Thanks for your experience and feedback

im sure its been covered but how long can you go between power ups , and retain the data.

30+ years...

okay so its not like the memory caps that need power every so often?

Nope. Different memory tech altogether.

Nicely done, wish I could do board work like that.

Just ordered some

You think you could have left the batteries in and changed out the chips, powered the game on and then take out the batteries? It seems this would keep your settings and your scores. Or would this not work and it'll mess something up?

No... the ram chip that retains that memory is what you are changing out

I changed all my pins to NVRAM except for my TZ and it was the best thing I did. No worries with batteries for very little cost.

FYI: Be careful buying from that seller (hkutsource) on ebay. They have been selling counterfeit IC's for years.

Sounds like a good hack. How does NVRAM with no battery handle Time & Date?

Anything else lost when you get rid of batteries?

I read that the game's time moves in real time, but if you cut off power, it stops keeping track of time. If you shut the game off at say 12pm, power it back on in 6 hours, the game still thinks it's 12PM.

Nice Job! I just have my Jokerz and Gorgar left to do myself..

That's normal, pinball companies would have sourced 6264 compatible NVRAM from various manufacturers in bulk & likely when they resupplied they just went with whoever was cheapest. The markings on the chip sometimes don't have "6264" or "64" even in them as you may have noticed. It throws a lot of people off when they go looking for the existing RAM in the machine, but a quick Google search usually tells you that it's a 6264 (ie. 8k x 8bit, 8192 words, 64 Kbit). Find that and you're good to go.

These are for sale in the USA by barakandl on Pinside. They cost a little more, but they are tested and come from a far more reliable source. He gives quantity discounts.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-mc6821p-mc6802p-pcd5101p-tip102-genuine-parts-great-price

Review:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/installing-barakandls-nvram-battery-eliminator-vids-review

True. In today's climate though, if you don't receive what you should have from an eBay seller.. eBay will take care of the buyer. There's minimal risk IMO. Same goes for some of the HK/China marketplace websites. So if you don't mind waiting a few weeks for chips and they're going in your own games.. not much to lose. With these DIP parts.. anyone importing and reselling them is just doing what everyone else *could* do if they wanted. Import, test them in a tester and offer them for sale at a premium. Nothing against that if the person stands behind what they sell, but there's no *guarantee* the chips weren't remarked or used in harsh environments or in equipment that did an extreme number of writes to the chip.

I'm definitely in favoring of supporting innovators, but reselling imported pulls isn't innovation. Now that the "cat's out of the bag" on where to get imported chips for cheap.. and multiple posts of China sellers whose chips work, then it's just up to the buyer to decide if they want to take a gamble and possibly have to dispute something if they don't get what they expected (but again, minimal risk IMO) or support someone in the pinball community, etc. If you look hard enough you can import DIP RAMTRON parts for $3-4 or less. $6 is actually a bit on the expensive side.

One thing to consider is the remark factor and revision number of the FM1608. Checking the data sheets you will see as time goes by and revision numbers increased, the rated life of the chips increases by a factor 100 from 1999 to 2004. When buying chips from eBay, they often take tons of the same kind of chip and refurbish them. They straighten the legs, resolder the legs, and they also reprint the top of the chip. If they reprint the top of the FM1608 you don't know if you have FM1608 rated for 10 billion writes (1999) or a FM1608 rated for 1 trilling writes (REV M date codes start around 2004).

All my FM1608 have original imprints, revision M (1 trillion write endruance, 35 years between cycles) and are tested good.

Saddly I cannot compete with Shenzhen sellers. I have squeezed the price point about as low as I can. As long as the batteries are getting off the MPUs is the main thing. About a years ago plus your options for NVRAM was priced up to $40 each. Competition is good the end pinballer.

http://html.alldatasheet.com/html-pdf/80224/RAMTRON/FM1608/245/1/FM1608.html early date code data sheet showing the endurance is only 10billion.

Nice

I have lowered my prices since that post too, I need to go back and edit that. You can get a 10 pack of FM1608 for $70 shipped. Plus i have 5101 NVRAM adapters and 6116 NVRAM adapters at good prices too.

Repro boards are in the works. Aux lamp driver is out, Bally -51 sound board coming soon.

http://nvram.weebly.com

Have to view this though of what the market was like a few years ago. DIP parts *were* obsolete.. very few overseas sources. PCD5101P was also nowhere to be found cheap. Imported SMD nvram was 2-3x what it costs now. The market has just changed a lot in 2014-2015. Not only from who is selling what & competition, but just in how many overseas sellers are competing on the imported RAM/NVRAM. If there were places to import RAMTRON DIP parts for $2-3 each and reliably get what you paid for.. and memory testers to give you some indication what you had was good.. then none of the custom PCB adapters would have happened (at least for the 6264 nvram). Even the easier dispute/resolution from eBay or China/HK marketplace websites has made it less of a hassle to take a risk.

I'm saying all that because there was a reason this didn't happen earlier and nvram adapters were priced at $25-30 (or more in case of the premier version of AnyPin). There's a reason many pcb nvram adapters are STILL priced that way. The parts costs are more expensive if sourced from authorized distributors, many people don't want to chance importing unknown parts and using them in a product they're selling. Sources for imported parts were much shadier a few years ago, resolving disputes was much harder. The Neoloch memory tester didn't exist, so you were pretty much "blindly" saying that a used chip worked just because it booted in a board. It's interesting seeing all of those changes and what it's done to pricing. And nowadays more people are catching onto eBay sellers or overseas sellers that they can buy the chips from cheaper than $6-8 even.. causing more people to attempt importing them themselves, cut out the middle-man. Why not, can't blame them.. if the parts work, it achieved the same thing and saved them a few bucks.

