Home	Forums	What's new	Resources

Saturn Modding Troubles

crisis - Apr 22, 2006

		crisis		Apr 22, 2006
			This is my first official post to SegaXtreme, so I figured I'd make it a good one! Prologue: I had a Saturn with the mod points taped in. I had become more proficient at soldering, so I decided to properly solder the Saturn. Too much of a solder blob led over from A+B to the 5V connector, and I was greeted with a fireball and smoke. That particular Saturn's CD drive no longer works. So, thanks to a local video game shop, I have a Model 2 Saturn with a 32-pin IC. I also happened to have a second Saturn modchip (I bought two, initially). No matter how I try it, I'm always getting the condition where the Saturn will boot the CD, but it treats all discs (official releases and CD-Rs) as Audio CDs. I tried doing both the A+B bridge and the bridge wire to Pin 14 method. With each of these methods, I tried every possible connection between the 14 and 19 points (just 14 bridged, just 19 bridged, both of them bridged, none of them bridged). In each of these cases, it behaves exactly the same. When the Saturn is plugged in without a modchip, official Saturn games load up and function just fine. I've gone ahead and ordered a new Saturn modchip from RacketBoy (great site, BTW!). However, in the meantime, is there ANYTHING that the SegaXtreme think tank came suggest that I could try? I've been at this for several hours, and I was so dearly hoping to finish it up tonight and put it back in the entertainment center. Thanks in advance for any and all replies!

		racketboy		Apr 22, 2006
			hey there! I just responded to your question over at my board http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=212...

		SirMorrisBig		Apr 26, 2006
			Hi crisis! My first post too . I just finished a pretty scary mod on my uk model 1 saturn last night, and I think I can safely say I've seen probably every combination of blob shapes and colours on the cd-player screen! The good news is that things spin and there's no smoke this time. The thing to do is keep your head and keep trying. The does-everything-but-play-games symptom you describe was fixed in my case by re-seating the modchip. However YMMV as:- Having the drive cable inserted into the modchip upside-down can look like this too. I was about fling my hacked modchip in the bin and buy another (hi racketboy! and yes - i was ignoring my own advice - as is my perogative!) when I though of flipping the cable over. I'm now the (very) proud owner of a fully pimped saturn with the switch-free-microcontroller-based-region-and-refresh-rate-hack as implemented by this chap: http://seb.riot.org/saturnmod/... Oh and I made the access LED blue, simply beacuse you have to, right? If you want to PM/mail me feel free and I'll help if I can. Are you UK based by any remote chance? TTFN, Charlie