How to mod a 21 pin Saturn

[attilathehun]

Der uh dah um I think I got it? That picture wasnt't large enought to show actual entire loop. When I bought the saturn it worked but the ribbon cable was pretty kinked up. Also there is a tiny bit of excess solder left bridging the 64 pin chip. Do you think that this could be the porblem causing it to hiss and not read cds? lol! :smash :lol:

 

[dj898]

finally done with country and 50/60z switch mod on my PAL Saturn and the next stop is the mod chip. I have two different mod chip from different vendors and will have to try Mel's trick this weekend...

while I'm at it I might as well put the internals of PAL into white JPN Saturn shell as I have one not working... 🙂

if everything goes well I will try the remaining mod chip on JVC V-Saturn (M2)...

cheers

p.s. anyone know how to rip the disc other than using CDRWIN - is it right? can't recall top of my head ATM? I'm keep getting ASAPI(?) error on my WinXP. I already installed the dang driver few times... 🙁 is there another program that can be used to rip on WinXP?

 

[lordofduct]

ahhh, i hated modding my sat. Killed my 64 pin doing it, but got it on my 32 pin (i own several of every sega system just in case a break down)... Now you might say, moron, why can't you solder. Hrm, try soldering when you use a 12 gauge sewing needle stuck through a wine cork and a candle. VERY DIFFICULT. yeah im poor.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Originally posted by lordofduct@Aug 4, 2004 @ 08:54 AM

Hrm, try soldering when you use a 12 gauge sewing needle stuck through a wine cork and a candle. VERY DIFFICULT. yeah im poor.

Hehe I guess its like the old saying, "Necessity is the mother of all invention"

 

[patroclus02]

Anyone knows where to buy the modchip in europe appart from robbweb??

Also, anyone knows if V2 modchip is better than classic one?? (V2 is the none soldering one, that comes along with another ribbon cable, and classic one is the one inserted into saturn's motherboard)

thanks!

 

[Sasurai]

bought a modchip from gamefreax.de a while ago and modded succesfully a model 2 64pin saturn (joined a+b). only problem is that you must wait till the cd player to insert the cd, if boot up directly it´s only recognized as cd-audio. someone know how to fix this.

mode 0014 working

mode 0019 not working (cds are recognized as cd-audio)

here are the chips which are on the modboard:

EM78P156ELP 0151D BP1CL1

GAL16V8B 10LJ J504B01

74HC157 9DA001

there is also SSIC8B printed on the board

Saturn Model 2 (Europe) MK-80200A built in Singapure

 

[attilathehun]

Originally posted by Sasurai@Aug 17, 2004 @ 09:14 AM

bought a modchip from gamefreax.de a while ago and modded succesfully a model 2 64pin saturn (joined a+b). only problem is that you must wait till the cd player to insert the cd, if boot up directly it´s only recognized as cd-audio. someone know how to fix this.

mode 0014 working

mode 0019 not working (cds are recognized as cd-audio)

here are the chips which are on the modboard:

EM78P156ELP 0151D BP1CL1

GAL16V8B 10LJ J504B01

74HC157 9DA001

there is also SSIC8B printed on the board

Saturn Model 2 (Europe) MK-80200A built in Singapure

Do you have any original saturn discs to play in it or just bu and imports?

If you have the original disc that is for the region of your saturn and it just plays audio then you might have a problem try adusting the laser lens. If its a bu and all you getting is audio then its probably because it was not burned properly with the video files. If its a import then you dont have a language switch/4-1Plus pro action replay. :devil

 

[shadowc001]

Hey, I have a sanyo cd board in my saturn and have tried every setting i can think of to get the mod to work... right now i have tried something that i dont think anyone else has, i jus took out the pc trap board and tried the mod that way... oddly enough it works for retail games only still (with the mod in and the pc trap board sill connected on different settings i can only get this or the audio cd thing).

ive also noticed that there is a 48 pin IC chip on the trap board, now im not real good at guts of electronics but wouldnt this be the same as the other ic chips? if so is there a pin that i can solder a wire to on that? or is it jus pointless to continue trying with this model saturn? One thing i did notice different from the pictures of the working sanyo saturn is i have 4 pins on my powersupply, which shouldnt make a difference but mabye something is different on the motherboard itself that is mod resistent?

