Add a Save Battery to ANOTHER Bootleg GBA Cart!

With so many different versions of bootleg Gameboy Advance cartridges out in the wild these days, I decided to do a tutorial on adding a save battery to one of the [surprisingly] more common ones! This tutorial is a bit more complicated than the last, but with this guide it should now be easy enough for even a beginner in electronics to tackle!
LINKS:
How to add a save battery to a simpler GBA bootleg:
• Adding Save Batteries ...
How to replace save batteries in Gameboy/GBC carts:
• The RIGHT Way to Repla...
How to REPROGRAM bootleg Gameboy Advance carts:
• How to REPROGRAM Gameb...
Ebay "pokemon ruby reproduction" search:
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Amazon "gameboy cr1616" search:
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AliExpress same-side tabbed cell (CR2032 not recommended):
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[@ghostmasterpresents]

Btw all the editing didn't go unnoticed and the close up diagram really helps, I thought it was a very good video overall. Everything is very helpful for someone going into this with little skill and knowledge on this type of work. Your other videos helped me replace my Game Boy batteries flawlessly too without any trouble, which never seems to happen lol Wanted to give my opinion on the video too instead of just asking for help, keep it up!

[@MathiasEek]

Oh, I would love to see you try even more different bootlegs.

[@BashoStrikes]

I have a 150 in 1 Nintendo Collectors knokoff of this type which actually had a 1616 battery of this type in it for save states. It lasted for about a year and just died. So I replaced it using this method, but obviously didn't have to block any of the traces. Works great! Thanks

[@madmanmax120]

To add to this, I've read that generally bootlegs will go through their batteries quicker than their legitimate counterparts.

[@ghostmasterpresents]

I tried adding a battery to a repo pokemon sapphire game like the one in the video and flashed it with a patched SRAM gba rom (pokemon creepy black (fire red fan remake)) and when I try saving in game it says that it saved successfully but doesn't show any save game when turning the game back on. Everything seemed to work correctly when adding the battery though, do you happen to know how I could fix this? (Edit: So I reattempted this tutorial on a different pokemon game, readded the save battery smoothly, everything tested fine on the mulitmeter, flashed the game with Pokemon Creepy Black (Fanmade rom). Now when I go to save the saving process works fine without any failure and when I loaded the game back up it showed the save and I was able to resave again, but once I remove the cartridge from the GBA SP and let it set for like 2-3 mins the save seems to delete and just goes back to starting a new game. So it seems the save holds this time but deletes shortly after. If you would please try and help me out I would really appreciate it since I can't seem to get this tutorial working for me.)

[@sintiendomevivo]

Congrats on the logo and jingle! Looks good! :)

[@KyleAwsm]

Hey, thanks man! 🙂

[@Brice_without_the_B]

What if my cart doesnt have the squares from the beginning

[@StarmanFromStarland]

Same thing. I tried soldering the battery anyway but the game I patched to use SRAM still doesn't retain the save after turning off/on the gba. There must be something left to do on the pcb to make it use the battery...

[@pikachudesinaloac160]

My bootleg is slightly different and instead of those 3 squares it has 2 squares that say "[1OK]" in its place. My bootleg is ruby and it saves but only like 5x and then it deletes itself

[@MrYuck-vm6om]

Same!

[@stephenwitmer90]

Great video! Gotta give it a 10/10. Do you need any handheld consoles or parts for more of these vids? I'd be happy to contribute what I can!

[@KyleAwsm]

Hey brother, thanks so much! Actually, I might be interested, yeah! What kind of stuff did you have in mind? 🙂 That is very kind of you to offer!

[@stephenwitmer90]

@@KyleAwsm I've got at least three white DMG 01 backlight kits and several bivert chips in a variety of colors I could ship out along with an assortment of other Gameboy consoles with a bunch of new parts and pieces. I could also sponsor a few videos on hand held mods for the parts and whatnot through paypal. I dig your channel and would like to see more awesome content. Thanks for doin what you do!

[@PkmHax]

Made 2 of these successfully. 3rd time I accidentally got solder on the top contact and stupid tried to scrape it off with the knife. Ripped all 3 contacts off the board. Nevermind 🤣

[@demodoc2106]

Outstanding bro, you seriously deserve far more subscribers. I'd just like to complement you on the video itself, I cant tell you how many videos I've seen with bad camera angles and cancerous intros. This is sublime, just 10 out of 10, keep it up dude.

