DDP3 Black Label... Clarification

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:38 am

Thanks for the links oxtsu, especially the links to the battery data sheet.

It says 6 years at 20C degrees but this is with a continuous trickle charge.
So if the PCB is powered off 50% of that time the life expectancy would
be 12 years! Theoretically

I am starting to suspect that changing the battery is a red herring.

The problem is not that the battery is at the end of
life. The problem is that it loses it's charge! Instead of
using a Lithium battery like on CPS2, PGM used a trickle
charge NiMh battery. The only snag is that a NiMh battery
will lose it's charge over time.

Replacing the battery is not as simple as first thought, since
the new NiMh battery that you buy will not be charged fully! One
solution might be to do a swap while the PCB is powered but this
means we must know the circuit.

So my advise is to dig out your BL's and power them up once
in a while. A rough guess is that a 24h charge will last a year.

Here is some more charging info about the battery:

http://www.varta-microbattery.com/en/mb ... erf_en.pdf

rtw

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 8:44 am

once a year is not nearly enough, i played mine not even 2 months ago and it still died.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:36 am

sven666 wrote:once a year is not nearly enough, i played mine not even 2 months ago and it still died.

How long was it powered ? Trickle charging takes a long time.

Can you measure the battery voltage on your dead BL for me sven666 ?

rtw

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:45 am

rtw wrote:
sven666 wrote:once a year is not nearly enough, i played mine not even 2 months ago and it still died.
How long was it powered ? Trickle charging takes a long time.

Can you measure the battery voltage on your dead BL for me sven666 ?

rtw

it was powered on for about 5-10hours every other day for about a week..

i cant right now, i dont have a multimeter at home

but ill do it next week..

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 10:15 am

sven666 wrote:i cant right now, i dont have a multimeter at home
but ill do it next week..

What have I told you about always having a multimeter available sven666 ?

Is your battery of the same VARTA type as all the others ?

rtw

zlk · Post by **zlk** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:42 pm

I decided to test my black label pcb today. It is dead.

Anyone know who I should send it to so that it can get fixed?

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 12:59 pm

zlk wrote:I decided to test my black label pcb today. It is dead.

Anyone know who I should send it to so that it can get fixed?

i dont have the energy right now (holidays comin up and all), but if you can wait untill september im gonna do a deep investigation on the best and cheapest way to revive it

untill then i leave it up to someone else..

Koma · Post by **Koma** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 1:08 pm

Scaring all this ddp bl death.
Can be possible that all pgm pcb like espgaluda and ketsui die too?

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:20 pm

Koma wrote:Scaring all this ddp bl death.
Can be possible that all pgm pcb like espgaluda and ketsui die too?

My Ketsui and Espgaluda had a voltage of 0.9V when I measured
them yesterday. I think it's only BL which dies.

zlk, sorry to hear that your BL is dead

. Does it show the ROM
ERROR ?

rtw

Post by **Dave_K.** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:42 pm

Damn! Two more BL deaths in the shmups family! This version should have gotten the "Death Label" name, not the PS2 port.

zlk · Post by **zlk** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 2:44 pm

All I see when the game boots up is "rom error" in nice yellow text.

zak · Post by **zak** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 3:09 pm

zlk wrote:All I see when the game boots up is "rom error" in nice yellow text.

I haven't powered mine up in a while. I'm assuming it is also dead (will check this week).

Koma · Post by **Koma** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:05 pm

Thx rtw.

Very sorry for you guys :/

sven666 · Post by **sven666** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 6:58 pm

zlk wrote:All I see when the game boots up is "rom error" in nice yellow text.

same as mine, i still got the credit sound tho when mashing the credit button.

took it out and adjusted the roms and now i dont even get the sound anymore

just a friendly "rom error!" text

LARGE KRO · Post by **LARGE KRO** » Tue Jul 31, 2007 7:54 pm

DAMMN !!!

So here are three more DOJ BL that died, this is nothing but apocalyptic.
Sorry for you guys

I guess these boards more than any others were only destined to arcades to run every day all day.
I'll tell you as soon as I get news of mine after the repair ...

Besides, Oxtsu would you have by any chance a mail adress or something to get directly in relation with Cave in english ?

