Sega Saturn Mod Chip Installation Guide

• Keep your chip safe by leaving it in the anti-static bag that I ship them in.
• Unplug your Saturn
• Turn your Saturn upside down on a table
• Remove the Saturn’s case screws
• Put the screws in a safe place
• Turn the Saturn right side up.

Step 2 – Install Chip and Hook-up Lens Cable

• Look at the twisted white ribbon cable running from the center of the system to the shiny metal box on the right hand side.
• Part of the ribbon will be taped to this metal box.
• First peel the tape off the metal box, then gently unplug the right end of the ribbon cable.
• Take this end of the cable and plug it into the connector on the modchip as pointed out below.
• Plug the chip itself into the plug where the lens cable was.
• If the chip does not plug in easily, you may need to file down the side edges of the plug in order to give it a better fit. However, you shouldn’t put too much pressure on the chip because it can crack easily. And a very gentle side-to-side wiggle can help insert it into the socket.

• The small wire soldered into the left side of the mod chip is called a jumper cable
• Attach this jumper cable to the Saturn to power the chip
• On the left side of the Saturn, there are four metal pins in a vertical row
• Take the end of the jumper cable and plug it into the second pin from the top (on the back of the unit) even if you see 5 pins instead of 4. (It’s the one marked 5VA — if one does not work, try the other).
• Below is a close-up of where to solder the power cable (red)
• Please note the power wire MUST solder to the power socket directly!

• The original way was to solder the signal (blue) wire to pin 14 of the 32-pin chip.
• To make this easier, put 2 pieces of thin cardboard surrounding and isolated the 14th pin
• Then you soldered to the 14th pin very easily, ignoring the other pins
• Below is close-up of where to solder the Signal cable (blue)

OR

• You can get rid of the signal cable altogether and link the signal point to point B with a bit of solder instead of linking to pin 14 of the 32-pin chip.
• This experiment has been detailed at this thread at SegaXtreme

Step 6: Finishing Up

• Take a few pieces of tape and lay them over the ribbon that’s hanging over the chip
• Tape it down onto the shiny metal box so the ribbon and tape hold the chip in place.
• Secure the ribbon with a few more pieces of tape, because you never can be too sure.
• Before you put the case back onto the Saturn, make sure everything is ready to run.
• Are the connections tight?
• Is the mod chip taped down well?
• Once everything looks good, re-assemble your Saturn case.

Testing

• Set your Saturn back up, plug in the controllers
• hook it up to your television set
• Put a burned backup CD into the Saturn and turn the system on
• The disc should play just like a real Saturn game.
• If not, you’ll need to open the Saturn again and see what you did wrong.

Additional Links:

• Saturn Modchip Troubleshooting Guide
• Soldering Guide

Bonus: Quick Tips for Burning Saturn Games

• Stick to good brand name CD-Rs and do not use CD-RWs
• Burn at the slowest speed that your burner and media will allow
• Check the region of the image before burning and make sure it matches the target console (use Saturn Region Patcher.)
• If a burned game fails to boot but the Saturn displays the “Game disc is unsuitable for this console” message, then the burn and mod chip are working correctly but the region of the image is set to something different than the console’s region. If the console only displays audio tracks, the then the problem could be a bad image, bad burn, and/or mod chip installation issues.