[@nyxnyxnyxnyxnyx4401]

Hi, great video! However, most of the carts I get this year has the AGB-E05-02 PCB board type. Can you make a video for adding a save battery for it? Thanks!

[@willch19]

I have a AGB-E05-01 PCB. I wonder how similar those boards are.

[@andreaf3324]

Hi Kyle, great video as always! I have a question: I have a Zelda bootleg card and this doesn't have the 3 little squares but only the 2 contacts for the battery and 2 orizontal squares in another place! What should I do? I can send you a picture if it helps, thanks!

[@bluetrainer3549]

You got any answer on this? I have the same style board, and I just found out that you can add batteries to bootlegs, so I wanna give it a try

[@JoshRBuchanan52]

Any chance you're still around and happen to know how to add batteries to other repro carts?

[@ThisUploaded]

Followed these exact steps, SRAM doesn't seem to take advantage of the battery still on most cartridges. Not sure what is missing, although I've noticed every cart, even bootleg, with a battery has a 10k resistor somewhere on the board. Possibly related?

[@kidanarchy2105]

Would this work for just making the game already on it save? I don't think I can afford a Joey atm, and was thinking of using one of these bootlegs as is (with a mod, of course).

[@ebgarcia1281]

I would like to know too, so I will can transfer my Pokémon LeafGreen to Pokémon Pearl.

[@KyleAwsm]

Hi there, good question! The bootleg carts can already save since the ROM file itself has been patched to save without a battery. This is actually a topic of a podcast I have coming out soon. Adding the battery simply makes it so that SRAM capable or patched ROMs can save to the carts, thus what makes them useful for programming. Cheers, guys! 🙂 Thanks for watching!

[@kidanarchy2105]

@@KyleAwsm Thanks so much for this info. It definitely helps in my decision about purchasing these games.

[@BBsan]

@@KyleAwsm Really great vid - this helped me a lot during my first attempts to re-flash my bootlegs 😉 Are you still working on some kind of video on how to patch those games? Would be interesting to me esp. because I want to patch my german Pokemon games to work with the bootleg cartridges - but the universal GBATA patches don't seem to hit it :/

[@RonGrethel]

@@KyleAwsm cna you link to the podcast? I bought a bootleg on accident, ebay refunded the money luckily. Anyway now I have a replica but I get that "the game will load" message every time it loads. Based on what I have been able to find out, it saves because the rom was patched, but that makes it not work with gamecube games for example. I am wondering if soldering a battery on the board and replacing the bootleg rom with an ACTUAL ROM would give me a copy that at least works well enough that I can transfer a jirachi from the gamecube to the cart, and then this cart to my pokemon pearl version.

[@theretrogamer9987]

I have one that has the 2 circle contacts but it doesn't have the contact to brake the connection to

[@nathanmead140]

The battery is used to power a RTC (real time clock) chip and the other chip is the ROM (program) and FRAM (flash memory with the same speed as ram) if these are proper clones of the original also there is another way to connect the battery

[@KyleAwsm]

These carts unfortunately work a bit differently and aren't equipped with RTC chips. Also, these bootlegs have SRAM for saving, instead of Flash like the original Pokemon games. Very few GBA games utilize FRAM, and there are actually countless different speeds of RAM. The place that bootleg GBA carts store their ROM is on a NOR Flash chip, while the original carts used MaskROM. Cheers, and thanks for your comments! 👍🏻

[@alubaldini]

i own a fake final fantasy cartridge can i restore or change it and how much time can work the battery?@@KyleAwsm

[@o0kaelas]

My brain goes to mush when I see soldering and pcbs your diagram and explanation prevented that, Thanks.

[@KyleAwsm]

You're most welcome! 🙂

[@freewayross4736]

That mini analog multimeter is fancy I only have those old thick ones i need one like this

[@VideoGameJNPoop]

Is it also possible to add a Real Time Clock onto GBA reproduction PCBs too.

[@zacharystiebel4127]

Whats the point of deconnecting and soldering the tabs at the start?

[@ReaperTheWAR]

I would like to know what this material is for? and why solder the battery to the cartridge? Is there a problem with a cartridge without a battery?

