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Japanese sega saturn mod model 2 - what have I done wrong..

Zincmann - Feb 9, 2013

		Zincmann		Feb 9, 2013
			20130209_161714.jpg (95.3 KiB) Viewed 22 times Ok so I have done my due dilligence by reading some of the trouble shooting guides online. I bought my mod chip for my Saturn from Racket boy and never have done soldering before. I bought the unit off Ebay from someone here in the US had never been modded before, so I ordered the chip with the red wire (power) and blue wire (Signal). Because my power board had a what seemed to be a heat sink around the power area to solder I soldered the red wire to the right pin but underneath the board, assume that is right? Anyway I was able to properly install the ribbon cable to the chip and i think the chip is in right. I soldered the blue signal wire to Pin 14 as instructed because it IS a japanese model and the A+B wire trick wont work on it. So when everything was powered on, the system boots up to the time set screen which I bypass (needs a new battery) and the disc in the drive spins..now I also have a US black Saturn when I put a disc in there it seems to spin up much faster, so as the troubleshooting guide said the disc spins, I am not sure as to what level it should be spinning but it spins...the cubes are green in the menu and detects it as an audio disc HOWEVER when i try to play the game disc which is a CD-R burned via ImgBurn at 5x it just is all static and thinks its a music disc. I then put in a US Music CD-R and same thing static then a US Store Bought music disc same thing static. I then put a US region Saturn game Original in it for Shits and Giggles and it again thought it was a audio CD. So I then put all of those discs in the US Saturn unmodded and all were detected as what they should be. So I am not sure if my chip is seated right? Seems to be nice and snug inside and as close to the white harness on the mother board as possible. So what have i done wrong? the space to solder the blue wire is quite tiny but i tinned the copper wire on the chip and then added a tiny bit of solder JUST enough to adhere to that contact point. Tough to see in pics though where it should be connected to...but i did my best. Any thoughts?? Some additional notes: Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:37 pm so I saw a few other close ups of course still cleaner than my work and i saw the actual wire soldered to the chip and not to the board per se...so again I melted it removed the joing from where I put it and resoldered it to #14 on the chip but still same symptoms. Could my drive not be spinning up fast enough? I saw a you tube video saying something about the pentiometer not spinning the disc of fast enough and it only reads audio cds...

		Zincmann		Feb 10, 2013
			Thegadgetguy said: 20130209_161714.jpg (95.3 KiB) Viewed 22 times Ok so I have done my due dilligence by reading some of the trouble shooting guides online. I bought my mod chip for my Saturn from Racket boy and never have done soldering before. I bought the unit off Ebay from someone here in the US had never been modded before, so I ordered the chip with the red wire (power) and blue wire (Signal). Because my power board had a what seemed to be a heat sink around the power area to solder I soldered the red wire to the right pin but underneath the board, assume that is right? Anyway I was able to properly install the ribbon cable to the chip and i think the chip is in right. I soldered the blue signal wire to Pin 14 as instructed because it IS a japanese model and the A+B wire trick wont work on it. So when everything was powered on, the system boots up to the time set screen which I bypass (needs a new battery) and the disc in the drive spins..now I also have a US black Saturn when I put a disc in there it seems to spin up much faster, so as the troubleshooting guide said the disc spins, I am not sure as to what level it should be spinning but it spins...the cubes are green in the menu and detects it as an audio disc HOWEVER when i try to play the game disc which is a CD-R burned via ImgBurn at 5x it just is all static and thinks its a music disc. I then put in a US Music CD-R and same thing static then a US Store Bought music disc same thing static. I then put a US region Saturn game Original in it for Shits and Giggles and it again thought it was a audio CD. So I then put all of those discs in the US Saturn unmodded and all were detected as what they should be. So I am not sure if my chip is seated right? Seems to be nice and snug inside and as close to the white harness on the mother board as possible. So what have i done wrong? the space to solder the blue wire is quite tiny but i tinned the copper wire on the chip and then added a tiny bit of solder JUST enough to adhere to that contact point. Tough to see in pics though where it should be connected to...but i did my best. Any thoughts?? Some additional notes: Sat Feb 09, 2013 5:37 pm so I saw a few other close ups of course still cleaner than my work and i saw the actual wire soldered to the chip and not to the board per se...so again I melted it removed the joing from where I put it and resoldered it to #14 on the chip but still same symptoms. Could my drive not be spinning up fast enough? I saw a you tube video saying something about the pentiometer not spinning the disc of fast enough and it only reads audio cds... Anyone???

		AG Wolf		Feb 26, 2013
			Thegadgetguy said: Anyone??? If the systeam was able to read discs before the modchip, do not fiddle with the laser's potentiometer. There are a number of different things you might have done wrong, but when you make one post with a book's worth of unbroken text, it's hard to try and help you troubleshoot. - are you certain you soldered the 5v red wire to the correct power pin? There are two different models of Saturn power supplies (one with 4 pins, one with 5). Use a multimeter to verify that you've found the correct pin. - you say you soldered to pin 14 on the drive assembly chip; was it the 32pin or 64pin chip? If it's the 64pin chip, you need to solder to pin 8. - make sure you didn't end up with any solder bridges that might be shorting pins/traces where-ever you've done some soldering. Get a magnifying glass and look carefully. - Also, the orientation of the modchip and cable is different depending on what model you've got... go here and do some reading for more information: http://www.segastyle.com/saturnmod.html... One last note, if the machine is hard-wired as a Japanese model (ie: you haven't done any kind of region modification), then you need to test your work with japanese region games- both official and burned.