Modding a Saturn Model 2 PAL

[Luka]

Hello all

I know this is my first ever post on this forum please dont flame me as n00b I come from the EmuAsylum forums and RacketBoy is a member there and he has pointed me to this forum for help and so on.

Anyways heres my problem:

I just bought one of RacketBoys Sega Saturn MOD Chips which is great I recived it today and me and my dad sat down and went through it together. Because I have a Sega Saturn Model 2 PAL which has the Sanyo board inside I followed this http://www.mikeg2.freeserve.co.uk/satmod/ guide which RacketBoy sent me to install it with.

We installed it exactly as how its shown in the guide above and my Saturn now doesnt really do much besides act a s CD player whenever you put a CD-R of a game or even a orginial game it will show the boot up animation and then go to the CD player and player the music tracks from the CD

Is there anything I can do to fix it and make it work? When we installed it we did come into one problem with the chip not fitting properly into the motherboard it was as if the chip connectors are to big for the port on the motherboard, but we pushed it in as much as we could.

We have used the A-B method, so bridging the A and B point on the chip and having the 5V cable going across the Saturn and into the correct place.

After reading a bit more information and emailed RacketBoy asking for help he surgested filling down the edge of the mod chip to make it fit better, we did this and it fits alot better now. After getting a better fit I booted up the Saturn with a CD-R game and it didnt show the boot animation and then the screen flicked off and a small smoke cloud came from round about the power button it scared the life out of me and turned it off and diconnected all power straight away. Then me and my dad sat down and checked everything and everything was secure and connected and not shorting anything. I turned it on again and it was ok but not loading anything, it would just load all the music tracks from whatever CD inserted.

My dad is curious that using one of RacketBoys chips in a PAL Saturn not compatable because of the voltage? I.E UK 240 V ?

We also tried diconnecting the chip and put it all back to orginal state and even like that it now just reads the music tracks off any CD! My Saturn was working fine before the chip was installed is it dead?

Please can anyone help me out I'm pulling my hair out on this! I have spent aload of money on tryin to get a modded Saturn to play all the classics again and I dunno want to have to throw it all away :rant

Thank you all for your time 😎

 

[lordofduct]

well... lets just start by saying that the PSU being 240v doesn't matter. The PSU in the Saturn is a AC->DC converter and outputs the 5v you need (thats the pin you put the red wire too).

As for your problem: your saying you have the Sanyo board? The one with the PC trap board? Could you take a pic of the inside of it possibly?

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Check to make sure you have the cables inserted right. The Saturn is very picky IMO when it comes to the ribbon cable being just right in the slots on the main board.

I would get the saturn woring without the chip in first before I tried to get the system to boot with the chip. My reasoning behind this is that if you saw smoke you may have trashed your Saturn. However if you can get it to work without the mod then you know your saturn is ok and you can go back to troubleshooting the mod installation. It is possible that you fried the modchip somehow aswell (Which i think would be better than losing the system) so trying to get it to work with a fried modchip will obviously never work out.

Puff of smoke doesn't mean for sure something is fried out, but i think it would be a good bet that something is.

 

[Luka]

Originally posted by lordofduct+Fri, 2005-08-12 @ 11:54 PM--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lordofduct @ Fri, 2005-08-12 @ 11:54 PM)</div><div class='quotemain'>As for your problem: your saying you have the Sanyo board? The one with the PC trap board? Could you take a pic of the inside of it possibly?

[/b]

Here is a photo of my saturn before I attempted to mod it:



<!--QuoteBegin-RitualOfTheTrout@Sat, 2005-08-13 @ 02:55 AM

I would get the saturn woring without the chip in first before I tried to get the system to boot with the chip. My reasoning behind this is that if you saw smoke you may have trashed your Saturn. However if you can get it to work without the mod then you know your saturn is ok and you can go back to troubleshooting the mod installation. It is possible that you fried the modchip somehow aswell (Which i think would be better than losing the system) so trying to get it to work with a fried modchip will obviously never work out.

Puff of smoke doesn't mean for sure something is fried out, but i think it would be a good bet that something is.

[/quote]

The thing is I have completly removed the mod chip from the Saturn and now it will only seem to read the music tracks off any game that is put in there where can I start to look to fix that? I knwo my consoles well I have taken apart Playstations 1&2, Xboxes, Dreamcast and ,much more but I have never up till now looked inside a Saturn so I wouldnt know what to look at this moment to try and fix it.

Thank you guys for your find back 😀