Question Sega Saturn issues

[silversmithy]

Hello, and thank you for taking the time to read this.
About 5 months ago I made up my mind to try and find a Sega Saturn. Just like everything else prices have become pretty steep. I was looking at NTSC-J consoles as they are generally quite a bit cheaper, but ended up finding an NTSC-U version 1 at a good price, relatively speaking. It was being sold as non functional, and most likely bad av out port, but really problem unknown. I have worked on consoles before replacing drives, etc., but no major repairs or overhauls.

The thing that seemed odd is that it had a metal switch on the back next to the battery door, and on the bottom of the console a large black and blue Saturn sticker. I don't recall either of these being on other Saturn's I'd seen in the past but it has been a long time.

Unfortunately when the console arrived it had been packed into a box that was a tight fit and switch was broken off inside the box. I hooked it up, and the access light continues to flash but no audio or video.

I dedciced to try it again recently and document exactly what happens. If I power up the console with no game inside the access light blinks all the time, and again the screen changes to a darker shade of black. No sound. I put a game in and the drive spins, but when it starts to spin the access light immediately stops and again the screen changes to a darker shade, but still no video or audio. My TV never says no signal, so something is getting through. I'm guessing this console is just toast or in need of a lot of help?

Any ideas? I'm guessing bad caps, bad PSU, or who knows what. I tried switching out the battery and of course that did not help.

Thank you.

 

[TerryLaze]

Non standard switch would make me guess they had a modchip installed with an off switch so you could still play original online games.
Or some other mod of course.
You have to open it up and see what's inside, if you are lucky it was a display mod and removing it will fix your output.

 

[silversmithy]

Got it, thank you. A while ago I bought an original PlayStation and it looked normal on the outside. Initially it just went to the screen that shows memory card or CD. It would play music CD's, but not any games. I decided to take it apart and it was a nasty mess I side, with an early .od chip badly soldered with I believe 2 of the 5-6 connections broken off. I snipped the rest of the connections as close to the board as I could and now it will play games, albeit the laser appears to be wearing out as games slow down and sometimes freeze.

When I look into the back of the Saturn through the open battery door area there is a small blue box that the toggle switch had been attached to, and it appears just a single light grey wire running from it, and then fastened to the underside of the top. It looks very clean from what I can see, and I'm guessing it was not an amateur job. Also I noticed that there is a foil tamper sticker that says something like Customer must purchase if the protective tape is tampered with. It also has some kiddy type stickers on the top probably covering up scratches so my guess is this was a rental that was later purchased.

All but one of the 5 screws on the bottom of the console have either fallen out already or were just hanging on. I will remove the last screw and report back the whole picture on the inside. In your experience do you think if I carefully snip whatever connections there are if it looks like the mod chip on that PlayStation that if it's a video mod there may be hope or will soldering must likely be required? Probably hard to say until I open it up.

Anyway, thank you again.

 

[silversmithy]

I did some research and found that most likely this is a 50/60hz Pal switch mod. If I just disconnect the switch from the motherboard do you think I may have a working unit again?

 

[TerryLaze]

I did some research and found that most likely this is a 50/60hz Pal switch mod. If I just disconnect the switch from the motherboard do you think I may have a working unit again?

I don't have any experience on this, research the mod to see if it replaced any components on the board, obviously you would have to replace those back.
But in general yes, since it's a display mod you should either remove it or fix it to fix your display.

 

[silversmithy]

From what I found it looks like basically a three pole 2 way switch has been soldered red and black wire from switch to jp1 and jp2 on the motherboard and a blue wire from switch to other spot on motherboard as ground I guess. I'm hoping that if I can just cut all three wires as close to the board as possible and remove the switch entirely I may have the same success as with the PlayStation. Thank you again.