Trevor spencer · Post by **Trevor spencer** » Tue Aug 14, 2007 8:30 pm

man this totally sucks for you guys , this is what i hate about arcade gaming its a pain in the arse that you spend so much cash on what you enjoy only for it to die , ive got espgaluda,ketsui and DOJ but its good news that these dont seem to die (YET) give it time no doubt

Thank christ for raz's phoenix mod on my CPS2 stuff , i dont care if the phoenix fix devalues my pro gear a little as long as i can play it and store it when i want with no worries

my guwange board dosnt seem to work properly anymore also

parodius · Post by **parodius** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:08 am

I'll have to test by BL board... haven't used it in a few months (fingers crossed).

RyanDG · Post by **RyanDG** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:29 am

I mentioned in the other thread (the one about Ketsui's dump possibilities) that I had no idea that this was a big issue. I hadn't booted up my BL PCB since sometime earlier this year, and I was really hesitant about doing so, thinking that there was no way that my board wasn't going to give me the error issues.

Fortunately, it booted up as normal, and it is fine. Thanks to everyone for bringing this to my attention though, as now I'm going to sure to boot it up a little bit more regularly now.

This would've been catastrophic for me if it didn't start up...

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:51 am

By my count there are 10 DDPDOJ BL boards owned by members here (could be a few more, I'm just counting those in this thread and Zak's thread who have posted in regards to the ROM error). That's 10% of the supposed run of 100 PCBs. I highly doubt only 100 of these were made.

I'm beginning to think this "edition of 100" stuff is just a Cave marketing ploy. I'm sure that's the initial print run, but I'd wager they print extra runs of these games after the initial run (not in large quantities, but still, extra copies of the game). It's clear they made extra print runs of Ibara BLs, and it seems they made a decent amount of DDPDOJ BLs as well. There's one up on Yahoo.jp right now, and MAK japan recently had one as well. Legend and Excellent have recently offered me DDP DOJ BL boards as well, in the past few months. Not exactly hard to find. If there really were only 100 of these in the world, I'd think it would be much harder to track one down, and they would be far more expensive (Legend offered me one for $950).

RyanDG · Post by **RyanDG** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 2:06 am

TWE wrote:By my count there are 10 DDPDOJ BL boards owned by members here (could be a few more, I'm just counting those in this thread and Zak's thread who have posted in regards to the ROM error). That's 10% of the supposed run of 100 PCBs. I highly doubt only 100 of these were made.

I'm beginning to think this "edition of 100" stuff is just a Cave marketing ploy. I'm sure that's the initial print run, but I'd wager they print extra runs of these games after the initial run (not in large quantities, but still, extra copies of the game). It's clear they made extra print runs of Ibara BLs, and it seems they made a decent amount of DDPDOJ BLs as well. There's one up on Yahoo.jp right now, and MAK japan recently had one as well. Legend and Excellent have recently offered me DDP DOJ BL boards as well, in the past few months. Not exactly hard to find. If there really were only 100 of these in the world, I'd think it would be much harder to track one down, and they would be far more expensive (Legend offered me one for $950).

I've wondered that myself. I know when I first was looking for it, I couldn't find the stupid thing anywhere... Then out of nowhere, I swear they've been popping up left and right if you keep your eyes open.

To be fair though, mine was purchased third hand basically (original purchaser sold theirs on an auction site, I purchased it from the buyer of that auction). I basically lucked into it because the guy was going out of business and was dumping all of his arcade PCBs.

Unfortunately for me though, I paid quite a bit more than $950 for it. ;)

EOJ · Post by **EOJ** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 2:09 am

There are two possibilities: 1) Cave started printing some more of these to meet demand; 2) Some people in Hong Kong (or wherever) started bootlegging them after they figured out out how to convert the DDPDOJ rom into a BL rom (in other words, they converted DDPDOJ PCBs into DDPDOJ BL PCBs in order to triple or quadruple the profit). I think 1) is far more likely, though I wouldn't rule out 2) quite yet.

zakk · Post by **zakk** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 2:15 am

TWE wrote:There are two possibilities: 1) Cave started printing some more of these to meet demand; 2) Some people in Hong Kong (or wherever) started bootlegging them after they figured out out how to convert the DDPDOJ rom into a BL rom. I think 1) is far more likely, though I wouldn't rule out 2) quite yet.

We've speculated about #2 before. Unfortunately, if anyone does any hacking to 'revive' dead BLs it will lead to the ability to convert normal DOJ to BL.

At least we know everyone who got ROM ERROR has a legit BL board!

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 3:47 am

Many PCB shops fix PCBs. Anyone bother to ask these guys?

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 6:33 am

GaijinPunch wrote:Many PCB shops fix PCBs. Anyone bother to ask these guys?

