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Saturn USB Mod
Knight0fDragon - Jun 13, 2025
 Knight0fDragon Jun 13, 2025
I am in the process of revamping antime's USB Cart to not be tied to the CS0 line as well as not being tied to any cart in particular. The purpose of this is to allow us to have something more useful than the serial connector.

My current goal for it is to allow us to play Netlink games as well as having access to extended RAM. (I already have Netlink play working with the current USB cart.)

When all is said and done, this mod should be able to be done right on the Saturn's MB, so any cart can be added. This will be especially useful for my SF3 online project as access to the memory card means more saves, and access to 4MB RAM means more online data being stored instead of having to retransfer.

Currently it is planned to work off of the CS2 line using the area that Netlink uses to do its transfers.

Current line of thinking is this:

4 to 16 Demux
A12 must be low.
If A12 is high, then all pins are high, disabling both chips ability to write.

CS2 must be low.
If CS2 is high, then all pins are high, disabling both chips ability to write.

If Write is low, then FT245RL(FIFO) is the only path.

If Read is low and A12 is high, then 74HCT245 (Flags) is the only path
If Read is low and A13 is high, then FT245RL (FIFO) is the only path.
Else both chips ability to read are disabled.

0x25802XXX is used for Flags
0x25803XXX is invalid.
0x25804XXX is used for FIFO
There is mirroring as only A13 and A14 are checked, so as long as one of those is high, you will get results.
Should be safe with Netlink as pin 12 is required to be high.
Should be safe from CS2 as it falls within the allowed range like Netlink does







Now I am not a hardware guy, so I am sure there may be things I am overlooking.


Added a new pic mapping the 4MB cart pins since I am going to use this for now.



 Solitario Jun 13, 2025
It will be wonderful to be able to play Saturn Bomberman online and other games, unfortunately my country has communist policies and prevented the entry of the components that were missing from USB Dev Cart, I ended up without the components, they are really difficult to find.

 Knight0fDragon Jun 13, 2025

Solitario said:

What chips are not allowed? You do not need the parts that deal with the game storage, you just need the parts that handle the USB

 Solitario Jun 13, 2025

Knight0fDragon said:

So I only need this components U8, 74LS154, 74HCT245 ?

 Knight0fDragon Jun 13, 2025
I am not sure, what I posted are just notes until the parts come in.

From what I can tell, only the two 74hct245, the 74hct138, and the ft245RL are the only major components needed. The 74HCT32 and the SST39SF010A might not be. So if you can't get the components, you may be able to make USB carts that have no menu on them.

 Knight0fDragon Friday at 12:18 AM
Finally got all the parts needed for this, next step is to assemble.

 Waterfuell Yesterday at 8:31 AM
Good job.


Knight0fDragon said:


F245RL Write input is active High, so you should invert 74LS154 output.

For full compatibility with all cartridges, consider examining the function pins FC0 and FC1. These are used for IRQ acknowledgment in the Netlink and for RAM refresh in the RAM cartridge. As I recall, they share the data and address bus when their respective functions are active.

 Knight0fDragon Yesterday at 7:19 PM

Waterfuell said:

Doc says it writes to the transfer buffer when it goes from high to low. Wouldn't that mean I need to make it low to send the data.

Not sure if I need to worry about the IRQ lines as I do not want the USB to be affected by it, and the address should disable it.

Netlink's XBand library does not use the IRQ, only the dialup portion does.