Best way to get a fully modded and chipped Saturn?

My wife and I in the US and are trying to get a Saturn to play imports and homebrew.
We are looking to get a 50hz/60hz switch and a UK/US/Japan switch for the imports and also chipped to play CD-R homebrew.
Neither of us have any interest in doing this ourselves, we are both all thumbs when it comes to soldering.

There seems to be three ways we could do this. We could a) Try and buy one already fully modded.
I found one expensive place in the UK that sells them pre-modded and chipped, but they are out of the fully modded black switched models.
They do have a white Japanese one that is fully modded and chipped but does it without using switches I think using the reset button to do it, for I think 110 pounds (about $225), and that’s before shipping.

b) Buy one of the black ones with just a 50hz/60hz switch and a UK/US/Japan switch, buy a mod chip for the CD-R (found one in the US for something like $56 plus shipping) homebrew stuff then try to get someone to put it in. I found one of these also in the UK for 70 pounds (around $143) before shipping. There may be some cheaper, I’m not sure.
But then I’d have to get someone/someplace else to add the CD-R chip which means mailing it back and forth.
I guess we could use a swap disk but we’d rather not if possible.

c) Buy a totally unmodded Saturn and get someone to do all the mods for me. I have no idea what this might cost or who would be willing to do it. As far as I can tell, most people either do the CD-R chip or both the 50hz/60hz switch and UK/US/Japan switch, but not all three.

Anyone have any suggestions on the best/cheapest way to do this?

Thanks!

 

I'd say the CD-R chip isn't that important. The swap trick is really easy to do, so long as you have a Model 1 Saturn. I've heard people say that it can cause permanent damage, but I've been doing it for 5 years or so and I've never had any problems. Besides, American Saturns are pretty easy to come by if it ever does break.

As for the other stuff, it might just be easier and maybe even cheaper to buy some different region Saturns. Although, I don't really see why you need PAL compatibility since virtually every game that was released in Europe was also released in the US.

So, my suggestion, in a nutshell: Crack open a US Model 1 Saturn, mod it for the swap trick, and buy another Japanese Saturn. This would probably be way cheaper than the other options you proposed. There are limitations to this method of course, but on the positive side it requires very little mutilation of the consoles.

 

Yep. The swap trick WON'T damage your Saturn unless you're a heavy handed clot with not motor function skills :lol: I've been doing the swap trick for 12 years on a Saturn that gets used at least twice a week. Still works perfectly :thumbsup:

Yakumo

 

I can never get swap to work! Guess I should try it again sometime. I might be stupid here, but for imports an Action Replay would work, right?

 

i got lucky (twice) once on ebay, once on here. that's my advice.

 

Yeah thats what I was thinking. Wasn't there a cart called a Strongcard that you could use to boot imports as well?...don't remember if thats the right name. Also Magic Card V2 aids in the swap trick quite well - thanks Yakumo :thumbsup:

 

Theres occasional contests on Nicola's site www.gamesniped.com lasting until christmas. Some of the prizes also include saturn plug and play (?) modchips!

 

:lol:
That excuse only works in the PSP scene, mate :clap:


(PS, no hard feelings, just thought it funny)

 

I managed to get a Action Replay for the Saturn before lik-sang closed down, and that works pretty well with imports. Not sure about homebrew, though.

 

If you don't even want to find an Action Replay, you can just use a North American Game Shark to play import games.

There's no way of getting around the "50/60Hz" switch though, but why is it important to you? I mean, can your TV even support PAL? Unless you have a recent HDTV for the international market, I'd say not. Maybe some of the PAL games you want play will also run fine in "60Hz" anyway.

See, the "50/60Hz" doesn't just change the vertical frequency, which would throw off any CRT alone, it changes the display system from 525 lines (like NTSC) to 625 lines (like PAL). Lastly if your TV did accept PAL video, then there's another chance that it won't take 625 line 50Hz NTSC video which isn't a popular standard so it'd interpret it as PAL and strip the color information... OK, so my point is that the only way to take advantage of the "50/60Hz" switch is to have a RGB TV/monitor that supports both 525 lines at 60Hz and 625 lines at 50Hz. So you'll need a Saturn RGB cable + HDTV/multisystem broadcast monitor with RGB input.


And as Anti said, you don't have to worry about a modchip for homebrew If you do actually want to play the little homebrew out there, you need to get an Action Replay + Comm link card + old computer to use it.

 

I didn't know that. I bet it's cheaper too.

 

The card people are talking about is a Super Magic Strong card v2.0. It just slows down the CD drive and tells you when to swap disks at, and then speeds it up when your done. They used to sell it in China/HK but now with mods, its not nessisary.

To install the mod yourself is pretty easy. Getting the actual chip for your machine might be harder. Especially if your using an older style Saturn.

Your probably better off just getting a pre-modded unit if you want to save yourself the trouble. You can also just get a action-replay if your worried about playing US games (Assuming you get a Japanese unit). For the other way around, some Japanese games need the 32mbit Dram card so it might be better to just get a Japanese unit since US games don't use it.

 

I think people say the Swap Trick damages the system because Playstation's were cheap pieces of shit which did get killed from bad swapping. The Sega Saturn seems built much better to me and I never had issues swapping. But was screwwing around with my Saturn model 1 trying to make my own Composite Video cable back then and I probably connected +5v to something and now he picture is messed up on it. So after that I ended up buying a model 2 and a modchip. Modchips were easier to come by back then.

Alot of things play imports. Apparently the "Memory Card Plus" that came with my first Saturn enables you to play imports. I just patch games before burning and it's not an issue. So you really don't have to worry about imports at all if you copy whatever import games you buy and patch the region code before burning.

The homebrew comment was pretty funny.

 

I'd just get a Japanese one. Games are cheaper and systems too. PAL games and systems are just laughable talking about prices.

 

The card I have is called a Magic Card V2. I presume these were released under different names?

 

Yeah different names (and translations), same product. There's also a V1, but I've never seen the cartridge, only it's swap CD.

 

There's a swap CD? Why? I thought the HK pirates never managed to duplicate the required security ring...

 

Yup, there's a swap CD so you don't even have own one original game.

 

Thanks for explaining this. I'm still learning about all this, so of course I made a mistake. I have a Samsung lnt4065f which I got specifically to play lots of werid consoles (It has loads of inputs). I was thinking my TV supported PAL, but its actually my OPPO DVD player that is converting the PAL on the fly.
If I could do it again, I'd get a HDTV/multisystem broadcast monitor, but anyway, thanks for explaining so I don't get mods I don't need!!!

So that means I don't need UK region capability, nor do I need a "50/60Hz" switch, which makes things *MUCH* easier.

From reading all this it seems like my best bet is to just get a US one with a US/JP switch, then get a modchip put in by someone else...
(aside from needing a step-down power converter, is there any reason why a white Japanese Saturn with a US/JP switch wouldn't be just as good?)

 

Since you live in the US, you don't need a step down for power, some people insist out of caution but it's pretty stupid IMO.

If you're going to play games which need RAM carts, just get an Action Replay 4M and don't mod your case at all.