So, why are we changing a battery holder on this board? Well, the leads on it were corroded. What could possibly happen to a pinball machine regarding batteries? At worst, if left in its holder for a long period of time, these batteries can leak and spill the acid onto the board completely ruining it. The board will likely be shot, and you would need a replacement, they cost around 300$.

Williams/Bally CPU boards use standard double A (AA batteries), and it is recommended they be replaced once a year. Duracell makes the best batteries in our opinion and that is what we use here at TXpinball. An investment of a few dollars will do you and your pinball machine good, in the long run.

IMPORTANT! Please use due care, common sense and a lot of precaution while using this advice as TXPinball will not be held accountable for use/misuse/abuse or for any other way for you to mess something up. If in doubt, get a professional repairman. If you're electronically challenged, please do not use any advice on TXPinball.com website, or any tips and tricks offered at all and please do not try to friggin' measure, poke around, do this or that, "diagnose" something and "fix" what you think is the great way to do something (like putting WD-40™ on flipper assemblies to "grease/lube them up to "work" better). Do not touch and/or replace anything at all if you are unsure of what exactly are you doing! Just friggin' stay away from the soldering iron if you think it is a piece of cake, but you have limited/no experience with it. Email us if you're stuck with a problem.

If you suspect that your machine has faulty components, please seek advice from a qualified pinball rapairman to look at it and fix it properly. If you have any questions about modern pinball machines, we'll try to help within reason, so email us with your problem.

Here we have a Williams/Bally WPC CPU board and a lovely coffee stain on the work bench together with Sylvester and Tweety coffee mug... That's pretty important, it shows something is kinda-sorta getting done on that workbench, so coffee is needed to stay sharp and focused... It is obviously missing an ASIC chip (the board , not the mug), software game ROM in location U6 and a battery holder. We'll deal with the battery holder first..

Battery holders are not expensive, generally around 6$ or 7$ and are available from a number of sources selling pinball parts online. You are welcome to email us for links. For example, one of them is PennRay International.

Here is what a brand new battery holder looks like... Pretty, nice, shiny, no corrosion.

I jumped here from showing a battery holder to cleaned up solder pads and holes all ready to go and install a new holder, since I didn't feel like messing with the digital camera at that point.

It is advisable if you do not have proper equipment and don't have any soldering/desoldering experience to leave this project to a professional pinball repairman. Picture shows a clean desoldering job on the solder side.

Clean and professional job done on the component side as well. Nothing lifted, traces intact, nothing burnt, no damage done anywhere, ready to go.

Another close up shot of the solder side. Now, we are ready to install the new battery holder in its spot.

When soldering, DO NOT just solder on the one side, leaving half of the trace hole empty! Look at the crappy job here, half hole filled, half empty, not good! Soldering repair job needs to be done properly, in order to be trouble-free and successful in the future. Soldeding is sort of an art & a skill at the same time, and practice makes perfect. The best temperature for soldering multilayer/double side PCBs is about between 700-720 degrees Fahrenheit.

When you're soldering, the best way to describe it is to make an "ant hill" around the component legs, not too much and not too little. Do not melt a crapload of solder making a big glob that the component leg is swimming and diving in! Go for a cone/an ant hill.

Make the solder melt, by touching it with the tip of your iron and let it flow quickly inside the through plate filling it up, since the gravity is forcing it down in the liquid/melted form. Let it fill the hole surrounding the component leg and let it cool down. Remember, it takes practice, and practice makes perfect...

Soldering begins.

3 top holes of the holder soldered in.

Another close up shot. Remember when soldering, you need to apply JUST right amount of solder, no more and no less. It should flow thrugh the hole, effectively filling it and making a strong, conductive and permanent connection between the component side and solder side.

Since battery solder steel legs are sticking out too much we'll use snips and cutters to trim them a bit. We are using a professional Xuron brand cutters here made of carbon steel just for applications such as these.

Carefully cutting excess long steel legs.

The end result on the solder side...

Well, that's it. Here is a brand spanking new battery holder and now all the custom settings entered by owner will be retained and saved successfully. For example, free play, custom messages, High Scores, extra ball settings etc...etc... will all be in there and okay now.

Remember to replace your batteries yearly! Remember that you can change your batteries while the machine is on to retain all your previous settings. If you change your batteries with a machine powered off, you WILL lose all your previous settings, high scores etc... and you will have to do them all over again. Again, the machine WILL reset to factory settings if you change your batteries when pinball is powered off. Remember, on WPC games, the plus (+) side on all 3 batteries is pointing up, no exceptions!

Please, again, do not do this if you are inexperienced with soldering and you really do not know what you're doing, but you think you do and/or it looks easy here. It may SEEM easy enough, but we do not advise hacking away at your boards when there are cheaper alternatives than ruining it and needing to obtain a new one.

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