data formerly held in the battery-backed RAM and replacing the potted module with a Z80A. Click on the game name to download the new ROM (if available).

Marine Boy
Changes
Looper (same as Changes)
Springer
Bounty

I'm still researching the following to see if they have batteries, and if so if replacement ROMs are available.

Wanted

UPL
UPL was another small company that used a suicide battery here and there... The only one I've verified is
Ninja Kid II (Rad Action)
They used one on the sound CPU. You can repair yours with the info found here.

Galeco
Galeco, an arcade manufacturer in Spain, most famous in the US for World Rally and Great 1000 Miles Rally 1 & 2, made heavy use of suicide batteries. Their batteries are particularly nasty. They used a Dallas Semiconductor DS5002 microcontroller to protect their boards, which has up to 128k of battery-backed RAM containing a program for the 5002 to execute. This program actually patches bits of the main CPU's code. If the battery dies, the 5002 no longer makes the correct patches and the game won't run. Typical symptoms of a dead battery are a "coprocessor not responding" message and/or a loss of sync. The game will still show their demos, but eventually lock up. They will not be playable. The games known to have suicide batteries are:

World Rally
Alligator Hunt
World Rally 2
Touch & Go
Maniac Square
Thunder Hoop 2
Strikes Back
Glass

And the following may have batteries, but have not been verified:

Target Hits
Salter

There is currently no fix for these games other than to send them back to Spain to be fixed. You might have success replacing the batteries before they die. (Make sure you maintain power to the battery contact points at all times when replacing the battery). *update* Lutz Blasinski from .de wrote to say he successfully revived an Alligator Hunt by replacing the 2 Eproms :44n and 45n from his PCB with the MAME unprotected Roms: ahntu44n.040 and ahntu45n.040. w00t™

Seibu
Seibu also released a game that makes use of the dread battery... Zero Team. When the battery dies, the graphics leave with it. I've been told the game can survive for a short time while you change the battery, like CPS-2 games. If you would like to eliminate the battery, carefully remove the battery and replace the program ROMs with these four:

ztx.zip

You probably noticed the strange arrangement of roms! They are:

ZTEAM1              ZTEAM3
ZTEAM4              ZTEAM2
 
Some PCBs use an extra PLD (PAL or GAL) mounted on a PLD which can be removed for the battery-less program.

Thanks Afzal!

Taiyo
Taiyo developed a game called Shanghi Kid on Data East hardware, released by Memetron, that uses suicide batteries. This one has a big black epoxy block called the "BBX" which is plugged into a Z80 socket in the middle of the board. Inside the box is a Z80, an 8K RAM chip and a tri-state buffer. The buffer seperates the RAM from the external bus, so that only the Z80 inside the module can access it. The RAM holds the first 8K of code for the Z80, which controls music and some graphics functions. It has two batteries on the outside which keep the RAM powered. If both these batteries die, the game will boot, but report "BBX NG" and reset, forever. If this happens, the game can be revived by burning a new EPROM containing the code from inside the RAM. Download it here:

Shanghai Kid

Burn the code onto a 27128 EPROM and replace the 2764 at location IC31 (ROM labeled CR04). Then remove the BBX module and replace it with a Z80A or Z80C. Your game should now report "BBX OK" and work normally.

Non-Suicide batteries.
There are another whole group of games that have batteries, but weren't designed to intentionally kill your board if they lose power. Instead, these batteries start to leak when they get old, pouring their acidic guts all over the game's electronic circuitry and eating it away to a light green powder or sludge.

The worst offenders are the early Taito 6809 games (Zookeeper, Qix, etc)., Omega Race, and the power supplies on MCR games.

Click here for Lawnmowerman's excellent and detailed list of what games have batteries and what to do about them.

You can email me at: tim@arcadecollecting.com.

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