I think batteries embedded in chips (like in the CD-i) should not have ever been a thing. That's even worse than the planned obsolescence stuff in modern tech, in my opinion.
@NovaSquirrel there was a time when it was the only way to store data in a non-volatile manner without needing mechanical components, though
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@NovaSquirrel oh you mean in the IC itself like those old dallas clocks
never mind, that's another matter
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@Felthry Yeah I don't think you should ever need a dremel to replace a battery. Battery-backed RAM by itself is a good concept.
@NovaSquirrel i guess the idea with those is that you replace the whole thing when you need to replace the battery. it takes up less space on the pcb than separate SRAM and battery, and I *guess* being able to take it out of the board and still have it keep its data could have been an advantage that was considered?
Dallas also made things that plugged in under a CPU and added an RTC to a PC-compatible motherboard that didn't support an RTC, and the constraints there kinda required a battery
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@NovaSquirrel it's not a great solution but i can see why they would have arrived at it, especially when no one was thinking anyone would care about this random computer thingy in more than the 10 year specified life of the battery
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@Felthry yeah that makes sense, and the amount of devices out there probably greatly outnumbers the amount of people who actually want to play Hotel Mario today haha
@NovaSquirrel true in the case of the cdi, probably less true in other cases though!
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@NovaSquirrel do you know what the battery-backed chip is? both RTCs and SRAMs were common; both can be replaced, but an RTC replacement will still need a battery whereas you can replace an SRAM with FRAM and avoid needing a battery
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@NovaSquirrel what we would do, personally, is replace the chip with a socket and then a tiny PCB with a CR2032 and some other RTC chip
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@Felthry it's a "Timekeeper" brand RTC chip. I think you can still buy them for ~$26 so one option is to put a socket in there and a whole new chip (assuming it is a new chip and not new old stock)
I guess the fact that you can actually get more makes it less scary to try and add an external holder.