Help with universal saturn installation please

[Charleaux330]

The chip seems to be a fairly simple install, but I'm having problems knowing if the modchip is even getting power.

SATURN Model no. HST-3210, JAPANESE (Oval buttons), Serial P52041809, 21pin mobo to cd stock ribbon cable.

Power supply is a long 5 pin supply, pinout seems to be Grnd, Grnd, 5.5v, 9v and 9v.

I dont have any japanese games to test at the moment, im using a burnt copy of DoDonPachi.

When the stock system powers on the green light comes on and the red "access" light blinks. When the lid is closed the laser does check for a disc as well. The system is suppose to be fully operational according to the ebay seller who is from japan.

When i install the chip the red access light does not blink. I dont know if this is suppose to after the chip is install or not. The laser doesnt seem to be checking for a disc either.

Ive tried 5v off the psu and off the green connecter that plugs into the cd from the mobo. Continuity check was ok both times.

The three pads for the different cd drive jumpers are bridged middle to jvc.

I'd appreciate any help. Thanks.

[Kez]

Have you run through the troubleshooting steps in the installation guide?

1) Reseat the ribbon cables
2) Make sure your ribbon cables are inserted correctly,
a. Check that they are not installed upside down.
b. Make sure you don’t have the MB20 connected to the CD drive and the CD20
connected to the motherboard.
3) Make sure your +5v connection is soldered in the right place on the power.

You can check 5V with a multimeter by actually measuring the voltage while it's powered on, just put one probe on the 5V pad and one on ground.

[Charleaux330]

Have you run through the troubleshooting steps in the installation guide?

1) Reseat the ribbon cables
2) Make sure your ribbon cables are inserted correctly,
a. Check that they are not installed upside down.
b. Make sure you don’t have the MB20 connected to the CD drive and the CD20
connected to the motherboard.
3) Make sure your +5v connection is soldered in the right place on the power.

You can check 5V with a multimeter by actually measuring the voltage while it's powered on, just put one probe on the 5V pad and one on ground.

Ok thanks for your help. The ribbon cable from the chip to the cd needed to be flipped.

The system now turns on with both lights and will try to read the burned disc. However, it won't read it. After a minute of trying to read it, the screen displays CD followed by japanese text and it shows 13 tracks with a total of about 50min in the corner.

Could the pot need to be adjusted or maybe its a bad burn? Im using Verbatim CD-R and havent had any bad burns using them and my dreamcast.the lowest I can burn at is 16x with my desktop. I have an old laptop i could try to burn at a slower speed.

Is the pot adjustment anything like the Gamecubes where you can read the adjusted ohms?

EDIT: Ok, so i changed the user interface to english from japanese. I also adjusted the pot a couple of millimeters clockwise. It reads the discs I'm burning as CD's and it will play the audio from them. I burned them from a BIN/CUE format image file. It still won't play them as games though. Does anybody know what this usually means? Should I try to adjust the pot again?

[Kez]

It is a bit of a myth that CDs need to be burned slow, a modern optical drive will be optimised for burning at their maximum speed. Try some other CDs if you can. Be aware that without an action replay, even with a modchip the system will only be able to play native region games (i.e. Japanese), however that doesn't seem to be the issue here as DoDonPachi is Japanese anyway..

[Lawfer]

It is a bit of a myth that CDs need to be burned slow

It's not a myth though, it's real, you don't NEED to burn it slow, but the best results are achieved by burning slow on a slow speed CD-R (the quality of the media and of the burner also plays a big role in this).

[Kez]

It's not a myth though, it's real

I disagree, but I don't think we should get into it here as I know it has been discussed elsewhere in the forums. CD burner manufacturers (rightly) assume that people will only want to burn at the highest speed possible.. both the discs and the drives are tested and calibrated for burning at these speeds, and will produce better results.

Maybe if you have an older drive that burns slow, and slow-burning media, you will get the best results.. but if you are using new discs and a newer style drive, you shouldn't try to burn at low speeds.

[Lawfer]

It's not a myth though, it's real

I disagree

PS1 and Saturn developers wouldn't burn their gold master discs at anything but 1x speed, burning at high speeds will give you inferior results and increased jitter.

[Kez]

Sure, but I am talking about modern technology, not 20+ year old stuff.

[Pikkon]

I would buy a jpn saturn game to make make sure it's reading fine.

[Lawfer]

I would buy a jpn saturn game to make make sure it's reading fine.

Yep, actually should have tested the console before modding it.

[Charleaux330]

It will probably be fine. I just ordered a new laser for it for about $11 dollars. It probably wouldn't hurt to replace it anyway.

Edit: Replacement laser worked fine. Optima 6s laser from ebay. Opened it up, took the anti static solder ball off and then swapped them out. Reads both retail and burned games. Verbatim CD-R not sure what they are called, but i got them from best buy they look like black vinyl records.

I have my Fram chip ready but havent messed with that yet.