Yes, make a backup copy of your sounds as soon as possible.
Just had to replace the battery in my Indigo a couple of days ago. Thought it was motherboard trouble at first as all the patch names had suddenly been re-assigned random letters/signs, and the sounds themselves had become distorted - like they still bore partial resemblance to the previous actual sounds, but half of the parameters had been changed randomly.
Some sounded pretty cool, actually, while others sounded like something Satan would come up with, hardcore ear-ripping, headphone-shredding madness. However, the next time I switched the Virus back on all the sounds had gone and it kept showing "Initialize Global Memory" followed by "Load Bank A with Factory-Sounds?".
Thankfully I'd made a backup of my patches last month and was able to successfully use SoundDiver to transfer all my patches back to the Indigo over MIDI, and play them (while power remained on), so I knew it wasn't a DSP issue. But after the patches were erased every time after turning the Virus off and back on again, asking for a factory patch reset each time, I knew it most likely had to be the battery.
If your TI is like my Indigo, the battery is a standard 3Volt CR2032 lithium flat disc-shaped battery, same as used in calculators or similar devices. They're readily available in supermarkets and cheap to get.
Given it was my Indigo, the disassembly will be different to a TI keyboard (I assume you refer to the 61-note TI, rather than the Polar). I pretty used the similar disassembly method as I've outlined before in my [
Virus surgery: Re-Potting 101] thread, but this time only had to expose the motherboard.
^ CR2032 as circled.
Thankfully the battery is not soldered in situ like other manufacturers do (Korg et al), you can just slip it out and slip a new one in. Make a backup of your sounds
before you do this!
Installed the new battery two days ago now and the Indigo and all the patches work again like a charm.