[@anonym-g-a-d7817]

Great video and the save file is working.

[@grayismysuperpower]

Can someone tell me what advantage this has over the bootleg carts that can somehow save to SRAM without the battery? Also has anyone figured out how to add a crystal and RTC to these bootlegs? That would make them more useful.

[@1adrock12]

So question what if you just want to make time-based events happen?

[@gameclassics]

Have the same question myself.

[@dom_the3166]

I would imagine this is impossible due to the bootleg carts not having an rtc chip or oscillator on the board.

[@ReaperTheWAR]

@KyleAwsm Does this procedure make the cartridge usable for flash function with other ROMs that are not from the manufacture of this cartridge? Is it possible to save other games saved on the card by doing this procedure?

[@Cards01]

Hey. 10/10 for the instructions. I have just one question. I recently bought a copy of pokemon emerald and had to find out that I just got a remake instead. If I use this fix can I just keep playing or do I need to change the software or something as well?

[@Its_MnD]

Was here to ask the samething

[@SefEXE]

Hey Kyle, appreciate the video and I've started looking into modding some carts or just replacing batteries myself. I have a cartridge with a battery, but I don't think it has RTC, how can I tell?

[@KyleAwsm]

Hi there, thanks for watching! This video has exactly the info you're looking for: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z6HMiZdpm8uqq8k Watch just the first 2 minutes to get a comprehensive answer, more than I can write here at least. 🙂👍🏻 Hope this helps you in your adventure!

[@Capitan_Chaos]

Do you know why snes repro carts don’t save? I have a chrono trigger repro and it doesn’t save whatsoever.

[@Boomer212]

Have you considered posting a video on how to make a Batteryless save patch for GBA?

[@artorius5414]

what if i dont have those 3 square section? only 2 solder point just like in the video? should i just solder away? thx

[@richardaywara5903]

Wondering if I could get some help. My bootleg cartridge has its contacts similar to 1:04 however, the only three squares I can spot are on the upper left like 0:51 with the labels y (on the left of the 3 squares) and n (to the right of the 3 squares) there's connectivity between the middle and right square. Any tips for me to move forward?

[@pkmntrainerwolfie1599]

Is it possible to remove that black plastic the cartridge I got covered the 3 little squares

[@zacharyfranklin8166]

I have a bootleg cart just like this. Only there isn’t any parts on the board to cut like on this one in the video. Also my cart saves without a battery. How?

[@peiyong9224]

What happens if your cart doesn’t have the 3 squares? I have two squares right above the contact that say 10K underneath it.

[@pikachudesinaloac160]

Man you are a very underrated youtuber

[@KyleAwsm]

Thank you so much! 😊

[@GaetanLavigne443]

can you do modifications to a supercard so that a real time clock works on it??? could you do a tutorial.. it would be so helpful

[@therealKrak]

How do you know the top circle is ment for the positive pad? I dismembered my saphire cartridge a long while ago (over 5 years) but wasn't able to get it back together due to various events... Well now I bought all the required items except for the cable because I couldn't remember that there was one connected to the previous battery. My PCB also has no indicators of what the positive and negative contacts are but there was some solder left of when I removed the battery in the past. I did it by trial and error but both connections don't seem to work. It keeps saying the internal battery has run dry... ...clock based events will no longer occur. After creating a new game, saving and restarting, now the game says "The save file is corrupted. The previous save will be loaded. The internal battery..."

[@Pinkietron]

i had 3 bootleg carts and none of them as far as i could tell were battery compatible, couldn't get any voltage readings

[@Monkeyman12534]

Did they save at all?

[@Pinkietron]

@@Monkeyman12534 the carts save just fine, i was looking to add a battery for thing like time based events

[@PkmHax]

Is it normal for the game to say the battery has run dry but can still be played when having done this?

[@g_arm_]

what happens if I install the battery and play the pokemon game? Will it load and save like a normal game? What would I have to do to achieve that?

[@TheDirkvaningen]

I have a bootleg pokemon ruby it does have those solder points but I have one with a AGB-EO5-02 motherboard, have you ever tried one of these 🤔any tips ?

