Icom IC-7100 Battery Modification

The real time clock battery in my Icom IC-7100 was always flat and the radio lost the time when I switched it off. After some searching and reading this was probably because I hadn't used the radio for a long time and the tiny rechargeable battery had become over-discharged and would no longer charge with powered up. I decided to replace the battery with a CR2032 which should give a few years of use.

I removed the original battery, cleaned up the solder pads and added some Kapton tape as insulation. I solder a 1N5819 SMD Schottky diode in series with +ve to stop the radio trying to charge the battery. I solder short wires to the battery and insulated the battery with more Kapton tape. The battery was then held onto the circuit board with tape wrapped around the SD card socket and circuit board.

The images below show the completed modification.