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Bought a saturn from a friend.....

Cyphix - Apr 1, 2003

		Cyphix		Apr 1, 2003
			I bought a saturn from a friend, and i bought a modboard. After looking at this... Im confused. How can i tell if i have the new or old Saturn lens?

		mal		Apr 1, 2003
			First of all you need to determine whether you have a 20 or 21 pin Saturn. Open it up and count the number of wires there are in the ribbon cable that connects the CD board to the mainboard. If there are 20, you can forget about using that sort of mod. 20 pin mods are quite rare, but they do occaisionallly turn up. If there are 21, you then need to look at the CD board. Have a look and see if it has a rectangular 32 pin IC, a square 64 pin IC or no obvious chips on it. If it has no ICs and a 'PC Trap' board in the middle of the ribbon cable, it seem that you're pretty much out of luck. If there isn't a PC trap, it can be modded. If it has the 32 pin IC, that's very easily modded and you can use any 21 pin mod. If it has the 64 pin IC, that's also easily modded, but it seems you need to buy a mod specifically from Gamegizmo.... Don't ask me why, as I don't know, but those ones work. For more details read the sticky...at the top of this forum. It needs the title to flash or something...

		Cyphix		Apr 2, 2003
			I have a 32 pin board and a 21 pin ribbon cable without the PC Trap. So i should be able to join points A and B on the mod and get it working, right? I just need to know if i should do the 0019 or 0014 solder bridge.

		Taelon		Apr 2, 2003
			mal, out of curiosity... What happens if you install a modboard with the wrong bridge connected? (the 0014/0019 thing?) The reason I ask is, I had no idea of this when I put mine in my Saturn, but it's worked fine since Day One. However, in very rare cases I notice the music playing from the CD breaking up during games, only to resume a few seconds later, then starting to break up again, etc. - this happens when using the CD player in the BIOS menu as well. But it's rare and doesn't bother me too much. I'm just wondering, could this be a result of using the wrong bridge for my particular Saturn? Or would the modboard just not work at all, then?

		mal		Apr 2, 2003
			That's a very good question. When I did the troubleshooting experiments and tried all different combinations of bridges and other 'errors', I saw no difference between using the 0014 and 0019 bridges. What confuses me the most is that I've read several others people's posts where they have had to change the bridge in order to make it work. It could always be that there was some other problem (mod inserted not quite correctly or something) and the removal and reinsertion made the difference rather than the bridge change. shrug

		Taelon		Apr 3, 2003
			Ah. I guess whatever my little issue is isn't modboard-related then. Hmm. Well, the picture further up says something about old-model and new-model lenses. What does that mean? Different versions of the CD-ROM drive?

Cyphix

Apr 3, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by Taelon@Apr 3, 2003 @ 02:48 PM



 Ah. I guess whatever my little issue is isn't modboard-related then. Hmm. Well, the picture further up says something about old-model and new-model lenses. What does that mean? Different versions of the CD-ROM drive?

That's what I'd like to know.

		mal		Apr 3, 2003
			:agree I'm guessing that it relates to the 64 pin IC/32 pin IC CD boards, but I think the 64 pin Saturn that I modded for ajnin a while back worked on 0014... Like I said, it's never been an issue for me on 32 pin Saturns. I'd try the 0014 first (all my Saturns have worked on that bridge) and try changing it to 0019 if it doesn't work.

		Eticam		Apr 10, 2003
			Mal, please help! I've read everything posted about modding Saturns, and I'm very confused. Please take a look at these 2 pictures, and please give me some advice: It seems I have a 64pin board. I connected point A to B on the modchip, and connected the pin at the corner of the modchip to the +5V. Then put it in, and tried it with the 0014 and the 0019 bridge. In both cases, this happens: Boots without the animation 2 red spheres cd doesn't rotate "checking disc format", and nothing more. Also, I noticed that for some reason, the sounds (of the cursor for entering date, or the control panel entering the screen) are pitched very low, like about 3 times as slow as normal. When I remove the modchip, everything works normal. Please help a desperate fellow Sega-fan in need :'( UPDATE: Ok, I'm very ashamed of myself... I put the ribbon cable up side down into the modchip....But still, this doesn't solve my problem totally. Now it will boot originals (so the modchip and the Saturn are ok), but it won't boot backups. So this means I either burned the backup with wrong settings, or the modchip still needs to be soldered onto the ic on the cd board. Oh, wait, I've still got my jumper set to 0019, I'm gonna try 0014...back in a minute.... UPDATE 2: Put the 0019 soldering back to 0014, and nothing changed, except for the fact that the Saturn gives a "no suitable disc" message after checking the cd for a shorter time. With the 0019 bridge, checking the disc would take like 10-15 secs, with the 0014 it was just 5 secs (or maybe it was just my imagination and there was no difference). So considering the fact that it does boot originals, I guess I burned the backups with wrong setting?

