Saroo vs. Satiator

[Xan]

Very out of the loop here so would appreciate some opinions. Is a Satiator still even worth considering these days? I'm hearing people are even selling theirs off in favor of a Saroo. The price difference to a Saroo from aliexpress is huge and apparently the console still needs to be power cycled to change games unless you have the 4in1 cartridge and flash it to a special firmware. They added a modchip mode to play burned discs which is nice though. What is the situation on the Saroo with resetting and the modchip mode, as well as compatibility?

I guess the other ODEs aren't out of the question but I think if a drive is working it's preferable to keep it inside the Saturn, and apparently both the Saroo and Satiator require the drive to be present with certain motherboard revisions.

[bobrocks95]

Very out of the loop here so would appreciate some opinions. Is a Satiator still even worth considering these days? I'm hearing people are even selling theirs off in favor of a Saroo. The price difference to a Saroo from aliexpress is huge and apparently the console still needs to be power cycled to change games unless you have the 4in1 cartridge and flash it to a special firmware. They added a modchip mode to play burned discs which is nice though. What is the situation on the Saroo with resetting and the modchip mode, as well as compatibility?

I guess the other ODEs aren't out of the question but I think if a drive is working it's preferable to keep it inside the Saturn, and apparently both the Saroo and Satiator require the drive to be present with certain motherboard revisions.

I recently got a Satiator and am very happy with it, though I had a 20% PayPal deal I used on it so it was about $160 USD.

You do not have to power cycle to change games if you opt to use Satiator Menu Kai, which looks nicer than the stock Satiator menu and allows for IGR on ~99% of games. It's a bit confusing, but Satiator Menu Kai does NOT require a 4-in-1 cart or a Pseudo Saturn Kai cart, it's just software you put on the SD card on the Satiator. I use mine with an official backup RAM cart plugged in at all times.

Saroo compatibility seemed iffy enough to me to justify the cost. Lots of broken links on the Saroo compatibility github and several games I'm interested in marked as having glitches or needing configuration, with broken links on the details of what the config needs to be. Still, it's an alluring price point depending on how much Saturn you actually expect to play.

[Xan]

It is strange that they wouldn't incorporate that into the stock menu then. It is a soft reset though, having the reset button work as on Everdrives would be better in my opinion. $160 isn't too bad but for me it would be $199.99+VAT+customs duties+unknown shipping cost (their calculator doesn't seem to do anything outside the US). And I don't have a RAM cart either while the Saroo can act as one. Though apparently stuff like the Castlevania 4M hack runs poorly so hard to say how useful that is.

Satiator prevents you from using the MPEG card while Saroo prevents you from using Netlink. The latter would be nice to try one day but no idea how many people are doing that these days. I guess the question with the Saroo is how much patching is really needed and how far it is from a stock experience, or vs. Satiator or the other ODEs that replace the disc drive.

Another option would be a modchip, but the Phantom ones appear to not be sold anymore. So those from Aliexpress would be the only choice.

[bobrocks95]

It is strange that they wouldn't incorporate that into the stock menu then. It is a soft reset though, having the reset button work as on Everdrives would be better in my opinion. $160 isn't too bad but for me it would be $199.99+VAT+customs duties+unknown shipping cost (their calculator doesn't seem to do anything outside the US). And I don't have a RAM cart either while the Saroo can act as one. Though apparently stuff like the Castlevania 4M hack runs poorly so hard to say how useful that is.

Satiator prevents you from using the MPEG card while Saroo prevents you from using Netlink. The latter would be nice to try one day but no idea how many people are doing that these days. I guess the question with the Saroo is how much patching is really needed and how far it is from a stock experience, or vs. Satiator or the other ODEs that replace the disc drive.

Another option would be a modchip, but the Phantom ones appear to not be sold anymore. So those from Aliexpress would be the only choice.

The stock menu requires exactly as much effort to set up as Satiator Menu Kai does- both are just files you drop on the root of your SD card. The unit doesn't come with an SD card or anything pre-configured.