 

[mal]

Originally posted by shadowc001@Aug 21, 2004 @ 04:07 PM

ive also noticed that there is a 48 pin IC chip on the trap board, now im not real good at guts of electronics but wouldnt this be the same as the other ic chips? if so is there a pin that i can solder a wire to on that?

I really have no idea. There may be a pin that would be worth soldering to on the PC trap, but I haven't had the time or the interest to check it out.

 

[patroclus02]

I have a 32 pin Saturn that works perfect with modchip A+B and V2 modchip (the one with quartz crystal on it).

I just got a sanyo cd-drive Saturn, and it does not work neither with A+B mochips or V2. I tried both 14 and 19 settings. All cds are as if they were audio cds.

Some people made it work (for example Mike, who posted a link to a web with some great pictures of a sanyo modified saturn). Do you know what can be wrong??

About the PC Trap, it seems like the 48 pin IC migth do some signal procesing to avoid modchiping.

 

[TJax69]

I've read through most of this topic, and decided I think I know enough to try and mod a Saturn, only problem is I don't have a Saturn. I have no idea how to tell if a Saturn is the dreaded 64pin model or not, is there any identifying features? Or perhaps a certain model # that is definately noy 64 pin? Basically is there any way to remove ANY potential 64 pin Saturns from my consideration? I just ordered a mod chip from Jandaman and now I'm anxious to get a Saturn and mod away!

EDIT: Well I've now read the ENTIRE thread and I guess I'm pretty much screwed if I get a 64 pin model, so I guess now I need any tips as to how NOT to end up with 64 pin model, ANY info on what to look for would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[TJax69]

I read over as many topics as I could that related to moding Saturns and the difference between the 64 and 32 pin Saturns and it appears as though ALL Saturns made in june/july 96 are 64 pin, while Saturns made in Aug/Sep/ Oct 96 are ALL 32 pin.

Could someone help me verify this? Either confirm that your Saturn fits that description, or tell me if your Saturn is different. IE: your june 96 saturn happens to be 32 pin. Thanks in advance.

 

[slinga]

Wow this thread is massive.

Just letting you guys know I successfully modded a Skeleton saturn with a jandaman mod using Mal's A+B.

Mod chip faces into towards the cd block, and there is NO TWIST in the ribbon cable. This is the opposite of my USA black saturn.

I ran into an issue with the chip being loose, but that can be fixed witha little tape I guess.

 

[TJax69]

I finally got my Saturn from ebay, it was an october model from malayasia and it was indeed 32 pins. I had no problems using Mal's method and a jandaman chip. It's working great, thanks for this thread, it's the best source of Saturn mod info by far.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Originally posted by TJax69@Sep 6, 2004 @ 11:55 PM

I read over as many topics as I could that related to moding Saturns and the difference between the 64 and 32 pin Saturns and it appears as though ALL Saturns made in june/july 96 are 64 pin, while Saturns made in Aug/Sep/ Oct 96 are ALL 32 pin.

Could someone help me verify this? Either confirm that your Saturn fits that description, or tell me if your Saturn is different. IE: your june 96 saturn happens to be 32 pin. Thanks in advance.

This is the conclusion that I also came to while searching for Saturns to Mod. I was hoping to get a larger number of people to give the statistics of the Saturns they have and try to pin point the exact times different revisions of the Saturn began and ended but that never really happened. So for now aug sept and oct 96 seem to be your safest bet.

 

[nim]

I finaly bought a soldering iron and modded my white 32-pin saturn (with no crystal) however I soldered the timing wire to the 14th leg (3rd from the right as displayed in the guide), I followed this guide which you have probably already seen.

It all worked at first try :¨), now no more wearing on my RSG and DDP discs. thought I'd report this since it differs from mal's report on the same kind of saturn, I guess you may have miscounted and actually soldered to the 14th leg also? otherwhise I could state that I got mashed up sprites in shienryu if the soldering to 14th instead of 13th would be a worse option and actually result in errors like that, it may sound silly from an insightful position, I guess it was something else,. well otherwhise it all worked great for me, the RSG I tested was burnet directly from my original so I can be quite sure it works I think :¨)

ps: thanks mal for tip on how to solder to the leg! it was easy even for first time soldering!