Lord Mardulak

Apr 10, 2003

	
	
		
		
			 mal, out of curiosity...



What happens if you install a modboard with the wrong bridge connected? (the 0014/0019 thing?)



The reason I ask is, I had no idea of this when I put mine in my Saturn, but it's worked fine since Day One. However, in very rare cases I notice the music playing from the CD breaking up during games, only to resume a few seconds later, then starting to break up again, etc. - this happens when using the CD player in the BIOS menu as well. But it's rare and doesn't bother me too much.



I'm just wondering, could this be a result of using the wrong bridge for my particular Saturn? Or would the modboard just not work at all, then?

I had a problem like that: I played a backup of Dracula X and after 2 hours of playing the music started breaking and after some time it completely disappeared and then the game crashed . in my case it was caused by unsoldered wires! after the problem happened I've SOLDERED the power modchip wire to the 5v and the problem disappeared! (previously the wire was not soldered - it was just "connected"

) mybe this is completely different problem - but i thought it's worth mentioning. maybe there some unstable connetions between your modchip and the Saturn...

		mal		Apr 11, 2003
			Where did you get the mod from? Some 21 pin mods seem to be incompatable with 64 pin Saturns. Also, and this is constructive criticism, the soldering you've done is pretty poor. It's possible that the soldering is causing some problems.

Taelon

Apr 12, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by Lord Mardulak@Apr 10, 2003 @ 04:15 PM



 




    	
	
		
		
			



 mal, out of curiosity...



What happens if you install a modboard with the wrong bridge connected? (the 0014/0019 thing?)



The reason I ask is, I had no idea of this when I put mine in my Saturn, but it's worked fine since Day One. However, in very rare cases I notice the music playing from the CD breaking up during games, only to resume a few seconds later, then starting to break up again, etc. - this happens when using the CD player in the BIOS menu as well. But it's rare and doesn't bother me too much.



I'm just wondering, could this be a result of using the wrong bridge for my particular Saturn? Or would the modboard just not work at all, then?




		
		
	



I had a problem like that: I played a backup of Dracula X and after 2 hours of playing the music started breaking and after some time it completely disappeared and then the game crashed . in my case it was caused by unsoldered wires! after the problem happened I've SOLDERED the power modchip wire to the 5v and the problem disappeared! (previously the wire was not soldered - it was just "connected"  ) mybe this is completely different problem - but i thought it's worth mentioning. maybe there some unstable connetions between your modchip and the Saturn...

Interesting!

In your case it sounds like the CD-ROM just stopped spinning/feeding the Saturn w/ data - causing the game to crash because Dracula X has the music stored in data files, not audio tracks... in my case, though, it only happens with CDDA music and after a few seconds of breaking up it bounces right back to normal playback, only to start breaking up again a little bit later... it's rare, and usually a reset seems to take care of it. Oh, and my wires are all soldered. ( WELL soldered, mal

)

mal

Apr 12, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by Taelon@Apr 12, 2003 @ 03:17 PM



 WELL soldered, mal

Good to hear.

Eticam

Apr 12, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by mal@Apr 12, 2003 @ 03:04 AM



 Where did you get the mod from? Some 21 pin mods seem to be incompatable with 64 pin Saturns.



Also, and this is constructive criticism, the soldering you've done is pretty poor. 



It's possible that the soldering is causing some problems.

It's a modchip from gocybershop.ca, I think it's the same as the one they sell at lik-sang. I know the ones from GameGizmo always work with 64pins saturns, but there are people who got it to work with this chip right? And yes, I know the soldering is bad, I only have a soldering iron with a HUGE tip here :/ I need to get it to a friend who has a good iron, but I'm sure the solderings don't shortcut, so it should work....

		mal		Apr 12, 2003
			Some people have got non-Gamegizmo mods to work with 64 pin Saturns, but not many. While the soldering probably isn't shorting out, it may be that it's making a bad connection and that is contributing to the problem.

Eticam

Apr 12, 2003

	
	
		
		
			Originally posted by mal@Apr 12, 2003 @ 03:30 PM



 Some people have got non-Gamegizmo mods to work with 64 pin Saturns, but not many. 



While the soldering probably isn't shorting out, it may be that it's making a bad connection and that is contributing to the problem.

Yes that's true....Well I'll try to make some good solderings soon when I have access to a good soldering iron, and we'll see what happens. If it doesn't work, I'm gonna get a GameGizmo mod. Thanks for your help