I had a clone Action Replay 4-in-1 cart flashed with Pseudo Saturn Kai before, and then switched to a Phantom chip + official backup RAM cart. For me personally, I don't really play fighting games, so the loss of the 1/4M RAM carts didn't matter much to me (I'd maybe get one at some point just for the Chronicles of Mystaria pack), and none of the VideoCD games interest me either, I can live with Lunar FMV looking a little worse. We're still stuck with the terrible Working Designs translation anyways afaik.

Also not seeing the Phantom available anywhere. Saroo is cheap enough to just start with and see if it's a hassle, if the Satiator is likely to end up closer to $250+ USD equivalent.

[Xan]

Might pass on Saroo for now actually, as tempting as it is (there are even carts being advertised with gold plated contacts and beveled edges being sold for cheap), I don't really like the whole concept of the hardware patching every individual game instead of replicating the actual drive behavior, because it bypasses the entire optical block. I'm sure it works well enough in practice though and apparently the cartridge slot bandwidth is much higher than from the optical block, people are saying it actually loads too fast in some cases. There is also this, which doesn't sound very encouraging: https://retrorgb.com/new-test-reveals-p ... blems.html

I was thinking to just try my luck with one of those modchips from Ali, but now I realised those Pseudo carts also allow to play back burned games, so it seems the only use for a modchip is to use an official RAM expansion cart. I don't care about the fighting games either and don't even have a huge list of Saturn games to play to begin with, so just getting one of those carts and relying on CD-Rs for now doesn't seem like a bad idea. Then if the drive ever dies I can just install a Fenrir or whatever, which goes for the same price as a Saroo and seems to have better compatibility. Or even a Satiator if I feel I like the system that much.

[it290]

No experience with the Satiator, but I do have a Fenrir and a Saroo—which don't play nice with each other, so I'm limited to using one at a time, thankfully I have multiple Saturn units to do this with. I think the case for a Saroo is quite limited until and unless the compatibility gets better. The main avantages it has are:

• Loading speed

• Ability to save to SD

As far as the first point goes, the difference here is pretty substantial, but really only for games where loading is frequent and somewhat lengthy, which mostly applies to 2D fighters. Given that I have a MiSTer hooked up to the same CRT that my Saturn is hooked up to, I'm realistically seldom going to play the Saturn versions of most of these games when I can easily access the CPS2/MVS versions from the MiSTer. I think the Saroo is a good fit if you want to play a lot of 2D fighters and you don't have other hardware options.

As far as the SD card saving goes, this is cool in theory, and I think some more tools have sprung up since I tried this last year, but the Saroo saves in its own custom format that none of the Saturn emulators or save tools really handle, and the tools in the Saroo repository are incomplete with stub code, meaning that moving saves from the Saroo to an emulator or other device and back, which would in theory be the main benefit of this feature, ends up being a huge pain.

So what this means in practice is that you you get the ability to fastload games with decent but somewhat iffy compatibility, and a theoretically cool save feature that is not that useful in practice. Meanwhile, the Fenrir (and Satiator, and MODE) give you near perfect compatibility with loading times that are mostly on par with the optical drive if not a bit faster in some cases, and really Saturn load times are generally pretty decent and it's only a few games that are substantially improved, most of which are more easily accessed in superior form using different hardware. Yes, the other ODEs are more expensive, but the difference in quality makes it worth it IMO.

[SGGG2]

SAROO is worth having just for Die Hard Arcade alone, the transistions between quicktime events are almost instant.

[Xan]

The Saroo has actually also added the capability to play CD-R backups recently, but the problem is said to be that it will still try to apply its patches to CD games, resulting in possible issues. So am I correct that a Pseudo cart would still be superior for this purpose? There is no doubt the Saroo offers more value than buying a 4in1 cart for the same price, but I'm still wary to buy one now if the checksum faults really turn out to be a flaw with the hardware.

Just hypothetically, I'm also wondering how things like that 4MB Castlevania hack would perform on the Saroo vs. a 4in1 cart with the expansion RAM. Not that I'm particularily waiting to play that hack, but it isn't something that's being discussed much.

Then regarding saves, apparently the Satiator copies saves to internal backup RAM upon loading the game, while the Saroo completely bypasses the internal backup RAM or backup memory cart. It seems to me that the Saroo method just adds an extra layer of possible bugs and reminds me of the VMCs in PS2 OPL, which I have never had a use for either.

