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Motherboard Issue (Game Disc Unsuitable)

mrandyk - Apr 24, 2019

		mrandyk		Apr 24, 2019
			Hi Everyone, I have a NTSC Model 2 Saturn that no longer reads game discs (official or otherwise) as being playable. It gives me the message "Game Disc Unsuitable For This System". The system apparently recognizes that this is a game disc judging by the message, but will only play the audio tracks. If I insert an AR cartridge I receive "Cartridge Unsuitable For This System". The system is modded with a chip, but I've bypassed that by removing it from the ribbon cable slot. Everything worked when I used the system last - about 2 years ago. Finally, I did buy a second Saturn on eBay with a broken disc drive and swapped the motherboards. This got me up and running so I know that nothing is wrong with the disc drive. Any ideas what is wrong with the motherboard and how I might be able to fix it? I'm hoping to keep all Saturn parts away from the graveyard.

		JDE		Apr 27, 2019
			You are doing well keeping any Saturn parts out of the coffin my man! I have two Saturns in bits im working on right now replacing the lasers i got off ebay. Ive yet to come across your interesting motherboard problem though i will say this...it is a mirricle any of these consoles are still working in 2019, since according to the holy golden manufacturing rule book, they were only meant to last long enough until the "next" system got released. I have just searched youtube for motherboard issues and have not found anything yet. If you have the time you could ask-give details to this fella. Shane McRetro... I have used his vids to fix stuff in the past but he is very busy and may take awhile to reply. Good luck!!

		antime		Apr 27, 2019
			If the system has been region modded, verify that the mod hasn't failed.

		JDE		Apr 27, 2019
			^ awww man, Mr antime sir...is there a link kicking around to info on "how to verify mod failure" S.O.P.? Probably going to need that myself at some point.

		mrandyk		Apr 28, 2019
			antime said: To my knowledge the system was not region modded, but I did purchase this system already modified (via a chip in ribbon cable slot) some 10+ years ago. I happen to have one Japanese game that came with the system but I don't believe I was ever able to play it due to region lock. Looking at the board it doesn't look like there was any work done. It seemed nearly identical to the one I pulled out of my 2nd Saturn.

		antime		Apr 29, 2019
			The "Game Disc Unsuitable" message means that the console has read the game header correctly from disc or cartridge, but that the region code in the header doesn't match the region code of the console. In the Saturn, the region code is defined by four inputs pins of the SMPC, that are either pulled high or low via a set of eight jumpers (two per pin, one for pulling it high, another for pulling it low). With four pins, there are sixteen combinations, of which 8 were defined, but ultimately only four were used. All the Action Replay cartridges I've seen include all the original eight area codes in the header, so this effectively means that your Saturn is reporting itself as one of the eight unused regions. Depending on the model of your mainboard, the jumpers are either traces on the board, resistors, or a combination of both. They are marked as JP6-JP13 on the mainboard. Their location varies depending on board model, but they will be near the SMPC, near the controller ports. It is unlikely that a surface mount resistor would fail silently, usually it takes mechanical damage, or a power supply problem feeding a large current through it. A PCB trace jumper is even less likely to fail, and I think you'd have noticed any gouges in the board. Nevertheless, it would be worth checking them. For a North American Saturn, the I believe the jumpers should be set as follows: JP6 - open JP7 - closed JP8 - open JP9 - closed JP10 - closed JP11 - open JP12 - open JP13 - closed You can also probe pins 5-8 of the SMPC, they should be pulled low, low, high, low. Another possibility is that a memory chip has failed, corrupting the header in RAM, but I would expect the header check to fail completely in that case.