PCE Duo internal battery is dead

[greg]

I also strongly advise to buy an NEC Tennokoe Bank Rom-Ram Hu-Card "flash" memory cartridge to save your PC Engine game saves for posterity...it's been known that the PC Engine Duo & the Turbo Duo's internal game saving memory vanishes if not "recharged" (by simply powering "on" the Duo console for a few minutes every few months) as the internal capacitor will lose it's "charge" to save your PCE game save files...I had to learn the hard way as I saw all my PCE shmup high scores vanish & had to resort to buy a Tennokoe Bank cartridge and start over again from scratch.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

What do I do when this internal battery dies? I've lost my game saves for Valis 2 and Macross Love Song. Every time I try to access the game save, the screen goes blank and freezes. I ran the Duo for about an hour playing Hellfire S, but it still didn't recharge. The system still crashes. The battery must be dead. Is it replaceable? What kind of battery is it?

What sucks is that the exact same thing has happened to both of my Dreamcasts. I found out that it takes a Panasonic ML2020, and I'll have to replace those as well (or have my tech savvy friends do it for me).

Please, somebody reply soon. I leave for Japan in one week, and I'd like to know if I should just buy another Duo while I'm over there. (It would be my third Duo bought.... )

[PC Engine Fan X!]

I also strongly advise to buy an NEC Tennokoe Bank Rom-Ram Hu-Card "flash" memory cartridge to save your PC Engine game saves for posterity...it's been known that the PC Engine Duo & the Turbo Duo's internal game saving memory vanishes if not "recharged" (by simply powering "on" the Duo console for a few minutes every few months) as the internal capacitor will lose it's "charge" to save your PCE game save files...I had to learn the hard way as I saw all my PCE shmup high scores vanish & had to resort to buy a Tennokoe Bank cartridge and start over again from scratch.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

What do I do when this internal battery dies? I've lost my game saves for Valis 2 and Macross Love Song. Every time I try to access the game save, the screen goes blank and freezes. I ran the Duo for about an hour playing Hellfire S, but it still didn't recharge. The system still crashes. The battery must be dead. Is it replaceable? What kind of battery is it?

What sucks is that the exact same thing has happened to both of my Dreamcasts. I found out that it takes a Panasonic ML2020, and I'll have to replace those as well (or have my tech savvy friends do it for me).

Please, somebody reply soon. I leave for Japan in one week, and I'd like to know if I should just buy another Duo while I'm over there. (It would be my third Duo bought.... )

Hi there Greg,

Saw your post regarding your PCE Duo not saving PCE game saves. My suggestion is to reconfigure your PCE Duo Backup to it's original state...meaning start from scratch and re-format it so that it may properly save your PCE Duo game saves. Sorry about you losing your valuable PCE games saves of Valis 2 & Macross Love Songs. By getting an NEC Tennokoe Bank Ram-Rom Hu-Card is the "only" insurance of storing PCE game saves if you don't "recharge" your Duo regularly in order for it to save it's 2MB allocated space for game saves. The Tennokoe Bank has 8MB of storage space which is more than plently enough for most people's personal PCE game saves.

If it does make you feel better, why not go ahead & buy another PCE Duo console as it seems that your 2nd PCE Duo is on the "fritz" when it comes to game saving. Perhaps, a simple "reformatting" of your PCE Duo's back-up memory is all that's necessary to get it to properly save your PCE game saves. If that doesn't work, then it's time to get another PCE Duo console my friend. Be sure to test it out and make sure it's 100% working before spending hard-earned cash on one. ^_~

As the old saying goes when it comes to PCE Duos/Turbo Duos, you either got one that works or you got one that soon goes 'kaput'. Naturally, you'd want one that works 100%...but just like everyday electronics, they will eventually fail sometime down the "road of obsolence". Hence, MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure -- phrase in the manufacturing industry to denote failure of products after a certain time period of working properly) is applied to everyday products that have electronics in them.