I've posted this before.. quite a few times in various threads, and I haven't attempted to order myself because frankly I have more nvram than I know what to do with -- considering I'd invested heavily in the stuff in 2013-2014 & have built products with smd parts and DIP parts.

Anyway.. this seller doesn't have a ton of feedback, but they're 5x for $15.00:
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-Shipping-5pcs-lot-FM1608-120-PG-FM1608-120-DIP-new-original-electronics-IC-kit/32477487724.html

There's some other sellers on Aliexpress I've found over the last year even cheaper than that.. I think the lowest I've seen was around $2.50. Again, it's a bit of a gamble..but it's $15.00. I personally wouldn't try and import with the objective of re-selling the stuff.. you don't know what was remarked or pulled from harsh environments. But if it's for your own machines.. well, let's just say if it was me in today's environment and I wasn't already knee-deep in nvram I'd definitely take the small risk. If you're going to use them or sell them, it probably makes sense to buy the Neoloch memory tester to verify what you buy in bulk. If you're doing a lot with pinball machines the Neoloch tester pays for itself quickly in saving you time of finding faulty RAM... plus you support an innovator of some great testing products that have helped us all

Here's 10x for $23.75

http://www.aliexpress.com/item/10PCS-FM1608-120-PG-FM1608-120-P-DIP/32413906510.html

And.. that is now probably the cheapest I've seen DIP parts. Seller has a ton more feedback than the other link.

If someone orders from that seller, post how it works out. I'd do it myself but.. that whole knee deep in nvram thing.. lol.

That looks like a remark to me. The font and package is wrong. Still probably works, but see my post above about revision number and write endurance. You want 1 trillion write endurance, not 10 billion.

I've seen a ton of different fonts on these things. The genuine FM1608B-PG parts I have look nothing like the FM1608 chips. And even on the same part number, I'd seen some different fonts.

How's the package wrong though?

The guinea pig has been chosen!

Good to see the prices have come way down.

The obsolete DIP parts were always kind of "out there" to be imported for $4-6 even a few years ago. Just much shadier looking environments. Aliexpress / Alibaba = shady looking back in 2011/2012. I did some research on Aliexpress back then.. saw they were a wholesale marketplace for Chinese sellers.. and found people were importing all kinds of knock-offs of clothing, watches, etc. Some people importing and having good luck with quality, some not. Shady. Not a lot of info on those marketplaces, no idea how good their security measures were with credit cards, etc. They had Paypal hooked into their system for a while and something fell through there.. I'd imagine enough disputes that Paypal was losing money or didn't want to support it back then.

And to be sure, you increase your chance of getting something that's a counterfeit or clone. Most likely any name-brand products (purses, shoes, expensive watches, Oakleys, etc) are clones. Probably enough of the expensive / obsolete ICs too.. but they're also doing a lot of recycling over there so it's anyone's guess what percentage is counterfeit versus remarked versus genuine. You and I don't know what's inside that "black box" -- if it functions correctly, hey if that works for you then you saved some $$$. But they could be factory rejects, clones, remarked scrap or a different chip entirely. The odds of getting something totally not working are slim because the dispute process on those websites is somewhat like eBay where it's in the buyer's favor. But that doesn't prevent the sellers from selling something that "looks and smells" like the real thing, even though it might not match specs, be a reject, etc.

The font used on that package "1" character should not have the horizontal bar across the bottom is what makes me think it is a remark. None of mine do in that package across similar dates.

I thought it was missing a circle shaped divot on the top, but that package does not have them.

Has anyone counted how many write cycles our pinball machines are doing while just sitting in attract mode? Is 10 billion not many writes or plenty?

The new FM16W08 dated 2011+ seem to have a 100 trillion write endurance. Maybe i should start pimping those as new and high write endurance. I paid more than $2 each the FM1608 pulls i have, cant compete with Shenzhen there.

Have not counted write cycles myself for anything, but in attract mode I'd think it's only doing reads. During a game, it's probably doing a lot of writes to keep track of scores, switches activated, game modes, etc. That'd be interesting to have some numbers on. Probably would write an entire memory map at once of anything it's keeping track of in-game.. maybe on-event? No sense in writing anything if nothing changed, but if a switch is sensed then that would cause scoring to be updated, status of switches to change, modes to change etc. On that note, I'd imagine write cycles are MUCH higher on the newer games (ie. late-80s onward) versus older games like Classic Bally/Stern or Williams that had the 6810 scratchpad to use for the stuff being kept track of in-game and would seem to have written much less frequently to the 5101.

The 6264 RAM is the scratchpad in these later games, no? The lamp matrix i think would be doing lots of writing even during attract mode, maybe not. We would need a software guy to figure that out i suppose.

If the ram was written to every cpu cycle of 1mhz. That is 166 hours to reach 10 billion. 16,666 hours to reach 1 trillion.

And the brand new SOIC-28 FM16W08 would take a whopping 190 years of straight writing at 1mhz to reach 100 trillion write endurance.

The date code and endurance could be important.

placed an order based on your original post. I have about 60 games to do so the cheaper the better. Cant wait to find out how the alibaba ones come out. please update when you can.

This one:
ebay.com link: Ramtron FM16W08 SG FM16W08 64Kbit FRAM NVRAM SOIC28 X 10PCS

If they are cheep to