CD-RW mod

Post by **Curlypaul** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 6:49 pm

I've been considering tweeking the laser on my saturn as outlined here:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/2005/02/ ... media.html

I'm a bit worried about the harm it will do to the laser, and that comment that the system would no longer play copies. Anybody have any experiences of this adjustment?

I do actually want to do some software testing on the system so I do actually have a need to be using rewritables

Post by **GSZX1337** » Sun Oct 21, 2007 11:34 pm

If you have a spare disc drive or can get one I'd do it. I might do it assuming there's no trouble in installing the Drive that I'm getting.

Post by **Curlypaul** » Mon Oct 22, 2007 3:22 am

Nope no spare drive lying around Im afraid. At the minute I could replace the whole saturn for £20, but it would wrong to wreck a rarish bit of kit intentionally

Post by **Curlypaul** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 5:22 pm

Well I went ahead and did it. I turned the screw a few degrees to the right and it now loads any kind of disk. The screw now wont go any further so I'm guessing that its already been re-focused by the previuos owner and it probably wont last forever.

Is it possible to to change just the lazer with a standard part out of any cd drive, or is it a properiety sega part?

Post by **marurun** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 6:47 pm

electronix.com might carry the right CD lens unit. They carry the hop-13 unit needed to fix a Duo and playstation1 lasers.

Post by **Curlypaul** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 7:14 pm

Well they dont have anything labelled as 'Sega saturn' but there might be hope...

This discusison here is talking about a CDX but the suggestion is that JVC made the parts for the SegaCD and the bits in the CD drive could be identified as standard JVC parts. Not sure who made the CD drive for the saturn, but it could be JVC, Hitachi or Sanyo. I'll take a peek the next time I open the top up

Post by **marurun** » Sat Oct 27, 2007 9:30 pm

Considering their CD lenses are relatively affordable, if you can find a compatible part that would definitely help.

Post by **RockinB** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 2:21 pm

I've been using a CD-RW mod for quite a long time. It's been a very useful method to test homebrew software on Saturn.

The biggest downside was the time needed to burn the CD-RW.
The second downside is read errors. They occur when you burn with too high speeds (> 4x), or use old or too cheap CD-RWs. These read errors can be confusing, as the might mislead you in debugging, making you think you got an error in your homebrew Saturn game, but it's just a CD read error. The CD-RWs age very fast, if you overburn the CD-RW a lot and very frequently, you'll need to take a new one very soon.

Up to today, I've never had a problem with a CD-RW modded Saturn CD drive, so I can clearly recommend the mod.

Post by **Curlypaul** » Sun Nov 04, 2007 5:25 pm

aaaahhh, I have been getting a few read errors and now that you mention it they do get more frequent as the debugging session goes on. I've also noticed that reburning the same iso can produce different results.

I guess I'm being a bit paranoid about the laser, my mates unmodded model 1 gave up when it was just 2 years old but maybe he was just unlucky and got a dodgy one.

Good to meet you btw, I've been lurking around your site and following your saturn demo. Very interesting

CD-RW mod

CD-RW mod

take care of read errors