[SuperDeadite]

Fenrir Duo owner here. Couldn't be happier as I actually use the VCD card. Throw in 4mb cart and it does it all.

[bobrocks95]

If you're thinking burned CD-Rs probably go with a 4-in-1 cart and flash with Pseudo Saturn Kai. Though that requires a disc hot-swap the first time you do it if I'm remembering right, which was tricky to pull off. These days maybe carts have Pseudo Saturn Kai pre-flashed?

The 4Mb Symphony of the Night hack crashed for me a couple times with a 4-in-1 and a burned CD-R, so I gave up on it. Could have been my disc drive though.
Load times were still fairly bad as I recall, and nobody's fixed the bad scaling yet either.

Satiator has a few other options for how it handles saves I believe. Thought SD card saves were one of them, at least with the Satiator Rings menu which I wouldn't recommend these days. I didn't look too hard in PSK but it's in the documentation- I just leave an official save cart in like I said.

[Xan]

These days maybe carts have Pseudo Saturn Kai pre-flashed?

Yes, there are Chinese 4in1 carts just like Saroo carts. Though a lot of them are actually 2in1 or 3in1, so some care is needed to make sure one is getting the right version. And the 4in1 carts actually go for just as much as the Saroo itself.

It's apparently even still possible to get the grey AR 4M Plus cart as new, too. I did wonder if there might be any quality difference between those and the newer black designs, because with the Saroo it's known that cheaper variants have been using salvaged/relabelled ICs.

[Xan]

Still waiting for some stuff, but wanted to collect a bit of information about Pseudo Saturn Kai carts here, as I've not seen a good summary of everything yet.

With PSK flashed to an Action Replay 4M Plus cart, one downside is you lose both the AR and save memory features, because the PSK firmware takes up the flash space needed for saves - I did not see an obvious acknowledgement of this in the PSK readme. Also, not all games seem to work when loaded via PSK, the devs have a compatibility list here: https://ppcenter.webou.net/pskai/compat/

Then regarding the carts being sold right now that already come with PSK, these have an issue that's also mentioned on that page - EMI causing some games to additionally not work (at least on certain consoles/revisions), because the carts lack the EMI shielding that official carts have. As said there, people are taping the inside of these carts with aluminum foil to get around the issue, though I've also seen it mentioned elsewhere that the foil would need to connect to ground to really do anything. The old grey AR 4M Plus carts apparently get away without these issues despite also not having any EMI shielding.

With the newer carts there are some versions that do offer save memory due to having extra memory soldered, and this apparently can be saved to directly by games, unlike the original cart, which can only be used as a backup using compression to get the claimed 8M onto the limited flash memory. The PSK dev is actually against this save feature, claiming that it will just wear out the flash prematurely and disabled it in the "official" PSK firmware, but even official memory carts just use a flash chip all the same. Another version of the newer carts restores the AR functionality, which is some hack of PSK as with the save stuff, as the original PSK firmware has it deliberately disabled.

It's also possible to deliberately brick the bootrom on these carts and have the console start the CD directly instead of going to the PSK menu - the devs warn against it but some people report having success with this.

About build quality, people are saying that all of these carts will ruin the cartridge slot over time due to not being tapered and edge beveled as real cartridges are. Myself, I have a grey AR 4M Plus cart now and opening it noticed the horrible soldering quality - some unused pads are badly tinned seemingly at random and some memory chip legs have random solder blobs on them, the thing looks like somebody was playing around with a soldering iron or just learning to solder. Found another picture of this PCB and was kind of relieved to see it's not just my cart, but also exactly the same there (the second one, SA19-5). On mine they even mixed 60ns and 70ns chips for that expansion RAM, just throwing on there whatever they had lying around, though it probably doesn't matter anyway.

With the newer red PCB design that's probably in some/all? of these ali carts, the soldering looks just as bad, but I found it kind of interesting that these newer carts use some old chips with markings made unreadable to do the address translation (which is done by a Sega custom IC in official carts) instead of the more expensive FPGA that's in the older AR carts.

Anyway, if someone comes across this and notices a mistake feel free to correct it.