 

[Emulsifier]

Thank you Everyone for the help in this forum! Finally (after 2.5 hours) I got my mod to work, the A-B bridge would have been useful earlier, since I soldered pin 14 to pin 15 after fixing that I got the wire properly connected to pin 14, still didnt work, found this forum and realized my power or my ribbon were not properly connected, an hour later and no luck, I was uninstalling the chip when I realized that you need to push the ribbon (or the chip) into the board pretty hard, and it goes in pretty far (much farther than I had been previously getting the chip to go into) one last try, +15 minutes to heat up my soldering iron to reconnect the power and it works! Thank God! And segaXtreme Forums!

 

[nim]

Hurrah! :¨D

 

[sardiax]

i've been lurking a bit and finally got around to trying to mod my model 2 32 pin ic sega saturn (MK-80000A, Manufactured early 97 i think.) i opened it up, soddered the A+B point, removed the ribbon cable from the motherboard, plugged it into the chip, and seated the chip pretty firmly into the motherboard. ( it seemed to be in as far as it could go ) i whipped out the voltage tester and concluded that the 2nd slot of the white plastic power thingy(for last of a better word) was a reasonable five volt source and slid the power wire from the modboard in there. i taped the door control closed so that i could test it without the link, taped the wires down and booted up the saturn. none of the copies or original i have on hand will play, two green cubes audio tracks only. i switched the jumped from 0014 to 0019 still no success. fiddled with it a bit more with no luck. the only thing that bothered me was that with the chip sucking the five volt source there was a bit of additional fuzz on the picture. little worried for my saturn at this point i took every apart and reconnected it regularly and it runs originals fine just like normal. anybody have suggestions? i've considered trying another modchip, the one i have i ordered from console-accessories, its a thin boarded blue chip that i've seen in many pictures.

edit - hmm got around to trying again. i tried taping the signal wire right up to pin 8(from the right) of the 32 pin ic on the cd board, after trying the A+B point connect, and got nothing. looking over things again noticed its pin 3/pin 14 on the 32 pin ic. so i changed the jumper back to 0014, taped the signal wire to the right pin and it worked fine. attempted to sodder, but then decided it against considering i'd stand atleast a better chance of soddering it than frying something in my saturn with some decent equipment. left it taped and decided to do a little testing. between testing different backups it had one point stopped working, as in no cd motor movement, no lens movement from power-up, i opened it up again real quick, pulled out the modboard from the motherboard, and the cd ribbon out of the modboard and then plugged them back together again and it worked fine. i'm thinking this might be caused by dirty contacts on either the ribbon or the modboard. i plan on heading to a friend's with better equipment later this week and cleaning the contacts and getting that sodder done.

i'm assuming the A+B bridge might not work because of a different model of cdboard, i dont' recall exactly what mine was but i remember seeing JVC written on,, i'll make a note of it next time.

 

[Shakey Jake33]

Just posting some info some people might find useful... I admit I've not read every page of this huuuuge topic, and I hope I'm not repeating what has already been said.

I have 2 PAL Model 2 Saturns here. Both externally identical. Both with the model number MK-80200A-50. One of them worked fine using the A-B method. One did not.

I decided to inspect the units closer, and found the CD units to be *very* slightly different.

While the CD units were both pretty much identical (both 32pin IC's I add), the CD unit for the machine that worked with this method was Assy CD Unit SAT JVC EXL P605. (You can see this label on the left hand side of the unit). This CD unit worked flawlessly with the A-B method.

However, my other machine had a CD unit marked as Assy CD Unit SAT JVC EXL P608 This CD Unit did not work with the A-B method whatsoever. This CD Unit also had a white boarder around the edge of the unit, which the other one did not have.

Just to prove this was not a fluke, my White Saturn also has the latter laser unit, the Assy CD Unit SAT JVC EXL P608, the unit that did not work. And sure enough, my White Saturn also did not work with the A-B method.

To make things even more complex, switching the CD Unit from one machine to another did not work - the CD Units refused to work in the other machine even without the modchip! It seems the motherboards are different also. I do not have a number for the motherboards, but it's safe to assume that they tie in with the CD Units, and require that specific CD Unit.

So from what I can gather, Saturn's with the CD Unit Assy CD Unit SAT JVC EXL P605 work fine with the A-B method.

Saturn's with the Assy CD Unit SAT JVC EXL P608 (with the white baorder) CD Unit do not.

There may be other CD Units out there too though.

As I say, there is no way to tell externally what CD Unit the machine has, even the Model numbers are identical. It's pot luck.

People who are having problems with getting this method to work should check which CD Unit they have.

If anyone else can verify this for me so we have a second opinion...