Sega Saturn Japanese Model 2 Mod Chip INstall gone wrong?

[zincmann]

bLue wire - not pretty but i think its connected

20130209_161714.jpg (95.3 KiB) Viewed 2017 times

Ok so I have done my due dilligence by reading some of the trouble shooting guides online. I bought my mod chip for my Saturn from Racket boy and never have done soldering before. I bought the unit off Ebay from someone here in the US had never been modded before, so I ordered the chip with the red wire (power) and blue wire (Signal). Because my power board had a what seemed to be a heat sink around the power area to solder I soldered the red wire to the right pin but underneath the board, assume that is right? Anyway I was able to properly install the ribbon cable to the chip and i think the chip is in right. I soldered the blue signal wire to Pin 14 as instructed because it IS a japanese model and the A+B wire trick wont work on it. So when everything was powered on, the system boots up to the time set screen which I bypass (needs a new battery) and the disc in the drive spins..now I also have a US black Saturn when I put a disc in there it seems to spin up much faster, so as the troubleshooting guide said the disc spins, I am not sure as to what level it should be spinning but it spins...the cubes are green in the menu and detects it as an audio disc HOWEVER when i try to play the game disc which is a CD-R burned via ImgBurn at 5x it just is all static and thinks its a music disc. I then put in a US Music CD-R and same thing static then a US Store Bought music disc same thing static. I then put a US region Saturn game Original in it for Shits and Giggles and it again thought it was a audio CD. So I then put all of those discs in the US Saturn unmodded and all were detected as what they should be. So I am not sure if my chip is seated right? Seems to be nice and snug inside and as close to the white harness on the mother board as possible. So what have i done wrong? the space to solder the blue wire is quite tiny but i tinned the copper wire on the chip and then added a tiny bit of solder JUST enough to adhere to that contact point. Tough to see in pics though where it should be connected to...but i did my best. Any thoughts??

[wiggyx]

I'm putting my money on that solder joint being the problem. I'd look up some video tutorials on youtube or something like that before having another go at it.

[zincmann]

so I saw a few other close ups of course still cleaner than my work and i saw the actual wire soldered to the chip and not to the board per se...so again I melted it removed the joing from where I put it and resoldered it to #14 on the chip but still same symptoms. Could my drive not be spinning up fast enough? I saw a you tube video saying something about the pentiometer not spinning the disc of fast enough and it only reads audio cds...

[zincmann]

http://www.fixya.com/support/t492541-se ... boot_games

This fits my issue to a T..so maybe its not spinning fast enough??

[zincmann]

And that didnt fix the issue...hmmmm

[Amplibax]

Based on those pictures it's very likely that you have some solder that is shorting out the pins to the left or right of the pin you have the blue wire connected to. If you haven't ever soldered before it's usually a good idea to do some practice on old junk electronics. Get an old broken radio or something from a thrift store and practice desoldering and resoldering parts.

And like wiggyx said above, have a look on Youtube for some basics tutorials for soldering before you take another stab at it if you haven't already. Good luck!

[Kirbyepsilon]

Where you able to get it working? I'm having almost the exact same problem. I'm trying to mod my white model 2 and I think I botched the solder job. I installed the chip, did a poor solder job at the 14th pin and now when I start up the system the disc will not spin. If you were able to get it working, what did you do?

[Saskatoonguy]

Both of you. Remove the modchip and test your Saturns out. If it is a modchip issue the unit will function properly and you can attempt another install if you think it was done improperly. Otherwise the chip has failed, that does happen.

Zincmann you really should not have adjusted that resistor that makes the drive faster. I used that article to fix my similar issue and that did not resolve it and left my drive spinning at at ridiculous speed. My drive ended up being FUBAR and I had to replace the whole drive. Might be what you have to do if the unit doesn't function after you remove the modchip.

[Kirbyepsilon]

I took the chip out and reconnected the ribbon and the disc drive still doesn't spin. Also I cleaned up the solder job to the 14th pin still without change. Saying that the chip has failed do you mean the mod chip or the 32pin chip?

[Kirbyepsilon]

Also when I try to start up the system, at the cd player screen sometimes there or the red orbs and sometimes the green ones