quik-n-sleazy me-5 battery replacement

[pinkjimiphoton]

Hi there

 

Thanks for the manual I d/l from your sight. It was a surprise to see it after searching all of these years, and then to see it on the Boss site . .weird!

 

But I think my internal battery might die soon, its the original one, and might be nearing its end. Could I have the instructions on how to change it as well?

 

Thanks!

Bruce

 

PS How do you keep control of all of your gear??

 

cheers

Hi Bruce,

my pleasure to supply the manual, i hope it proves helpful....

and that section of the roland website never DID used to be there, or else it's one of those "who you know" deals, i guess....lol...the important thing is that ya got a copy!!!

if you can solder, you'll have no problems.

what you'll need is some hook up wire and some shrink wrap/electrical tape, a small piece of foam rubber can help, depends on how you want to do it...a coin cell battery (CR2032) and a battery holder.

my main me-5 is stuck on my pedalboard with silicon at the momet, and my spare is being borrowed, so i'm going on memory here.....and my way, tho it does work, is probably not the correct way to do it....you may want to modfy it as it seems suitable.

basically take off the back cover....and look at the circuit board with the pedals pointing at you (the unit is upside down)....my fix may seem crazy, but the me5 has traces and stuff on both sides of the circuit board and there's a lot of disassembly involved to really do it "right"....so here's my workaround.

if you look on the main circuit board in the bottom right quadrant close to the edge, you'll see an old-school lithium battery...it looks like a little barrel, about a half inch or so long and about as big around as a fat pencil....it has orange plastic with writing on it that crinkly kind of plastic, and there are two flat metal tabs on it, (IT LOOKS ALMOST LIKE AN ELECTROLYTIC CAP!!) on either end that solder into the circuit board.....these we want to keep!!! note which side is +, which is -.....write it down.

now also, you need to back up your data!!!!!

ya need a midi cable, the kind that plugs in your pc by USB or the old ones that connect to the joystick port on the back of your soundcard!!!!!

dl "midiox" if you need to (it's free) and dump the sysex from the me5 into your machine with it. otherwise, you WILL lose EVERYTHING you have for programs you've patched....you can use a sequencer to save it, too, if you have one....restoring the factory presets is no big deal, but you want to keep your patches!!!!

anyways, back to this orange battery...take some needlenose pliers, and carefully peel off one of the tabs going to the circuit board from the battery....make sure it doesn't break on the circuit board side!!! then do it on the other side, same thing...now ya have two little leads sticking up where the lithium battery was...

take your coin cell holder, figure out which terminals are + or- and solder 3/4 inches of hook up wire (different colors makes it easier slightly) to the terminals...to get the thing to fit, ya may have to bend the terminals so they are not gonna hit against the case of circuit board...now take the wire, twist it together tightly (probably not necessary to twist them, but i do) and connect the respective wires to hot and ground on the tabs sticking up from the circuit board.

dude, you're almost done!!

this is where the foam rubber comes in....

install your battery, fire up the me-5 to make sure it's all working...(check, then doublecheck your connections!!! no shorts!!) turn it off, wrap the battery you just installed in a small piece of foam rubber, add a touch of electric tape to hold it shut, and find somehere to stash it where it won't rattle around when ya put the back cover back on, then put the back cover back on and you're good to go!!

now in 4-6 years ya just replace the coin cell....ya probably shouldn't, but i've replaced while the unit was on and running in the past if i had to so i didn't lose my data.

now all ya have to do is reinitialize the me-5's factory presets, then reload your patches....

if you have a laptop and are short on $, sometimes you can get the guy at the music store let you "try" the midi cable right there so you don't have to buy it, lol...

but they're cheap..the usb ones i think are slightly better than the old school ones.

one caveat: sometimes the plugs labeled midi in/ midi out on these adapters are labeled BACKWARDS from how you'd expect.....midi in might mean it connects to the MIDI IN on the COMPUTER, not midi in on the unit, capiche???

any probs, you know where to find me bro.

hope it works out for ya, happy wailing!!!!!

peace

[Zemu]

Hello,

I see only a bios-like battery on the board. I want to remove it,  but it is stuck with an adhesive i guess. So what should i do?