Amiga 500 Plus Battery Removal

Hi guys! does anyone know how to remove the battery on the a500 plus? I really want to remove it before it kills my old miggy, what happens if I don't replace it? apart from the clock won't work? does it supply power to anything else? internal setings and stuff? Thanks
Kristian

[Nexjen]

I had a little bit of a problem of it leaking all over the AGNUS part of my board , which basicly fucked up all the graphics.

:-| Your lucky you knew about it before I did. My Poor miggy.

[Syko]

Removing the battery from any Amiga is pretty much the same, the battery has two pins one end and one on the other:

use soldering iron (15 to 25W w/ 1.5mm tip is ideal) to melt the solder on the single pin end, and carefully lift it out of the board

then, working the pins alernately do the other end; melt joint, lift a little, do same to other pin; takes about three goes on each pin before they come free, and give it time (about 30secs) to cool before each cycle - this stops the tracks lifting.

Also apply the heat from the top side of the board, as the tip of the iron will hep hold down the copper track.

If you have solder-wick or a solder sucker, you can use these to remove most of the solder first, but be carefull not to overheat the area around the joints...

Once the battery is removed; if it has leaked at all, clean around the area using a cotton bud soacked in IsoPropyl Alchohol (or IPA for short) this will remove the corrosive gunk that comes out of the battery, and help stop any futher damage to the board/chips

Only problem you get, is the RTC is always on it's default setting on startup, inserting a setdate command into the user-startup sequence will improve things, and you can also set the time prefs to open (by having the icon in WB-startup) automatical so you don't forget to set the current time/date

Most local computer shops can get a nicad battery that has wires instead of pins, and has better capacity and fewer probs with leakage. You can solder this direct, or use a small connector between the battery and the board so that you can mount the battery to the case, and disconect it when needed. Aminet has a hardware hack to replace the battery on an A4000 with the standard button cells used in modern PC's; just needs a diode to block the charging voltage

This problem was also addressed in this thread: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=13327 but with reference to the A4000