posted 08-29-2007 04:13 PM ET (US)
Maybe someone here may benefit from this.Well, the plotter I bought off ebay a couple of years ago and it recently would no longer store waypoints or preferences once I powered the unit down. I figured it must have an internal battery to keep RAM memory alive and that it must have died.
I brought the unit home from the boat and looked up Ramarine's website. They wanted $250 flat rate repair and I could not stomach that. Looking at the back of the unit I saw lots of phillips-head screws so I opened her up. The case splits in half and has a rubber seal between the halves so I thought I had a good shot at sealing it back if I were to open it. Luckily it is not a nitrogen filled, electronically welded together affair!
After I took the back off, the battery was very evident. I measured for voltage and there was nada. Problem was it is not the easily replacable, pop the old out, pop a new one in veriety as you see frequently on computer motherboards but a standard 3V 2032 battery with legs soldered to it which are then soldered into the circuit board.
A Google search for "2032 board mount" yielded a how to page on replacing this on a MOOG synthesizer. It speced a DigiKey part number that allows you to replace batteries without unsoldering, etc.
The part arrived today and I had it installed in 20 minutes. The battery socket and a new battery were $13 with $8 being shipping and handling.
On my circuit baord, I would have had to unsolder the legs for the old battery backup from a fairly inaccessable side of the board. I was able to pop the solder spots from the old battery and use these legs to solder the new socket to. I put a spot of silicon behind the new socket as it stands off the board by a 1/4" and I would like it to stay put without being prone to getting loose from getting jostled around. I have plenty of clearance inside the plotter enclosure so this standing off will not prevent proper reassembly.
I have some silicon grease that came with my dry suit that you put, periodically, on the waterproof zipper. I rubbed this down both sides of the rubber case gasket and screwed it back together. I then wiped a bit of silicon caulk into the many recessed screw holes to prevent ingress of moisture there. I did this in a dry but not too cool environment to cut down on moisture inside the unit but not creating a future expansion/contraction issue because of the temperature at resealing.
Pretty satisfying fixing this kind of thing for $13 rather than $250 I must say.