Saturday 16 May 2009

Modding goodness

I got my Saturn modded! Amazing how, with a bit of luck, you can still find someone today who will mod your favourite retro system. I was that lucky, something I never thought possible in this videogame god-forsaken land. The timing was funny, since just a week or so before I attempted to do the 50/60 Hz mod thingy, based on a guide where you just had to solder two wires into two big pads on the Saturn's board. Only to find out that my board was a different model and that I needed to solder a wire either directly into a tracer in the board or into the tiny leg of a chip. Fuck.

Still, in a cosmic coincidente, I browsed miau (that's Portugal's eBay) for the first time in months, aimlessly, just for a kick, when I found a sale for the complete service of a mod chip and switch. 60 euros and two weeks later, I got my Saturn back, and it works like a charm! Bye-bye fucking swap-trick (that was annoying as hell when I just wanted to play for 5 minutes to relax) and black borders in my picture. Now it's just putting the disc in and it will play straight away, in full screen and at full speed. Yay!


Not my video, my cellphone camera is not that good

Now the only thing lacking is a region switch, but nothing an Action Replay 4M+ cart won't solve.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

I did it the lazy way for my Saturn.
I bought a japanese console and swaped the PSU, so now I can not anymore play 50Hz games ^_^
Not a big deal, my game library contains more japanese gems than PAL ones.

NebachadnezzaR said...

Way to go :D

Did you know there are 3 different PSU's for the Saturn, each compatible with a strict range of motherboard models?

If you didn't, you got really lucky there, having two systems from different regions compatible with the same PSU :)

Erkan said...

Nice switch.

The Plushiest said...

Yeah, I wish I had my Saturn modded. I do get a bit tired of doing the swap trick as well. And I agree, the switch looks pretty darn rad!

Unknown said...

You can region patch the games before you burn them on pc instead of a cart..I assume you're talking about backups though.

chipperkwah said...

Dude I would have done the mod for you for 20 USD! That guy is charging an arm and a leg...

NebachadnezzaR said...

Anthony, that's what I've been doing, but now I also own a couple of original imports, so there's the need for a cart.

chipperkwah, I appreciate the offer, but since you're talking in american dollars I assume we're half the world away from each other, which would've complicated things :)

I do know that he shouldn't have charged that much, and I even talked about it before agreeing with the deal, but since it's so rare to see a guy doing this kind of job I really didn't have much of an option. I look at it as an investment :P

elend said...

Hey, nice mod! I can really, really, really, really recommend everyone, to actually check the japanese game library out. There are so many gems, which some of you might not even heard of.

Sorry for not posting something for quite a while. I did buy a cool Sega Saturn Poster recently, though. The one with the Shinead O'connor girl on it. :p I may be able to photograph it soon.

chipperkwah said...

Haha so true, with shipping it would have probably been the same amount. And what a good investment it is!

Unknown said...

I have yet to do this to any of my Saturns. I may have to soon though.

Unknown said...

Also, check out my newest blog "The Sega Museum". Just getting started, but have a couple of posts. Let me know what you think.

fatherkrishna said...

An amazing tale dear Nebacha! I think I might see if I can locate such a service here in good old blighty!