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Okay, so I got a beautiful backlit Game Boy for my birthday and I'm curious, since the Power LED is no longer there, how does one gauge the battery life? Will the backlight start to fade out? Should I just guess? Does the backlight decrease the normal battery life?
Of course, letting the battery die while tracking is usually bad, right? I backup often, but still..
Last edited by PixyJunket (Feb 8, 2010 6:42 pm)
you could view some contrast missing and hour before the battery dies..
..and than PUF! The gameboy turns off suddenly. 
Btw i never had any problem with this.
..when the batteries (and the gameboy) die , i just change them and i continue to tracking. 
yeah,
since the LED is gone there's no visible notification that the batteries are dying.
i personally have used my gameboy enough to gauge it's battery life, and just
change them periodically when i assume the time is right. with mine, nanoloop
will work until the DMG just shuts off. but my ems32 cart w/ LSDj will not boot
when the batteries are too low.
side note:
i have NOT noticed any change in battery life now that i have installed the backlight!
Yeah, your indication that you're running low on power is a sudden drop in contrast. One thing which bothers me is how people just yank the old power indication LED out, since that thing actually would give you some good indication of whether the system was going to die soon or not.
One thing which bothers me is how people just yank the old power indication LED out, since that thing actually would give you some good indication of whether the system was going to die soon or not.
the reasoning is two fold.
(1) space :: if the LED is still on the board the backlight module doesn't have enough room.
(2) power :: the backlight is actually powered from the old LED's posts.
not to mention, the resistor that is installed for the backlight is a standard value across all colors of LED's.. this is how nonfinite ships them.
But if you know anything about how led's brightness vs. color of LED you'd know that each color draw's a different amount of current. So..
you could have a color that is super bright and thus drawing a lot of current which is killing your battery life. They dont have to be Excessively bright to be functional.. Something to consider peeps..
Thanks for the information guys, I'll keep backing up regularly until I get a feel for when I should be expecting to change.
Ikea sells 10 packs of really good AAs for $1.99 so I could honestly not care if I'm ditching them early either.
Ikea sells 10 packs of really good AAs for $1.99 so I could honestly not care if I'm ditching them early either.
you could also pull them out and use them is something less "mission critical"
I read somewhere that 4 AAs in a DMG last about 30 hours.
As far as I know, the backlight doesn't decrease this limit all too much, so I suppose you could estimate how long's left on your batteries like that.
edit: I was wrong about the Fuji Enviromax line, they're absolutely no different from regular batteries.
Fuji 1, me 0.
Last edited by orgwell (Feb 12, 2010 4:45 pm)
I read somewhere that 4 AAs in a DMG last about 30 hours.
As far as I know, the backlight doesn't decrease this limit all too much, so I suppose you could estimate how long's left on your batteries like that.
Yeah, one set lasts a VERY long time.
I've heard rechargeables last a fraction of that, anybody care to chime in?
I've heard rechargeables last a fraction of that, anybody care to chime in?
I can't comment on the specific duration of rechargeables in a DMG, but I've shied away from them in general because I find their overall functionality to be significantly less convenient than single-use batteries. Rechargeables lose a portion of their overall capacity following each charge, and I believe their lifespan is somewhere around 50-60 charges. Because of this gradual decay, you may never really know where any one battery is, re: immediate charge or overall lifespan. More "professional" uses in the music-industry never use rechargeables, for many of these same reasons. Recharging a whole fleet of batteries is always a cluster-fuck, and certain varieties of rechargeables are cautioned not to be used with certain charging-units.
All these reasons --> my decision to go with the Fuji Enviromax. My city has a "responsible battery disposal" program as well, so that helps me to feel even better about my my battery-use.
Yes, orgwell has it about right. When I need long battery life in my devices, especially my Tandy 102, I go with plain old alkaline AA batteries.
For those who'd prefer their battery-use to be less environmentally toxic, I've recently come across these:
AA Size Digital Alkaline Battery
- Dispose of in Most Landfills*
*Please follow your state and local regulations regarding the proper disposal of all batteries.
Fuck those guys. Seems like a load of shit. They are just standard alkaline batteries. Use rechargeable batteries or one of those DMG recharger packs.
mmm i use lithium cells and they give me from 12 to 20 hours on a gba, depending on the soft used.