Quoted from UWbadgers:Thanks for the price thoughts.
Can you explain in noob talk ”NVRAM to the MPU board for you to get rid of batteries. Need to inspect that MPU to be sure there is no current battery damage to the board?” Is this a common problem with three machines? Battery Damage? What do the batteries do for this machine?
NVRAM is non-volatile (NV) random access memory (RAM). That means the memory on the chip doesn't need battery power to maintain the settings in the game when you turn it off.
Take a look at the area below where the battery is on the board. The batteries can leak alkaline occasionally, if they are not changed regularly, and that substance drips/leaks onto the board causing damage to the traces. The damage usually can be repaired, but the leakage can cause the game to exhibit odd behavior during play, and if not corrected can cause the game to not work at all. This can be a problem on any game with batteries installed on the board.
You can remove the batteries from the board and install a remote battery holder (example:
). I believe installing NVRAM requires a board modification beyond your skill set (example:
).
I suggest a remote battery holder be installed, if you really are worried about it. Or you can change out the batteries on your machine every year, which just about guarantees that the batteries will never leak onto the board.
Robert