Rechargeable Sega Saturn Save Battery

[lordofduct]

I was reading through some old threads in the Sega CD and Saturn forums and saw some people complaining about the Saturn and its battery dieing a lot. I just remembered buying yet another battery for my Saturn just a month ago. So I got thinking what about making a rechargeable battery for the bugger out of something readily available like a portable phone battery (no huge fandangle charger required for it and plenty of space in the saturn for the battery if you dont have the MPEG card)

Now Im not extremely knowledgeable in the workings of circuitry in computers and only depend on my knowledge of house wiring. (my father being an electrician for a good deal of time and taught me what he knows) So I went on Google to see who else had thought of this and get what input I could find.

I found this!

Perfect, exactly what I was looking for. This guy has already done it with his freaking Comp... DOY! He did it exactly how I was thinking too (minus the diode and resistor, hrmm, its a good thing i googled) I'll just use the 5v off the saturn PSU board and make this bisnatch and let you know how it works!

 

[schi0249]

Let us know. That would be nice. Then again, the DC has a rechargable but I don't use mine enough for the battery to stay charged.

 

[slinga]

Search the saturn board, I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before.

 

[dj898]

hmm... the battery for Saturn usually last a very long time and frankly I don't see why anyone would bother with it 😛

 

[lordofduct]

Originally posted by dj898@Mon, 2005-01-03 @ 05:42 PM

hmm... the battery for Saturn usually last a very long time and frankly I don't see why anyone would bother with it 😛

[post=127006]Quoted post[/post]​

because its cheap and easy.

 

[KuKzz]

What for ? Just use your RAM card for saves and forget about internal memory.

 

[dj898]

exactly!

then you will have to set the clock every time you turn it on though...

battery is cheap and readly available - if it dies I can pick it up from local super market...

 

[antime]

It's a neat hack, what more reason do you need?

 

[lordofduct]

kukzz - actually thats the main reason I am doing this.

Most people probably have a 4-1 RAM cart, or something similar. I know I do because those interplay memcards dont work and official ones are expensive as all hell. Nevermind 4-1's being really expensive also!

Now with the 4-1 you can't save directly to the cart during game, you have to transfer it from the internal memory to the cart and vice versa. How I always did it was put the games im playing at the moment on internal memory and then update the cart every so often...

Now if the battery happens to die, those save states disapear on the internal and what if you haven't updated your cart in a while! Yeah I could update regularly, but say I just got done with a 4-6 hour session of SF3 and my electricity goes out, or I get a call and have to rush out the door real quick (both which have happend to me) and I forget to update in that rush. Thats 4 hours of SF3 that I'll have to do again, and I REALLY hate having to do a dungeon over again!

----

Also, Im not sure about stores near you or how your Saturn is. I know that my Saturn will kill one of those CR2032 batteries in about oh say 4 months... those batteries cost about 2-4 bucks... thats at minimum 6 bucks a year!

This very EASY hack at the price of 8 dollars and only 1 trip to the store is great for me.

rechargeable 3.6V portable phone battery - 6 bucks (or free if you are like me with about 20 lieing around)

diode - 1 dollar

1/4W resistor - 1 dollar

and as antime said, its neat!

 

[Borisz]

Pachuka modded his Saturn so it uses AAA batteries instead of the standard the Saturn uses for extended battery life.

 

[lordofduct]

Yep, so today i went and finally purchased the diode and resistor i needed (i hate going to RadioShits, so i procrastinated) I wired it up and popped the bisnatch in there. $1.52 US, and I have a rechargeable battery in it... for those interested Ill let you know how it works in the long run, but so far it seems to be working great.

 

[lordofduct]

Its been a month and this thing still works fine. I didn't even play my saturn for the past 2 or 3 weeks because Ive been busy and my saves are all still there.

 

[mrkotfw]

are you able to take any pics? i kind of want to see how it looks like

 

[dj898]

can this mod be done with VCD card inside?

cheers

 

[FunkyPoopMonkey]

Originally posted by lordofduct@Thu, 2005-02-03 @ 09:29 AM

Its been a month and this thing still works fine. I didn't even play my saturn for the past 2 or 3 weeks because Ive been busy and my saves are all still there.

[post=128918]Quoted post[/post]​

Can we get an update? Has it been working well?

 

[lordofduct]

yeah it still works fine... I had pics posted in another thread about it.

Let me check my photobucket.

here is how everything installed looks. And yes it can be done with the VCD card installed. This image here is a model 2 US saturn with a VCD card, mod chip, country switch and battery mod.

This pic though is of my saturn I sold to someone in Great Britain... the one I have at my house right now is a model 1 and it also has a battery mod and a chip in it and it works great! no pics... sorry.

 

[FunkyPoopMonkey]

Hmm. I still don't really see it in that picture.

 

[lordofduct]

towards the front of the saturn to the right of the power button... you see the bread board with the white battery held on with electrical tape? thats it. I combined everything into the bread board though. That is also where the hex inverter is for my country mod and also I disperse the power for everything through that board.

Here it is sketched out from that website and I listed where each wire should go.