Category: Gaming

CPS-III Backup Battery Replacement

Posted on December 22nd, 2009 in Gaming, Tech.

Every three years the CPS-III game cartridges have to get new backup batteries or else you risk the battery dying. What happens when the battery dies? The battery powering the hash table on the cartridge that unlocks the game dies and the hash is erased, making your game unplayable and turning a piece of arcade hardware into a big paperweight. It’s original purpose was to prevent piracy, but I don’t see how it helped to curb piracy myself. What you’re supposed to do is send your cartridge in to Capcom and they take it apart, replace the batter, and send it back to you. Well the game is pretty dated now and what are individual owners supposed to do? In my case my 3rd Strike cartridge was specially modified by a previous owner to make changing out the batteries a snap, literally.

Step 1: Pick up a new 1/2 AA battery. Radioshack carries them, even though the employees at the store weren’t aware of their existence.
step 1

Step 2: Power on the machine and allow it to finish booting up.
step 2

Step 3: Locate old backup battery on the CPS-III game cartridge.
step 3

Step 4: Remove the old backup battery with a small flathead screwdriver.
step 4

Step 5: Pop new battery into place, making sure you use the same +/- orientation as the last backup battery.
step 5

There you go, I’m good for another three years. Speaking of three years, I can’t believe it’s been three years since I picked this machine up and brought it back into working order. You can check all that action out from early 2007 right here. Thanks to the dedicated mod and arcade cab community. The original battery swap involved the same battery, but you had to solder positive and negative leads into place on the cartridge. I have no idea how common this snap-on battery modification is, but it squashes a lot of headaches for sure.

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Megalo 410 Back in Action

Posted on October 8th, 2009 in Gaming, Tech.

After moving in July and accidentally letting the Megalo 410 succumb to some collateral damage by leaving the monitor control board in place, I have the machine running again. The main monitor board on the bottom of the cabinet fell up into the cabinet while transporting it to the new apartment and broke off the potentiometers that control the vertical and horizontal size of the monitor. That’s all of the old news, now on to the new.

Last weekend a friend donated time to solder the new potentiometers to the monitor control board and with the new potentiometers in place I was ready to go home, unlock the machine, replace the board, and see if that had fixed the monitor issues. I wake up on Saturday to give the board a test, but can’t find the keys to the cabinet. I searched for hours everywhere in my apartment for the keys, but could not turn them up. The keys to the cabinet are always on my key ring in my pocket and I assume that the keys were dropped when either giving my car key to the dealer (back when my car broke down and was broken in to last month) or when putting the car key back on the ring after picking the car up from the dealer.

The locks on the Megalo 410 are simple cam-style locks so I picked up a couple of replacements at home depot and set to removing the old locks. I drilled out the bottom left lock since I can reach the other two locks on the cabinet from that central location and wouldn’t have to spend triple the time drilling through the locks one by one.


Old Sega lock for game panel New latch lock installed
Old Sega lock for game panel New latch lock installed


Now that the old locks were out it was time to get the new locks in place. To get the new cam locks to fit I had to use a Dremel equipped with the sanding tool to scale back a set of tabs in each lock hole which made the lock hole a little too small for the new locks to fit in. Once I shaved a little off of the tabs the new locks fit in and, while the cabinet was open, I replaced the main monitor board, rewired the controls for Player 1, and adjusted the screen. With Megalo completely working again I locked up the cabinet and left the keys in their respective locks. I don’t want to go through that ordeal again.

Fast forward from Saturday to Monday night. I picked up two white Hugo stools from Ikea for people to sit at while playing on the arcade machine. With the two stools at home to accompany the cab it was time to get rounds of Street Fighter III 3rd Strike in on it for the first time in three months.


The Megalo's new home 2 New latch lock installed
The Megalo 410 complete with stools


Special shouts out to Chad who hooked me up with a solder on the board and to Daniel from work who was the first person to lose to me on the now working cab. Not only have I fixed this most recent problem with the Megalo 410, but I did a ton of electronics work on it from January to March of 2006. You can relive the entire work process through pictures in my Candy Cab Restore set on Flickr.

