OK, so I have a couple Seibu pcbs (Raiden II, Raiden DX) I am putting in a project, and I am still getting my head around using original hardware as opposed to a pc/game console/etc. One area I am confused is the battery on the PCB. From what I can tell, batteries do different things for different manufacturer's games- they can leak and damage the board, or die and lose crucial data (suicide battery)?, or die and no longer save scores (which I think is the case on my Seibu boards).
Anyone have a link/resource that outlines what to do to maintain the batteries on different boards? How concerned should i be about the battery? Should it be removed or replaced (and if I did, would it save scores again?).