I recently had a fellow SRK member PM me, with this very question. Got me thinking at length about all the variables. I thought the response, and my thought process (for what’s it worth), might be valuable to others. Of course, would love to hear what others’ thoughts are on the subject and/or the approach of other collectors.
Historically, the popular way of thinking has been: replace the battery religiously every 5 years. I agree, that’s still probably the best practice. However, with the introduction of the ability by anyone (with a small capitol investment), to reprogram boards’ encryption keys if a board suicides, why stick to that regimen? And, with the small possibility that replacing the battery will cause the board to suicide, why take the risk? At the same time, the battery is certainly going to fail at some point, and statistically speaking, the longer the original battery is in place, the more likely it will fail and cause the board to suicide.
And, or course, even a 5-year replacement program is no guarantee. You could get a battery that is defective or has, for whatever reason, a short life span, and fails a day, week, month, etc after installing it. Anything’s possible, but we won’t go too far into the weeds with the “what-if’s”.
So, I don’t think there’s a right answer to the question, but I do offer the following, to consider:
- As we’ve said, the battery will certainly fail at some point. The longer the original battery is in place, the more likely it is to fail.
- There’s also the risk of battery leakage and greater damage to the board in the event that the battery fails. I don’t believe that a battery would fail today, and immediately start leaking. I think the reports of board damage due to battery leakage that have surfaced were likely the result of a neglected board sitting with a failed battery for some extended period of time, until the point that the battery leaked. But, I’m no expert in batteries, and it’s a risk nonetheless.
- As we’ve said, replacing the battery could cause the board to suicide. It’s a small chance, but I’ve had it happen on 1 out of 10 boards I replaced the battery on, and others have experienced it as well. In my case, the battery was out no more than 2 minutes, and in theory, you are supposed to have at least 30 minutes to perform the swap. All that said, there are many many CPS-2 collectors/owners who report never experiencing this problem. I believe it’s a fairly minute risk, but don’t have solid numbers on the rate of occurrence to know this for certain.
- If “uptime” is important to you, then implementing a rigid battery replacement program and/or going with suggestion #4 is probably a good idea. For instance, if your board is commonly used at tournaments, local gatherings, is regularly operated “on location”, etc, or even just you relying upon it to prep for tournaments, local gatherings, etc., then it’s probably best to replace the battery religiously every 5 years (or go with suggestion #4), and ensure it will be fully operational when you need it. If you can wait a couple weeks minimum, from the point of determining that the board has suicid’ed, then this may be less of a concern.
- Alternatively, riding out the battery until the point of failure and sending it to me or someone else to reprogram the board if it suicides, or putting together the components to reprogram encryption keys yourself, in the event you have a suicid’ed board, is now the ultimate insurance.
I hope this information is useful.