Possible to Flash Saturn's Bios?

[ramirez60]

Possible to Flash Saturn's Bios?

I was pretty sure this was addressed before but I can't find the old thread.

Is it possible to flash the saturn? Like burn a bios to cd, boot the cd, and then have it convert say a pal saturn's bios to a us saturn's? If it is, is it then possible to burn a modified bios that removes region coding? And finally, is it possible to modify the bios so that it ignores the security ring all together? Sure sounds interesting to me...but no way I'm trying it on my saturn first

 

[ExCyber]

Possible to Flash Saturn's Bios?

Is it possible to flash the saturn?

Not without replacing the BIOS chip with a Flash ROM. Saturn, like most game systems that have a BIOS, comes with the BIOS in a mask ROM, which is not programmable.

convert say a pal saturn's bios to a us saturn's?

As far as I know, there's not really any such distinction. PAL/NTSC and system region settings are determined by jumpers set on the mainboard, and any BIOS is compatible with any setting.

If it is, is it then possible to burn a modified bios that removes region coding?

If you actually replaced the BIOS, yes.

And finally, is it possible to modify the bios so that it ignores the security ring all together?

From what I'm told, that's handled by the CD block (most likely the SH-1, which has its own internal BIOS ROM). It simply won't read data tracks until the check has been performed. The system BIOS could be hacked to make it do the check at a different time or under different (e.g. user-selectable) conditions, but none of this changes the fact that it must be done before you can read a data track.