I recently acquired a (used, of course) Zoom MRT-3B drum machine, a cute little beatmaker from the early aughties (2003, best I can tell). I noticed after playing with it a few times that it was losing all user content every time I turned it off and on, displaying “Init” on startup. Turns out this is not because it’s Bri’ish, but is short for “initialize” which means, in effect, it’s erasing all user content. Bummer.
It occurred to me that this probably comes down to it storing user settings in battery-backed ram, and said battery was probably extinguished at 21 years of age. So I set about finding and replacing the battery in question. Sadly, I didn’t think to blog this for posterity until all was said and done, so I have no pictures for this tutorial. Nevertheless, hopefully it helps someone restore their machine to full use.
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