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DS Lite vs DSi: Trade Up

Posted on June 12th, 2009 in Gaming, Nintendo, Tech, Web.

DSi in box

Last Sunday I went down to GameStop and took advantage of their DSi trade-up offer. What they’re doing is allowing you to trade in your DS Lite for a DSi and knocking $70 off the price tag. That discount brings the cost of trading from a DS Lite to a DSi only $100. Before making the trade I did a little bit of research and found that the biggest concern was the lost of the GBA slot. While the GBA slot is gone, I don’t regret trading and feel like the benefits of the DSi outweigh the loss of a GBA slot (especially when GameBoy Advance SPs can be had for under $35 these days).

Let’s start with some hard facts and then I’ll move onto my own opinions about the two.

The DSi comes equipped with:

  • Matte outer finish
  • 3.25″ Screens
  • A size of 137mm x 74.9mm x 18.9mm
  • A weight of 214g
  • A battery life of 9-14 hours
  • DS cart slot
  • SDHC card slot

On the other hand, the DS Lite comes equipped with:

  • Glossy outer finish
  • 3.00″ Screens
  • A size of 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm
  • A weight of 218g
  • A battery life of 15-19 hours
  • DS cart slot
  • GBA cart slot

For quick reference here are some comparison shots:
DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi DS Lite vs DSi

Along with the above specs the DSi adds a music player (capable of playing AAC audio files) with some bad ass nintendo-inspired visualizers, two cameras (front camera: 3MP, inside camera: .3MP), the Opera browser, a beefed up internal memory capacity, and access to WPA secured networks.

The DSi doesn’t have a GBA slot:
I know, I was initially upset about this too! When I really, really thought about it I came to a conclusion. The only GBA games I play are import games from Japan. I have to play those games at home anyway since I need guides and translation help during gameplay. Remembering that I had the GBA add-on for my GameCube, I was no longer bummed about giving up my beloved GBA slot. Sorry Mother 3!

The DSi has a shorter battery life than the DS Lite:
Okay, so the DSi gets 9-14 hours of play on the lowest brightness setting as opposed to the DS Lite’s 15-19. I’ve had my DSi almost a week and played it every day. Thursday it finally died and I had to charge it which means I got 5 days of gaming in before I had to stop to recharge the battery. If you play your DS a ridiculous amount then it’s no more of a hassle than it is to charge your cell phone every night. Hell, my DSi gets better battery life than my Blackberry Pearl! One plus to the lower capacity battery is that it takes less time to charge so you’re back to gaming quicker. On a side note, both the DS Lite and DSi have a better play time than the PSPgo, 3 to 6 hours of gameplay are you kidding me?

Aside from the two points hit above I think the DSi beats the DS Lite hands down. The larger, brighter screen is immediately noticeable and the camera is actually fun to use whether you’re playing the WarioWare game that uses the DSi’s camera (available in the DSiWare Store) or simply using the camera itself. The PSP previously had the DS beat in online capabilities and general usefulness, but Nintendo has more than answered that with the DSi. The DSi provides an interface and capabilities that transform it into a living, breathing, online-enabled device and there is a lot of new hope for the DS’s online community. The DSiWare store, while sparse at the moment, actually houses worthwhile games (and some apps, most of the apps are sad excuses for apps. Why do I want a simple calculator or a skinned clock anyway?). The XBOX 360 Marketplace has tons of products and very few I actually want. Opposed to that, the DSiWare store has a small catalog for the time being, but I want like half of the products in the store.

I seriously hope Nintendo takes the right steps with the DSi and transforms it into the fully online-enabled gaming experience that it has the potential to be. With my DS Lite I think I used the wifi capability once or twice, but with the DSi I am constantly connected to wifi networks while browsing the net or checking out the store. The functionalities have made me more aware of when my DSi is on or off line and has left me with no possible reason as to why all future multiplayer games will not be wifi compatible.

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