Sedro-woolley, WA
Quoted from DrStarkweather:I gotta be honest, as a pinball collector with limited electronics knowledge and bad soldering skills (no way Im risking my boards), this product area confuses the crap out of me. I understand what they do, but I feel like there is market confusion because of all the different options out there now.
Honestly, and no disrespect to you, this product is probably not for you unless you are willing to send your cpu board out to have it done.
I can see how there could be confusion as to which product to buy but in reality there is no difference between buying a NVRAM product and a water pump for your Ford truck. Look up the application list for the NVRAM product you are interested in and see if it supports the boards you want to use it for. If it supports classic Bally boards but you have a WPC, then that's probably not the right NVRAM product.
These are great in that they completely rid the nuisance of batteries from your machines. The bad part is that you have to cut the existing memory chip off the board, remove all the legs with your soldering iron, then de-solder the holes. Solder in a chip socket and install the NVRAM with adapter.
*Poof* no more batteries. EVER.
Edit: Just thought of something. I'm not sure if it already exists or not, but maybe some of the NVRAM gurus could write a Pinside how-to or something to list all of the NVRAM products available for a given board set. I bet that would really help the community figure out what to buy. If there are multiple vendors for the same item (IE: WPC) then list them all so everything has the same exposure and opportunity for sales.