Of course, it is common knowledge that a NEC PCE Duo's/Turbo Duo's CD-Rom drive will be the first to go 'kaput' but the Hu-Card cartridge slot will still work fine...that isn't acceptable if you want to play those CD-Rom2/Super CD-Rom2/Arcade CD-Rom2 games though.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[matt]

FYI, the Tennokoe bank also uses a battery, so it won't last forever either!

I don't remember what type of battery the Duo uses, but IIRC it's something standard. If you just pop the system open and take a look at it, you should be able to get a replacement.

[greg]

[Perhaps, a simple "reformatting" of your PCE Duo's back-up memory is all that's necessary to get it to properly save your PCE game saves.

I completely love you! You're the PC Engine TATSUJIN, not just a mere fan! I never tried the formatting option. If you hold down both the start and select buttons at the boot screen, there are three options: delete file, reformat, and exit. I've never done that before! So I booted up Macross Eternal Love Song, tried continue, and it displayed a list of empty game save slots instead of crashing on a blank screen. You made my day!

My first Duo got quirky after I moved back to America from Japan. For some reason, the SFX chip developed a glitch and would ignore certain sound effects, usually gunshots and explosions. After replacing it, I wasn't very excited about buying a third one. You just helped me save a lot of money.

BTW, does the Tennokoe have the ability for a direct save, or does it function solely as a backup?

Now if I can only get my DCs' internal batteries replaced and back to functional working order...

[GateofThunderforceIII]

This isn't related to the Duo's battery, but one of my Duo's takes a while to play the redbook audio when it is first played after a long while. It's like it needs to warm up or something. The sound effects work fine and the CD games load fine, but it won't play any tracks after maybe about a few minutes or more. What's up with that? Perhaps I should play test my new and unused Duo...

[Specineff]

The TenNoKoe is used as a backup. It doesn't support direct save.

@MATT: It uses batteries? I thought it was flash memory. Dang.

[DC906270]

is the tennokoe hucard all you need for making backups from your cdrom battery? as ive also seen a hardware tennokoe unit that plugs into the exp slot on your pce? i thought maybe you need both?

[Ganelon]

Nope, the PCE has a huge deficiency in not being able to make permanent backups. You can rely on the system's internal memory although it's not very large and can delete files after an indeterminate number of days/weeks/months after the system has been unplugged. The Tennokoe Bank provides 4 times the storage but runs on a battery that's already started dying by now on some of the cards. The Memory Base 128 saves directly but operates on alkaline batteries and only work on a few games. Too bad nobody's made a flash memory card for the system yet.

Anyway, Duos (the black ones, not the revised R & RX models) are inherently unreliable when played for long stretches of time or with poor ventilation due to the placement of the cooling fan and power source. IIRC, weird sound quality is the first indicator that the system is sick. D-Lite at Neo-Geo.com could explain this issue well.

And dude, to get to the save screen (at least for Duo R & RX), all you have to do is press Select at the startup screen...

[matt]

Anyway, Duos (the black ones, not the revised R & RX models) are inherently unreliable when played for long stretches of time or with poor ventilation due to the placement of the cooling fan and power source.

Duos don't have cooling fans and use external power supplies...

[Ceph]

To answer the initial question: The DUO/R/RX consoles don't have a button cell backup battery like Dreamcast or Saturn which could be replaced but some sort of internal rechargeable battery which recharges itself every time you use the system. I have no detailed information on what kind of storage battery it is (is it even a battery?) and how long it will continue to work. I have a number of PC Engines and so far they all are fine.

However, the Ten no Koe memory banks (just like Neo Geo memory cards) use non-rechargable batteries and will die sooner or later; considering how old they are probably sooner. Hopefully someone will build a flash version soon.

[Ganelon]

Duos don't have cooling fans and use external power supplies...

Yeah, I was confusing it with something else. I meant "poor ventilation due to the close placement of the heat sink and sound amplifier." That's what supposedly causes the sound to fizz out after some time.