Need electronic advice on battery connectors

acharris · March 1, 2012

Hi all I need some electronic advice. I picked myself up a old vintage computer battleship board game. I need to repair the battery connectors and the game uses 2 x PP3 9v batteries. Now I know that the game is suppose to have 2 x PP3 batteries connectors to put in the 2 batteries.

My friends one has 2 connectors with 2 red leads and 2 black leads, but the one I bought had broken connector, but only 1 connector with 1 x red and 1 black lead. there was 2 batteries in the compartment taped together but I could not see how they could have run it with 1 connector, broken at that.

I took it apart and had a look and only the wires of the 1 connector are soldered to the board, no broken wires or anything, just 1 pp3 connector. So I was wondering if anyone knew of a fix that I could do so that I could run 2 x PP3 connector clips and connect the 2 9v batteries so I can give it the 18 volts it needs to run. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

+Stephen Moss · March 6, 2012

First are you sure it needs 18V from the batteries and not 9V?

It may well need 18V from an external power unit but that is probably sub regulated internally to 9V where as the batteries may be powering it directly at 9V.

Considering the age of the unit it would make more sense for the batteries to be connected in parallel so that you get twice the current.

If you want to use two PP3 connectors and the unit needs 18V then you need to connect them is series, connect the red from one of the connectors to the black of the other then connect the remaining red and black to the points where the red and black from your existing single connector go. However, if it needs 9V then you need to connect them in parallel, connect both reds and both blacks together at the point where the red and black from your existing single connector go.

If you are uncertain if it requires 18V or 9V from the batteries and have access a multimeter/DVM and you friends unit try measuring the voltage by putting the black lead of the DVM on the -ve terminal of one battery and the red lead on the +ve terminal of the other battery, if you get about 9V they are in parallel, if you get about 18V they are in series (assuming they are fully charged).

Alternatively if you cannot get the meter leads in there without disconnecting the batteries then change if from measuring DC volts to resistance and remove the batteries, if they are connected in series you should get a reading of 0 when connecting to the one positive and one negative terminal that are connected (you may need to try several permutations to find the correct one) and infinate resistance (1 on the left of the display) when connecting to the other two terminals.

If they are in series then you should get a reading of 0 when connecting to either both -ve or both +ve terminals.