SOLVED: Modding a 64 Pin Saturn

[MentalMan]

All the games I am trying to play are North American Region so I have to go through the Action Replay to set them up. This stops me from being able to open and close the lid until it possibly works.

Ohh, that's why you are using action replay. I was wondering already.

You can make your life a lot simpler by using this:

Saturn Region Patcher

I use it to patch some of the north american games to the japanese region, so my saturn will play them.

The 64pin IC's are picky how and when they pick up a game, I dont think its a good idea to try it while running action replay. If you patch the game, you can easily keep trying in the normal saturn menu until it picks up the game after opening and closing the lid.

You put the power cable to the second to last spot on the power area on the board and the signal cable on 8th pin on the 64pin IC right? Did you file down the chip or anything? This is exactly what I did along with the addition of changing the control to the 0014 and still no luck.

Actually that picture is a little outdated. I now feed my chip with 5v from the cd-drive board. As "17DaysOlderThanNES" suggested in another modchip thread, this seems to be necessary. It does make sense, because the chip properly needs to be timed properly when kicking in. (The power supply obviously gets power first above all else, and the cd-drive kicks in a few miliseconds afterwards.) Ever since I did change it my chip behaves a lot better. Check out This guide again to see how its done!

About the 8th pin on the 64pin IC, correct, I soldered directly onto it and did not use the A+B method.

And about filing down, yup, I filed it down quite a bit and now, in comparision it goes in as smooth as the original ribbon cables.

Heres the full rundown on how I get my saturn backups to play:

1. Saturn OFF. Put in ORIGINAL game disc. Close lid.
2. Turn saturn on. It will try to load for a while until reverting to saturn main menu, showing audio tracks only.
3. Either open lid and close to try to play original. Ususally picked up on first try. Or:
4. Open up the lid, and put in backup disc. Ususally picked up on first try.

This is obviously all without the use of action replay. So you MIGHT want to give it a shot, trying patching your backup game of choice to the japanese region!

Im sorry to hear its not completly working yet, but dont worry, it took me a day too before figuring it all out, especially the rundown on how to bring the saturn to time the chip properly

[skate323k137]

I'm back! Thank you MentalMan SO much for the info on the jumper setting. Really, it solved years of headaches and unanswered questions. I can't thank you enough for chiming in.

I ordered another chip, and changing the jumper from 19 to 14 did work out in one of my 64 pin systems- however, not quite as perfectly as my 32 pin. On the 64 pin saturn, If i put in a game and boot, it ends up at the cd player. If i then open/close the lid, the game is runnable. I found sometimes I can just boot with the lid open, and close it at the cd player, but this is proving less reliable than the first method.

In order to use an action replay, i boot w/the lid closed, and then just have to open and close the lid right before clicking "start game". If i don't do that, it hangs indefinitely. It seems action replay or not, the best thing is to let the system boot with the lid closed, open/close once, and then launch the game. Note that this is using the A+B method on the modchip.

I'll stick with the 32 pin for now, since no lid shenanigans are necessary, but its a relief to have a spare modded sautrn. The 64 pin i just modded has a region switch I put in too, so its great to FINALLY have it modded.

[MentalMan]

I'm back! Thank you MentalMan SO much for the info on the jumper setting. Really, it solved years of headaches and unanswered questions. I can't thank you enough for chiming in.

I ordered another chip, and changing the jumper from 19 to 14 did work out in one of my 64 pin systems- however, not quite as perfectly as my 32 pin. On the 64 pin saturn, If i put in a game and boot, it ends up at the cd player. If i then open/close the lid, the game is runnable. I found sometimes I can just boot with the lid open, and close it at the cd player, but this is proving less reliable than the first method.

In order to use an action replay, i boot w/the lid closed, and then just have to open and close the lid right before clicking "start game". If i don't do that, it hangs indefinitely. It seems action replay or not, the best thing is to let the system boot with the lid closed, open/close once, and then launch the game. Note that this is using the A+B method on the modchip.

I'll stick with the 32 pin for now, since no lid shenanigans are necessary, but its a relief to have a spare modded sautrn. The 64 pin i just modded has a region switch I put in too, so its great to FINALLY have it modded.

Haha wow! Im so glad to hear that. Congratulations for finally having done the 64pin.

This is sweet. If christoph manages it as well, there are 3 undeniable units that work thanks to these jumper settings. I guess the 64pins arent that nutty after all, as long as one is okay putting up with the lid shenanigans, as you so perfectly put it.

[christoph]

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[christoph]

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[MentalMan]

Awesome!! I was confident you'd be getting there, congratulations to you as well!

This is really sweet, lets see if we can move good old Racketboy to let us throw together a cleaned up, rewritten 64pin explanation and all the possible solutions we have proofed to be working on 3 different kind of units. (Funny, my was the Pal one, skate323k137's probably a North American saturn and you have the NTSC/J Japanese one!)

What a nice sega-blue-sky day it is!

[christoph]

Yeah definitely.

!

[MentalMan]

Interesting, yes you might as well swap the guts if you dont mind.

This reminds me though, after I had the chip working myself, I left a game running in attraction mode for a real long time just to build up heat and see if it will still work fine swapping a game afterwards, turning off and on and the likes.

When I came back, the game had reverted to the saturn cd menu screen, that was quite strange. Wondered if that was a "feature" of the game, because the drive would keep spinning for no reason with no input at all, lol, just a random guess.

Everything was still working fine though, cd-drive has no problems loading or picking up, there is no skipping music or data that needs to be re-read. So, no idea what to make out of all this. Drive problem could be plausible, the drive in my saturn had to be slightly pot-tweaked a year or two ago. Ah well, luckily the cd drives are easily interchangeable.

[gtmtnbiker]

Nice job guys figuring out the 64pin Saturns.

[Niode]

Well done! I can finally get round to doing my 64pin Model 2 Saturn.