Wonder boy in monster world genesis save capacitor fix?

I recently got this game at the thrift. It seemed to save but it loses it when it's taken out for a while. I opened it up thinking I just had to change the battery but it turns out to be a capacitor rated at 16v 47uf.

What fix would I need for this cartidge as I have never come across a cartidge game with a cap for saving, if that's what it's even for.
Online says it has a eeprom though, but then I really don't understand why it wouldn't be saving.

Thanks for the help.

 

Well I went an put a battery in place of the cap and it magically my save was there, which is odd.

Can anyone tell me how that worked out or should I attribute it to magic?

 

Check traces/contacts. I think that EEPROM chip requires power to read data, and it doesn't get it normally.

 

If i remember correctly, a lot of genesis games have that 47uf cap. In this case it may have something to do with the save function, but it's not designed to hold a voltage for very long. Maybe it is a type of last minute power filtering, or perhaps is stores just enough power to keep the cart on for a shot time after the console is powered off to ensure the eeprom holds its data.

Regardless you should be able to replace that cap and everything should work as normal.

 

Maybe it's that cap is the source of the problem or maybe not. It's easy to replace and cheap (most people even won't have to buy because they have some broken stuff with those common caps)
And of course, it's for filtering, not a power source. Thing is, if he got a broken trace or cold solder joint replacing cap with battery will just supply required power for EEPROM and it will become readable.

BTW, a picture of that cart PCB will help (good quality picture, of course, not webcam one).

 

I'm not sure about the broken trace or cold joint only because the save would last a few minutes outside of the genesis when the cap was in. After about 5~10 minutes is when the save would not appear.
I'll take a picture of the pcb tomorrow, I loaned it out to a friend which is why I was trying to get the save to work in the first place.

I have tons of caps that I take out of broken things, especially at that rating so I could put in a new one and see what happens.

 

Capacitor ? Capacitor is there to control interference on the power rails. It has nothing to do with saving.

Is there a RAMTROM chip on that board ?

Read this: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showth...-chips-are-nice-(Sonic3-related-stuff-in-here

 

I'll have the game back for sure tomorrow (sunday). The snow around here didn't let travel be possible for me to get the game back

 

Here is the pcb http://imgur.com/gallery/eyVewCa

There is no ramtron chip inside. The wires is where the cap used to be.

 

LOL


BTW that board requires no battery to save it uses a I2C eeprom. A Xicor 24C01 to be exact. (it's the 8 pin IC at the corner)

Please put the capacitor back and get the 24C01 replaced as it's probably broken. Also a trace on the saving circuit could be broken (more likely).

 

Alright. Ill do that once I get a replacement chip, unless I should asap.
Why would putting a battery there cause the save file to start appearing? It's this that makes me doubt its a bad trace.
But then again I've never worked on game pcbs and don't know much about em.