[@SimonWhittlebone]

Hey I have a pokemon red game could you try this on mine if it’s possible looks nothing like it

[@caydescards8147]

Can you do a bootleg Pokemon GDC games from wish. I need help putting a save battery into it

[@m.emreak]

my game doesn't have any of those i've have bootleg lotr

[@soranightstorm9262]

so what about the bootleg versions of gold silver yellow green blue and red versions of Pokemon i could use some idea what they would look like

[@keithdesousa5550]

So i have a gba cartridge with no pos/neg connections and am trying to figure out which way to solder the battery on. Do you by any chance know how to find the right connections?

[@ngiws4402]

Why add battery when the game is already saving??

[@delta-3856]

Why is there no gameplay shown to prove what's actually working here? All I see is you bam slam and badabam that battery in there, but how the hell am I supposed to believe a CR16-22 battery is supposed to work with random and cheap half assed Chinese hardware.

[@roarke222]

If it makes you feel better, I know that Kyle doesn't make a video unless he has verified it working, if you have the same board this will work

[@aaliguy9986]

Another great video :)

[@KyleAwsm]

Thank you, brother! 😊 I appreciate it!

[@indubitably01]

I have a bootleg that does not have a battery but isn't exactly like this. Is there a resource I can use to figure out how to attach a battery to this one? Weirdly enough, the saves do persist, for now, not sure how.

[@jesussalinas6456]

how do I fix and advance game that has a memory issue

[@austinpowers9403]

Why add batery if the botleg game saves without it?

[@MrBeftackel]

Maybe to fix the ingame clock or just to be extra safe ;)

[@andersonrn27]

If you install the battery and repro this cartidge with the original rom, does the RTC feature works? I mean, those cartdges with sram chip for save.

[@roarke222]

Beautiful video!

[@yevgeniylankin7032]

Would this make gba Pokémon games compatible with pal park?

[@zengwenxin8402]

Hi. Here I have a question. If there is no battery in those carts in the first place, how do they save? I'm sure they can save in the pokemon game they originally come with.

[@tiagoguerreiro8318]

Hello! Bootlegs cartidges uses Flash memory like a USB stick, the original ones uses RAM memory, that only storage information, like a save file, if it has battery on it, if not, it will delete all data, RAM memory is cheapper, that's why nintendo used it on their cartidges.

[@timewizard1719]

Can you do this with the older Pokémon games like crystal, silver, and gold

[@KoolKyleProductions]

If I added a save battery to my fire red reproduction, could I restore a save onto the cartridge?

[@railroadverdigo1665]

my board look nothing like this and it sas the save file will be loaded

[@KyleAwsm]

Save data for these bootlegs is stored natively on unused parts of onboard flash storage where the game ROM data is stored.

[@MathiasEek]

How do you know if you need to cut a trace or install a resistor or not?

[@ogiimo]

is there a way to mod the cartridge in order to use pal park? or just any way in general would be too cool. cant believe i just bought pokémon sapphire for the price i did lmao

[@DonaldFromKingdomHearts]

So after that, is the game one just bought ready to go or do you need to reinstall it to be compatible?

[@joognyeezy9637]

Hey! I have this exact cart and I can’t seem to get the Joey to rewrite the cart properly! Only with this cart! Have you had any issues like this?

[@Skleebean]

So If you install this battery to a bootleg Pokémon game, can you then connect to Pokémon colosseum on GameCube and also migrate your Pokémon from the bootleg gba game to the next gen Pokémon DS game??

[@lem09able]

Nope. Unfortunately, authentic pokemon gen 3 games use a flash memory. Fake pokemon gen 3 cartridges have been patched to use SRAM memory. When migrating, your ds will try to look for the data in a flash memory that doesn't exist so it still won't show up in your ds.

[@mamoniji]

wow, thx!! my sonic2 bootleg is saving again!!

[@michaelgarcia5493]

Now when I put a battery on this will it play on Pokemon stadium or Colosseum ?

[@VonCreeperTv]

can you do this with Mario world bootleeg for snes?

[@TooManyMonsters]

If those chinese pokemon carts doesn't have a battery you can't save your game file?

[@johnniewinwin3432]

Wait so after you add a battery you have to flash the game? What does that mean?

