Dead Dreamcast clock battery No More!

 How many times have you powered up your good ol (10 years to be exact) Dreamcast to be met with this message:

Yup, Your clock battery is dead. and every time you power it on your going to be met with the same "re-enter time" message unless you do something about it. Well, Heres what you'll need:
CONTINUED AFTER JUMP





Philips (+) screwdriver
Soldering Iron
Solder wick
Solder
New Lithium ion Battery
Lithium ion Battery cradle (more on this later)

First, Lets get inside this sucker, Flip the dreamcast over and remove the Modem.

 

Then unscrew the 4 black screws located in each corner and open her up

 

On the front of the system behind where the controls pug in you'll see a small board with a Litium ion battery mounted on it.

unplug the ribbon cable from the board

Pull the control mount panel up and forward slightly

Pull the board upwards at an angle to remove it from the system.

Here is your control board with the clock battery on it.

Now here's where it gets fun and you get to do some soldering. The Dreamcast came with a surface mounted clock battery thats not replaceable like say, the lithium ion battery on a PC motherboard. we're going to fix this by installing a battery cradle so the battery can be replaced with greater ease in the future (i.e. no soldering).

But first, De-soldering! Use the soldering iron to heat up the solder connections between the board and the battery. Use your solder wick to pull the solder off the battery connections.

Heat the solder on the bottom with the wick in between to get it off the board.

Your going to need a lithium ion Battery Cradle. Notice how the three pins on the mount match the three pins coming out of the original Dreamcast battery

Left to right: Old Dreamcast battery, Battery mount/Cradle, New Battery

New Battery Mount/cradle

Take the Battery mount and stick the three pins into the holes where the old Dreamcast battery was and solder it in. They should plug in with no problem.

New mount on board

Solder into place

Place new battery in mount

Ta-Da!

 All you need to do from here is reverse the dis-assembly steps so they... assemble. yeah. Anyways PRESTO! Wait...

Oh yeah, You have to enter the Date and time... But this is the last time! Next time you turn it off the System will actually save the time. Now you can play Dreamcast and your system info won't be all over the place.

The Sega Dreamcast makes an excellent system for your porch

The best part about replacing the clock battery with a mount is that if you play your Dreamcast for another 10 years and the battery dies again all you need to do is unscrew those 4 screws and pop in another battery. That's it, you don't even need to remove the board again. Its like replacing the battery of a VMU. To be honest, the clock battery is going to wear out in about 4 or 5 years anyways. Also, I reccomend going to Radio Shack or a pharmacy and buying a name brand battery for $5 or so. When I first did this I bough a large pack of Lithium Ions at the 99 cent store so I could power up my VMUs as well. The Clock battery was dead again in a month. I went out and spent real money on an Energizer battery, popped that one in the system and its been fine for a while now.