PAL (Aus) Saturn with modchip & AR 4M Plus - backups NOK

[bretth]

Hi,

I've had a (admittedly) brief search through the forums & elsewhere online and couldn't find a similar query.

I've found that my Aus/PAL Saturn (oval buttons) will quite happily play my backups with the mod chip I put in a few weeks ago. But it gets stuck at the AR 'Loading' screen when the AR cartridge is installed as well.

Same thing happens whether I put in an Interact Game Shark or the AR Plus that just arrived from RacketBoy today.

I'll have to dig some of my originals back out of storage to check what happens there, but was curious if this had been seen by anyone else. I think the Game Shark worked okay with originals prior to the mod chip install ...

I've noticed that sometimes I need to open the lid and reset to get the backup to play (without AR cart. installed), but I guess you can't really do that trick with the cart. installed. I'm not so interested in the cheat functions, just the RAM and backup memory (so, duh, perhaps I should just try and track those down instead).

Cheers.

Brett.

[Hobie-wan]

The Game Shark is notorious for causing issues with the cart slot. The board in it is a little thicker than everything else and the contact pins get bent out of whack. The AR probably isn't making good contact and freezing. You may need to perform a little surgery and carefully bend the pins back towards the center of the slot so they make better contact on the AR and then don't use the GS anymore.

[bretth]

Thanks buddy. Interesting idea - yeah, looking at them now I can see the edge connector/PCB is a bit thicker. I'll open her up again and have a look.

[synbiosfan]

As a side note, don't forget about Madroms' Sega Region Patcher.

Hobie-wan already gave the best answer.

[Ziggy]

Hobie is definitely correct about the Game Shark. I have first hand knowledge about that, learned it the hard way.

You might try cleaning the cart slot. That will definitely help if it's dirty. The Saturn's cart slot uses thinner pins than other slots, so it's a little harder to clean.

I use to use a Game Shark to boot imports until I learned that it messes up the slot. I use an Action Replay now. Some times it'll take a few tries to get the cart to work in the slot. Cleaning it definitely helped. But yeah, if it's too bad then you'll have to try and bend the pins back in a little.

Also, in addition to the Game Shark cart having a slightly thicker PCB, the corners are not rounded like other Saturn carts. It has been suggested that this is another reason it wrecks the cart slot.

And on top of that, the Saturn's cart slot is VERY finicky anyway. Like I said, it uses thinner pins than most slots, so this is a good reason why the thicker PCB can wreck it easily.