a saturn with switches?

Post by **instant_classic** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:52 pm

i had a saturn about 10 years ago and decided to get one again. my neighbor let me have his for a few dollars but when i took it home to check it out i saw some switches on it. i dont remember saturns having those, what are they for? i was hoping to get a saturn mod chip but will the switches interfere with it or do they do the same thing as the mod chip?

Post by **selfdestroyer** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 3:25 am

Most likely its a PAL / NTSC switch. take some pics and post them .. maybe I can help some more.

but I have to ask.. why not ask the guy you bought it from what they are?

Post by **Adderall** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 10:19 am

yeah, the switches shouldn't interfere with your mod chip.

It's actually a great thing that you have those, because now you don't have to mess around with the region header when you burn games. You also don't really need to get an Action Replay cart (unless you want to use the cheats included on it).

Post by **marurun** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:22 am

One of my Saturns has a region switch (US/JPN) inside the battery door. Keeps me from ever installing an MPEG card, but I'm not crying over it.

Post by **instant_classic** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 2:47 pm

well i asked the guy today and he told me that the switches were to play imports though he cant remember how youre suppose to set the switches. he was ranting and raving about some import he used to play that was like resident evil but better. he also said that he had the "drive" upgraded from generation 1 to generation 2, so the games run faster..? i think he meant the cd lens reader or something who knows, my neighbor likes to yank my chain alot.

heres a pic of the saturn, had to take it in bathroom because my camera sucks and thats the room with best lighting:

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m141 ... switch.jpg

oh yeah and i was checking out the saturn instruction manual and it had things like keyboard, floppy disc drive, and hard disc drive 'coming soon'. did any of that ever actually come out/

Post by **Scooter** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:07 pm

Well, a keyboard adaptor was available so you could type online using your NetLink. I think they sold a Sega brand keyboard though all I ever got was the adaptor and used the keyboard off an old computer. I don't know about the other stuff but I've never heard of an external hard or floppy disc for Saturn.

Post by **Liam** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:28 pm

The region switch takes two switches. The first switch changes between UK and US/JP. The second switch changes between UK/US and JP. So for a Japanese game, set the first switch to US/JP and the second to JP. For a UK game set the first to UK and the second to UK/US. For a US game, set the first to US/JP and the second to UK/US.

Since your switches aren't labelled, you'll have to experiment. There's an indeterminate state when one switch is set to UK and the other to JP. I don't know what will happen if you turn on the Saturn in that state.

Post by **lordofduct** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 6:51 pm

instant_classic wrote:well i asked the guy today and he told me that the switches were to play imports though he cant remember how youre suppose to set the switches. he was ranting and raving about some import he used to play that was like resident evil but better. he also said that he had the "drive" upgraded from generation 1 to generation 2, so the games run faster..? i think he meant the cd lens reader or something who knows, my neighbor likes to yank my chain alot.

heres a pic of the saturn, had to take it in bathroom because my camera sucks and thats the room with best lighting:

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m141 ... switch.jpg

oh yeah and i was checking out the saturn instruction manual and it had things like keyboard, floppy disc drive, and hard disc drive 'coming soon'. did any of that ever actually come out/

Liam has it right, that looks like a region switch. It didn't come WITH the saturn, someone modified the console to do it. The guy you bought it from probably was a big importer back in the nineties...

As for the accesories, tons of weird things were made for it. Including the floppy drive, a printer, a karaoke machine, a midi port for keyboards (musical keyboards) and the sort. Most of the software that utilized it and the legitimate hardware was never released here in the USA, but in Japan it is all over the place. Check out ebay for listings of some of the crap if you want to try it.

Most of it is stupid though, more of a novelty then anything else. Hardly useful. For a long time though computers were really expensive, so a lot of people bought cheaper machines like the commodore (which was still very expensive) to act like their home computer (and the commodore was pretty damn good at it). Some of the fun things to do was make music on it!

Where do you think stuff like Industrial music really started getting its unique sound. Check out some of the older shit like Front 242 and the sort. Freakin' commodore man! I guarantee if you check out any electro bands that are more then 15 years old, and they'll say that atleast started composing their music on a commodore or some other homePC/console.

anyways, console designers kept having the access to this stuff for consoles for quite some time. They never really hit it big though because most gamers were 10 year old kids who never dreamt to use consoles as a tool to compose music on. And the nerds who did (like some guys I know in "99 cent special") moved on to just using better computers as the prices for them dropped.

Post by **marurun** » Sun Dec 09, 2007 8:59 pm

The game that's "better than Resident Evil" that he was talking about is probably Deep Fear. I haven't played it (survival horror isn't my thing) but on-line reviews have put it on par with RE. It's a 2-disc affair with English voice acting.

Post by **instant_classic** » Mon Dec 10, 2007 2:04 am

thanks for all the clarafacations guys, i have one final question. so i looked in the back of my saturn and to my horror i read the serial number as MK-80000, then i shockingly realized the power/reset buttons were oval shaped. how will this effect my dream of adding a mod chip?