I suspect that this is something that AMI does themselves. I am
guessing the operation goes like this:

. Solder a new battery
. Insert a special EPROM which populates the NVRAM
. Remove special EPROM
. Insert normal BL EPROM

That being said, I have now received my batteries from mouser.
However I am not sure what to do. I have measured the voltage on
them and it's 3.6V but I need to verify that they will hold the
voltage when they are subjected to a load.

Or I can do the operation while the PCB is powered.

rtw

CRI · Post by **CRI** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 10:21 am

TWE wrote:By my count there are 10 DDPDOJ BL boards owned by members here (could be a few more, I'm just counting those in this thread and Zak's thread who have posted in regards to the ROM error). That's 10% of the supposed run of 100 PCBs. I highly doubt only 100 of these were made.

don't know if you also count the board from Raidenfighter Kirkov.
he also have one and we tested the pcb a few day's ago.
fortunately it still work.

jpj · Post by **jpj** » Wed Aug 15, 2007 1:58 pm

its just pure speculation tho isnt it. equally likely is that the game is a bit old nowand theyre appearing more on the 2nd hand market. BL just got rarer now tho.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 8:04 pm

This is going to be a bit more challenging than a CPS2 swap.

I spoke to a battery expert at work...

He said that using a helper battery was something that he
would never use when replacing another battery. The reason
being that the old battery will receive a lot of current
from the fresh one due to the low internal resistance in the old
battery. I have fine read the Varta specs and they say that you
should never put two batteries in parallel.

So a helper battery is a no-no. Instead he advised me that I
should inject the battery voltage from a current limited power
supply. The only problem is finding a power supply which can
current limit down to 8mA! Which is the charging current for this
battery pack.

So it has to be live, I have a normal Dai-Ou-Jou which I am
going to do a test run on. I.e. leave the board on for a while
so that the battery gets charged. Then do the following:

. Change the setup to something which is NOT the default
. Unsolder the battery while the PCB is powered.
. Clean the terminals
. Solder in the same battery
. Power cycle board.
. Verify that the setup is still the same

If this works, the Black Label is next.

rtw

LARGE KRO · Post by **LARGE KRO** » Thu Aug 16, 2007 10:49 pm

He said that using a helper battery was something that he
would never use when replacing another battery. The reason
being that the old battery will receive a lot of current
from the fresh one due to the low internal resistance in the old
battery. I have fine read the Varta specs and they say that you
should never put two batteries in parallel

the fact that the original battery is chargeable makes things more complicat. Also maybe you could replace the old battery with a new non rechargeable one that has the same specifications instead of the varta, just to make things easier for the next swaps

those don't cause prolem whan they are in parallel when swapping on CPS3 carts.

I also changed the Varta battery on my PGM motherbaord with a lithium 3,6 volts Maxwell ER3 battery and it works fine, but maybe it feels risky to try it on your BL

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 2:08 am

I called Mak this morning. When I asked if there was a way to fix it, they said just "ship it back to the manufacturer" and they'll do it. He didn't know how much of a fee they would charge. I assume Fujita could organize something w/ foreign owners of the PCBs.

rtw · Post by **rtw** » Fri Aug 17, 2007 10:03 am

LARGE KRO wrote:the fact that the original battery is chargeable makes things more complicat

.

True, but the Varta battery comes charged up to around 70%. So if
you do the live swap and leave it powered things should be OK.

LARGE KRO wrote:Also maybe you could replace the old battery with a new non rechargeable one that has the same specifications instead of the varta, just to make things easier for the next swaps those don't cause prolem whan they are in parallel when swapping on CPS3 carts.

Actually they might cause problems. If the battery replaced is old it will
have a very low internal resistance. So the moment you connect the
helper battery it will start charging the old one. The CPS3 is sensitive
to voltage fluctuations and this might trigger the deletion of the NVRAM.

The CPS2 & CPS3 uses a non chargeable Lithium battery, however the
PGM uses a chargeable NiMh battery.

LARGE KRO wrote:I also changed the Varta battery on my PGM motherbaord with a lithium 3,6 volts Maxwell ER3 battery and it works fine, but maybe it feels risky to try it on your BL

I hope you disabled the charging circuitry

. If you used this battery:

http://www.maxell.co.jp/e/products/indu ... index.html

It is not chargeable and comes with the following warning:

Never charge. The battery is not designed to be charged by any
other electrical source.Charging could generate gas and internal
short-circuiting, leading to distortion, leakage, overheating, explosion, fire,
or generation of irritating/corrosive gases.

rtw