Why, why does my Saturn cause me such pain !?!

[brickiemart]

My saturn modchip blew about a week ago, so I ordered a new pair from Racketboy. I just got these babies today and go straight to work. I bought my Saturn pre-modded so everything involved in this process was new to me.

First, I remove the old chip, but kept the wires; the old chip had a two wire 14pin connection (model 2 Saturn btw). I replaced the chip, but kept the wires. The first chip didn't go well, but I believe I am responsible for this. It didn't fit well into the slot and I believe I caused it some damage trying to wedge it in. Once in place it did nothing but heat up like my defunct chip does and it displays an unchanging "checking disc format" message, regardless of whether the drive door is open or not. I replaced the wires and still nothing.

My fault on chip one, I ordered a pair of them not for this reason, but I learned not to be stupid. Second go. This time I remove the chip and wires and put the new one in place...carefully. All seems good; I soldered the power wire and then the second wire to the 14 pin. Now the Saturn runs normally, but it can not read burnt games. It reads them as audio discs (what it would do without a chip) and it reads audio cds just fine too.

I twist, reinserted, and resoldered everything, still the same results. My last step was bypassing the 14 pin mod and going to an A to B bridge solder. Same results. At its best the Saturn acts like there is not a chip there. I'm open to any ides or suggestions. I tried searching for information on this in the troubleshooting guide, Google, and the forums, but found nothing. Any help is appreciated!

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Maybe you should try going with new wires alongside the new chips. Usually when any kind of mod I have overheats or blows I find that starting fresh on the mod with all new parts tends to save you a lot of time frustration and potentially your console from being destroyed.

[gtmtnbiker]

I would check all of your solder connections. Make sure you don't have an open connection or a short. It would help if you took some photos of your solder connections on the board so we can inspect it.

[PhilExile]

I don't get why these Saturn modchips burn out so often. Whats the deal?

[brickiemart]

So far I've only lost one modchip (if one of the ones I bought does not work I am 90% sure it is my own fault) and that was the one that came with the console which had an unknown amount of milage attached to it. The timing for it death was really annoying though.

I think my soldering is the problem. If solder get inbetween two pins what is a solution to cleaning it out without causing damage? Thanks for the replies, I am afraid that I do not have camera photo to interent technology. I'm going to screw around with it some more and if nothing works I'll borrow something that will allow me to do that.

[gtmtnbiker]

I think my soldering is the problem. If solder get inbetween two pins what is a solution to cleaning it out without causing damage? Thanks for the replies, I am afraid that I do not have camera photo to interent technology. I'm going to screw around with it some more and if nothing works I'll borrow something that will allow me to do that.

The cheapest way is to use solder wick. It's copper braid that you spread out and place on top of the area you want to take up solder. Then you heat the braid with the iron and when the solder melts, some of it will be picked up by the braid.

At radio shack, they sell a solder remover for around $10. It's a soldering iron with a bulb at the end. Again, you heat the solder and then squeeze the bulb when it's melted. It sucks some of it up.

When using the solder braid, you want to be careful to not pull any pads off the board. This can happen if it's still stuck to the board. In that case, heat the braid up until it's free again.

[Upsidedown Fuji]

Sorry to hear you are having so much trouble. Maybe your work area has gremlins eating away at your work and systems? Gotta blame it on something.

[dentman42]

I'd be afraid of using the RS desoldering iron on either the modchip or the CD controller board. That iron is 40 watts. 15-25 is recommended for electronics work in general, and we're talking about an even more delicate situation. (I have one of those desoldering irons and I have lifted traces on much more durable boards using it) I'd even be afraid of solder wick in the case of a surface mount IC. Doesn't take much to lift one of the pins and that's delicate soldering work to reconnect it.

I looked at my Saturn CD board and not only does that IC pin trace back to pin 1 on the ribbon connector, I traced it a bit further to a larger solder pad with less close around it that would probably be better.

I can't really understand, other than bad wiring/cabling/soldering why the connection to pin 14 would work but the A-B method wouldn't. Obviously the ribbon cable can carry the signal well enough and without interferrence (or else an unmodded Saturn really doesn't use the signal on pin 1) or else it wouldn't work. That basically leaves the connection on the modchip from the ribbon socket to the pads at the top, which is just a circuit board trace, and the soldering and wire used to jump A to B.

(I also pulled the power supply board and found what looks like a good point to solder the power wire to on the underside of the board - less around it to possibly get a solder bridge to, and no messing up the pins from the motherboard or the plastic of the connector).

If anyone's interested, I can post some pics of these points.

Unfortunately, my modchip arrived broken despite heavy padding so I'm waiting on a replacement and until then can't test my ideas. (It arrived on a weird postal day - I haven't had any damaged packages or oddities for months, then on the same day I get a broken/semi-crushed modchip and a postage due package where the seller shipped media mail and somehow a priority mail sticker got stuck on the box, so USPS treated as priority. Or maybe it's a Saturn thing. The postage due box was a spare Saturn.)

All the talk about modchips running hot and having a high non-initial fail rate got me wondering - could some of the logic used on them possibly be 3.3v instead of 5? Dead end, I looked up datasheets on GAL16V8, EM78P156ELP and 74HC157.
GAL16V8 - Supply voltage (recommended) Vcc = 4.75v to +5.25v max +7v
EM78P156ELP operating voltage range 2.3v to 5.5v
74HC157 power supply range 2v to 6v

So much for easy answers. Maybe a small fan to cool the modchip is needed?

[dentman42]

Well, the replacement mod chip got here today. Worked on the first try. When I first installed it, I ran it for about 45 minutes with the cover off and it didn't even get warm to the touch.Then I ran it with the cover on but not secured for about an hour. It was just slightly warm at that point. So I'd say a modchip getting hot (at least the ones from racketBOY) is an indication of a problem. I installed on an MK8000A (model 2, 32 pin chip, 21 pin CD cable, no access light, round buttons) that looked like the one in RB's instructions for model 2. I used the A-B method. I started by connecting a wire to the usual pin on the power supply, except that I soldered it on the underside of the board to the pad where the pin is soldered. Once I had the modchip in the socket, I connected (twist and solder) its power wire to the one I soldered and insulated with electrical tape.

Here's something I noticed about modchip behavior that might help somebody:
In my experience, for the modchip to work, you MUST have a disc in the drive at power on. An empty drive or door open at power on will result in the "not compatible with system" message on the CD player screen when you put in a backup disc, even if you put in an original first. I have not tried booting with an audio CD in the drive, just originals or backups and it doesn't seem to matter which. With a disc in the drive at power on, the modchip keeps working after pressing reset. Without a disc in the drive or an open door at powerup, the modchip won't work even after reset.

(if any of the mods find anything I post here useful, feel free to move it to a more appropriate place or to insert your own keywords to make it easier to find with a search.)

[DethManX]

One thing I noticed when I did mine is that the modchip PCB is made to a really crappy tolerance. Mine was too wide to fit into the connector so I had to file some of the PCB off the side where it inserts. Also, there was a ton of excess PCB between the bottom of the connector part and where the pads started. If yours is the same, you have to file it down or find another way to remove it. Otherwise, those pads on the chip will never make contact inside the connector.