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My saturn boots to a black screen

Blodsverging - Oct 11, 2002

		Blodsverging		Oct 11, 2002
			Its a model 1 which i have had for a few months(second hand of course).I have been using the swap trick but the previous owner i am pretty sure did not know of the swap trick,so about 3 weeks use of the swap trick(can't see any damage coming from that).It was in good condition when i got it and i have cleaned the power supply and laser recently but it still didn't work.I had not used it for about 3 weeks till today.When it boots up the red light flashes for a few seconds and stops while the cd continues to spin,i'd say that means its at the clock display screen which probably means there's a problem with rf cable but im hoping its something simpler i can fix right now,any ideas?? Thanks

		Taelon		Oct 11, 2002
			Let's see.... black screen? Anything happen if you turn your Saturn on with a disc inserted? If you turn it on with the drive empty, do you hear the sound from the startup animation?

		Blodsverging		Oct 11, 2002
			Nope no sound when turned on with or without a disc inserted. The only activity is the disc is spinning,and the lights for power and the laser are flashing,no sound or picture but the black possibly proves that at least some signal is coming through as when the saturn is off its the white and black ants look(whatever its called).

		Curtis		Oct 12, 2002
			It's usually called "snow" or "static". As for your problem, your theory may be correct about going straight to the "enter the data and time" screen because this means that the start up animation is bypassed. If you still have sound output, you should be able to hear the noises the Saturn makes when you move the pad. However, this is of absolutely no use to you if there is some kind of permanant hardware damage. You could try checking to see if the cable between the CD and mainboard is in place, although it will usually boot to the CD audio screen if there is a problem here. I think that it is most likely that you have some kind of fault with your unit that you wont be able to fix. Open it up and check for any obvious blown components on the mainboard (will require much tedious screw-undoing).

		Blodsverging		Oct 13, 2002
			Well it boots every now and then now but now i have found another problem.The sound is stuffed up big time as if not all the sound chips is running...its a really weird effect,like its running through an old midi chip. I partly fixed the first problem by cleaning the power supply pins more throroughly but it didn't seem to fix it completely,like it did when a similar problem happened to my dc so maybe the pins actually took some damage rather than got dirty.I'm pretty pissed off right now though,but i'll open up the entire thing tommorrow and have a look at the mainboard and hopefully i'll be able to fix it.

		Blodsverging		Oct 14, 2002
			I've now got everything working except for the sound is still f*cked up.Does anybody have any ideas on how to fix this? Thanks

		SilentSnipeR		Oct 14, 2002
			is it possible it could be the cable?