this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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The battery is soldered in, but it's dead simple to desolder and replace with a proper battery holder so you can easily replace it down the road. Just make sure 6ou remember to use a rechargeable.
TIL rechargeable CR2032s exist, and also that their output voltage is higher than standard ones and apparently may run the risk of damaging circuits?
Rechargeable battery chemistry usually can't exactly match the voltage on the old ones. I've seen problems with all sorts of stuff by switching to rechargeable AAs. They typically have only 1.2v compared to 1.5v of a regular AA.
But the rechargeable coin battery mod for the Dreamcast is fine, I modded mine years ago and have had no issues.
Um......are there different models of dreamcast? I changed mine a decade ago. Just popped out. Popped new one in.
Probably gotta do it again if I were to play dreamcast again.
Yeah, there are different models. I have a first gen North American one. I didn't realize some had swappable batteries.
Yeah, if I ever did that, I'd rather take it to someone who knows what they're doing. I have little experience soldering and I don't want to destroy something in my Dreamcast by accident.
That's fair. I'd consider myself fairly new to it all, I'm not passing judgment but it's worth checking out a vid on how to do... If you've used a soldering iron once or twice you could probably handle it.
You may also want to (or have your person doing the work) replace the single-shot resistor fuse with a self-healing one while they're in there. Both parts are on the controller board. The fuse is notorious for blowing, and that can make the whole system unable to detect your controllers.
Yup I went through that and did the battery holder + rechargeable coin cell at the same time. Works perfectly, great advice.