I have a Saturn that I've played frequently for many years now, but a couple of years ago, it started exhibiting a problem. After about 30-40 minutes of play, the picture will freeze (oddly, I found when I was playing Dark Savior, it paused the game before freezing) and after a couple of minutes of that, the picture will start rolling, or just go black. Giving the console a short rest will allow it to function for about the same length of time again. I got myself another Saturn which I'm in the process of modding, but I'd love to restore my original Saturn if possible (it has region switch, 50/60Hz switch and a mod-chip, so it'd be nice to not have to do all that again!). I tried switching the power supply from the working Saturn to the broken one, but that had no effect, so I suppose it's not that. No capacitors that are visible when taking the top case off are obviously blown, but I've not taken the shielding off to inspect the main board yet. I've also tried playing with the case off and it seems to make no different whatsoever, so overheating seems unlikely to me. Was wondering if anyone knew any common causes of stuff like this and has advice on what I should check and do/not do. I'm quite a beginner at stuff like this. Thanks in advance!
Complete layman here, but what I've read of caps, a broken one may not always be visibly obvious. Might we worth replacing them anyway. Someone may correct me, however.
Power supply most likely, have you opened it up.. its an old system with capacitors that are usually warm form the system running, probably dried out.. replace with high temp, low ESR caps and it should be ok. But this is just a guess as we don't know the codition of the system...
I thought power-supply, but ruled that out by using the power supply from a working Saturn. The machine is in good condition, but it's heavily used (by me, over many years) - I guess replacing all the caps might be a reasonable start... Meanwhile, I think I'll move the mod-chip over to the working one and do a 50/60Hz switch mod so I have something to play with while I fix the broken one.
Another thing that's worth checking - especially on older machines that have been heavily played - is the clock PLL. I've seen a few machines where it starts to generate unstable clocks when it gets hot and then dies totally.
