Hi.
I just bought a Saturn on Ebay. According to the auction page, the machine should be working perfectly. Now i have recieved it and powered it up. Tried with Magical Drop 3 and Darius 2. Both times the game won't boot. Instead the audioplayer starts up. No problem in reading the disks, no problem in playing the music on the disks... If only i could play these lovely games. Im not sure if the Saturn is chipped, but the seller told me that it might be. He was selling it for a friend.
I don't know anything about electronics, and im not sure if i could spot the chip (if there is one). Just wanted some help from you guys. It seems you know what you're talking about
Well then, you should probably take off the top half of the shell and take a look inside. Racketboy probably has pictures of the saturn mod chips and what they look like when installed, so he'll be able to show you what to look for, to find out if you have a modded Saturn. Because who knows? Perhaps if it has a mod chip, it was installed improperly, and is now causing all games to screw up.
Those 2 games are Jap imports... are you playing them on a jap system? If not are you using a country converter cartridge/region mod? That could cause your problem (though it should give you a message telling you this game is not compatible with this system).
Hi again.
Yes the games are jap import games. No need for a converter here Please check the link below to see what has been installed. I don't know if its a real "approved" chip.
It seems to be a multi 20/21 pin chip to work on both model 1 and 2 saturns!
I can not tell if they did an AB mod on it (as that chip isn't like the chip that supports the AB mod)... nor does it have the signal wire going to the IC on the CD board (the IC it needs to be soldered to is the square chip on the lower left of the CD board). Try taking the modchip out and the cable that goes from the CD board to the chip should be placed back in to the slot with where the mod chip has it's cable plugged into.
This DOES mean that you won't be able to play bootlegs... but the chip is inproperly installed so it doesn't matter as you can't even play any games as is right now.
If you want to play back-up games you have two options. trouble shoot the chip and find out how to get it to work. OR because you have the easiest model to mod with the common mod chip get yourself one of them and place the lil' bugger in.
I have an extra one lieing around. I certainly would like to check out this chip. Would you be willing to do a trade for one of my common chips so I can take a look at that chip? I'll put the AB mod on it so all you have to do is plug it in and send the red wire over to the power strip (just like the black wire is in your picture).
[edit]
for clarification. The common chip (the pic I posted earlier is the common chip) has two ways of being installed. One is the original way where you sent a signal wire to the CD Boards controller IC. Mal at SegaXtreme found a way around that though and it was called the AB trick where you soldered the points labeled A and B on the mod chip together bypassing the signal wire all together.
lordofduct wrote:for clarification. The common chip (the pic I posted earlier is the common chip) has two ways of being installed. One is the original way where you sent a signal wire to the CD Boards controller IC. Mal at SegaXtreme found a way around that though and it was called the AB trick where you soldered the points labeled A and B on the mod chip together bypassing the signal wire all together.
Just remember that the success rate of the AB method isn't fantastic. Worked perfectly for me though.
lordofduct wrote:for clarification. The common chip (the pic I posted earlier is the common chip) has two ways of being installed. One is the original way where you sent a signal wire to the CD Boards controller IC. Mal at SegaXtreme found a way around that though and it was called the AB trick where you soldered the points labeled A and B on the mod chip together bypassing the signal wire all together.
Just remember that the success rate of the AB method isn't fantastic. Worked perfectly for me though.
Probably about a 90-95% success rate from what I've experienced from others
