Lucky me!

[Myname]

It's reasurring to know eBay isn't always a cruel mistress. I bought a white Saturn a couple of weeks ago, and it arrived from Japan yesterday. I'd got a Saturn Satellite for playing my PAL games, so I was all set.

The only trouble was, it would only load games sporadically and would sometimes freeze when accessing the disc, giving the message on the CD player that the CD drive was open (at least I assume that's what it says). So I opened it up to see if that little thingy that you tape down for the swap trick was playing up, and sure enough it was a little bent so that was pretty easy to sort out.

Whilst I was doing this though, I noticed that it has had one of those nifty pass-through modboards installed! I don't have any Saturn CDRs anymore (bought real copies of the ones I had, sans Silvergun) and I wasn't planning on modding this unit, but it's pretty nice to get it for free :cheers

Sorry for the rambling, but I've not had much luck with online purchases recently so I think I'm entitled to a bit of glory

.

 

[mal]

A free mod in the deal? That's excellent!

 

[Tony Skyrunner]

Yeah, congratulations!

I'll have to buy an NTSC Saturn because I've recently bought a Dreamcast and now I notice those 50Hz borders and speed issues on PAL games more than ever <_< I'll have 3 Saturns then

 

[mal]

Now that I've got a Japanese Saturn I'm never going to play a Japanese game on my Euro Saturn again. I had absolutely no idea the difference it would make.

Now I'm looking for a US Saturn to add to my collection.

 

[Taelon]

Originally posted by Myname@Feb 11, 2003 @ 12:03 PM

...message on the CD player that the CD drive was open (at least I assume that's what it says). So I opened it up to see if...

Congrats, I'm happy for ya :cheers

But did you know you can change the language in the settings menu? No need to go guessing at whatever Japanese your console throws at you...

 

[Myname]

You can? Nice one, I'll give it a crack whenever my housemate's finished on Tony Hawk 4.. Could be a long wait

 

[mal]

You sure can change it to English. It took me a little while to find the option though.

What surprised me the most was the different start up sequence and the extra sounds it makes. It makes my Euro Saturn seem quite boring.

 

[Myname]

Sooo.. You gonna tell me how you did it Mal? You can only delete everything on the memory so many times before you realise you're going in circles

 

[mal]

I really wish I could just tell you.

I think it's one of the bottom two (bottom left or bottom right) menu items, but I could well be wrong.

I spent quite some time going in circles.

 

[Taelon]

In the main menu screen (CD player/starship thingies/hovering cubes), select the top middle icon (the arrow up). That brings you to the system settings.

There should be a menu with four options (and an Exit button at the bottom). Select the second from the top. That's the language setting.

Six languages will show up, and each should be named - well - in its own respective language (i.e. Deutsch, Espanol, Francais, English). From there it should be easy.

Pick your language, "exit" your way out of the submenus and everything should be in English from there on forward.

 

[mal]

I'm home now so I can tell you how I changed mine.

BTW Taelon, I guess my Japanese Saturn is a little different from yours ...

Originally posted by Taelon@Feb 13, 2003 @ 07:39 PM



In the main menu screen (CD player/starship thingies/hovering cubes), select the top middle icon (the arrow up). That brings you to the system settings.

On mine the center top icon takes you to the memory manager.

There should be a menu with four options (and an Exit button at the bottom). Select the second from the top. That's the language setting.

From there you have two options at the top; 'Remove Item' and 'Clear [memory]'. At the bottom left is 'Exit' and bottom right is 'System Settings'

After selecting 'System Settings', you get four options; 'Clock', 'Language' and 'Other Settings' with 'Memory Manager' on it's own at the bottom.

Six languages will show up, and each should be named - well - in its own respective language (i.e. Deutsch, Espanol, Francais, English). From there it should be easy.

Pick your language, "exit" your way out of the submenus and everything should be in English from there on forward.

It pretty much matches Taelon's description from there on.

 

[Taelon]

Whoa, I guess the Japanese BIOS version differs in more aspects from the American version than just the power-on animation...

I'm beginning to wonder why they even did make two different BIOSes, when both of them run on *any* region Saturn, and both let you select from six languages including English and Japanese. It's a mystery ...

 

[Myname]

Thanks for the little walkthroughs, I managed to get it in the end. Just out of interest, is your Saturn one of the grey ones Taelon? Could be the reason it differs from mine and Mal's, though it's still a little odd.

 

[Taelon]

No, my Saturn is a 100% American Model-2, er, model (black).

I just put a US/JAP region switch and a mod chip in. But whether I have it in US or Japanese mode, it still runs the v1.00a BIOS, which is the American version of the Japanese v1.00 (no 'a') BIOS.

I also know of a v1.01 and v1.01a, respectively, but nobody seems to know what the differences would be. Maybe slightly updated versions that made it into the late-production Saturns (Skeletons? Derbys?).

 

[mal]

I think my Japanese Saturn has the 1.01 bios.