[@Monkeyman12534]

That just means reinstalling the ROM

[@Kianfox]

I have a different type of bootleg cart that I'm not sure how to work with. I spent all this money on a bunch of carts like an idiot, and now I can't play pretty much any of the games :/. If anyone can help, it would be much appreciated. My PCBs have the 2 contacts on the left, but the chip looks different, I'm not sure where I would have to cut and what not.

[@KyleAwsm]

Hi! Feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram. I typically help people out over there with this kind of stuff. Cheers!

[@Hawkeyes2017]

Do you have a way to do this with electrical tape?

[@lemonchicken507]

I have a cart i'd like to send you to see if a battery can be installed. Can this be arranged? It's very similar to the one in the video, minus the small squares

[@KyleAwsm]

Ok, feel free to send me a message on my Instagram and we can talk about it more there. 👍🏻

[@paulocuento9949]

man this was so helpful.. i have a few of these games.. i dont think i will ever find a way to use them any other way... but they will definitely be very useful when learning this skill

[@mrmapache6324]

Bro my console was out of energy and My fire red gots deleted, i plug the console and the Game does saves, i think the repro cardgame need console energy?

[@benyaminmanuel]

Same here. I lost my save data too

[@mattluvet]

Great video! Is something like this possible for bootleg Geneisis cartidges? I have MegaMan Willy wars that is not able to save.

[@alubaldini]

because dont havent battery is just a pbc similar than sonic 3 bootled

[@imagotchi_]

Could you use kapton tape instead of electrical tape or is that overkill for this mod?

[@KyleAwsm]

Kapton tape is actually recommended instead. Good question! Thanks for watching!

[@imagotchi_]

@@KyleAwsm thanks for confirming and the content.

[@DimPortal]

I recently bought a cartridge without a battery in it. It cannot save. I opened it up and i see 2 open holes where you can solder a battery to, except it doesnt say which is + and - , is there a way to find out? or should i just take a chance and try soldering? both holes are one next to another and they are gold plated. it is 99% similar to the PCB in this youtube video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iIbXfWiNoptsp9U can you take a look and let me know if its possible to solder a cr1616 battery to this cartridge please?

[@swordcrafted]

With the other tabbed battery, do we just need to solder it like normal?

[@KyleAwsm]

Correct!

[@KyleAwsm]

But also with the trace cutting and soldering too. That is required on that cart for any battery installed.

[@TheJcPalma]

Hi, would this also work to prevent data deletion upon shutting down the gameboy during save in bootleg Pokemon R/S/E for example? would this also fix the initial message that appears at the boot of the pokemon game saying that "the save file has been loaded" for bootleg Pokemon R/S/E and a similar message on the bootleg versions of FR/LG that also use this type of cartridge? Also, great video!! Started to dust out my old collection and hoping to fix it and do a museum to keep as a family heirloom.

[@KenjiRyuma90]

All I need is an authentic copy to aviod the save data being lost and wasting all the time (time is valued more than money)

[@calebprince4914]

I currently have the linked PCB board for my copy of Fire Red imgur.com/a/NS8LiHC its tabs are in a slightly different location (Shown in A) would I connect them like B or C? imgur.com/a/BhDSdE9

[@calebprince4914]

on that the game currently temporarily holds save, saying "The Save Game is OK" will adding a battery fix the losing save issue or do I have the completely wrong board?

[@RyoPotter]

@@calebprince4914 did you ever figure either of these out? I have those same boards

[@calebprince4914]

@@RyoPotter Sadly not :/

[@Echidnai]

There are too many materials in this video...!

[@KyleAwsm]

Do you mean the tools and necessary things to actually do it? If so, not much can be done about that! There's a reason I include all of them. I won't mqke a cut-rate video and show people how to do things the wrong way.

[@Echidnai]

@@KyleAwsm Thanks. Still, the tutorial makes it look way shorter than expected...

[@KyleAwsm]

@@Echidnai Is that a compliment...? I genuinely don't know. 🙂

[@Echidnai]

@@KyleAwsm Yes, it is. This kind of tutorials is very useful to create custom GBA cartridges and give new life to those consoles.

[@KyleAwsm]

@@Echidnai Thank you! 😊

[@ngiws4402]

He just showed how but never why...

[@squidgames2562]

I dont trust myself with this stuff

[@joshuaelliott4666]

this seams like a good pace to practice because who cares if you kill a few under 10 bootlegs