saturn Model search help

Hey guys

I'm looking for a japanese saturn that has a motherboard and case that matches the US April 1996 saturn. Does anyone know of one? I'm most interested in the oval HiSaturn variants, but will take a grey saturn as well.

 

x

 

Well, my understanding is that a white saturn is immediately out of the running: they all had Round buttons, and the april 1996 is oval buttoned.

Furthermore, april 1996 boards have a breakout board for the controllers, so the VA4/VA5 boards can't really be considered equivalents as they won't fit in the april 1996 case. I suppose i should explain my purpose at this point: My favorite US saturn is the April 1996 Oval button system because it is so unique among saturn systems, at least internally. I'm hoping to find an import system, preferably a HiSaturn, where i can do the same kinds of mods i've done to my April 1996 systems.

So, the case has to be an oval button case and needs to have a breakout board for the controller ports in order for it to be correct. Does this information help?

 

x

 

Perhaps my original intent didn't come across correctly then, and if so i apologize and will try again: I'm looking for an oval button japanese saturn, preferably the hisaturn, that has a motherboard AND case mold that matches the US April 1996 system. This means no difference at all (as in, no removal of the access LED or lightpipe, no round button cases, controller daughterboard exists, etc).

Based on my criteria, no round button saturn will ever work, and as such neither will round button variant boards unless the access LED is still included.

My goal is to place my current april 1996 board in to an oval case that will fit it, and to find a matching board and case that will allow me to do the same mods that i've done on my april 1996.

I have to disagree with your use of the word Identical here....the VA4 and VA5, because the LED is missing, is simply not identical at all. But your work has led me down the right path (B62 for HiSaturns, a lead on what to look for in grey saturns), and i'm incredibly happy that someone else took this on. I tried to do something like this many many years ago on segaxtreme and simply didn't get all that far with it.

 

x

 

Again, they are not identical. by definition, identical means no differences at all. For my purposes, i need models with no discernible differences (memory change is fine, but nothing else on the case or board can be different), so the removal of the memory clear button, the resistors, and the access LED immediately make those boards different from the ones i'm looking for specifically, and therefore are completely useless for my needs. Also, you admitted that there is a different id number between these models: VA2/3 and VA4/5. That makes them different, doesn't it? Even in sega's eyes?

To be perfectly frank, and with all due respect, what you consider aesthetics really doesn't come in to play with what i was asking from the beginning. As stated in the first post, i am looking specifically for a Japanese system that has the same motherboard AND case as the april 1996 US version. the key there are the words "same" and "case". Trying to play semantics with what i am specifically looking for just because you don't classify the boards differently doesn't help me find what i am looking for and isn't relevant to either my request for assistance or my search. Again, i appreciate the work you've done, and i also appreciate the answer you provided, but you're arguing with me about what i need and am looking for, and you keep playing with the word "identical" as if you can change its meaning to fit what you FEEL it means relative to this topic. No matter which way you look at it, "nearly identical" isn't the same thing as "identical", and yes, aesthetics happen to count...very seriously i might add...towards what i am in need of.

I'm sorry you feel that way. At the time, no one else was doing anything, and the information was still correct, regardless of how you feel about the direction it was going. I had only US saturns to work with where i could see the boards themselves. There were a lot more plans involved that never really happened due to getting stalled with import systems and the lack of interest and information. But at least i tried, right?

 

x

 

Look druid, pretty much since i asked the question, you've been coming across as kind of a dick, starting from where you said that an april 1996 system wouldn't mean anything, right down to your criticism of my failed attempts to get something similar to what you've accomplished done 11 years ago.

Maybe i'm being too sensitive, but when i correct my request to clarify that i need oval shaped cases for this mod, why is there a continued questioning of what i am trying to find out or offering of opinion that round vs oval is just aesthetics? I'm sorry i wasn't more clear about the fact that i need an oval case in the first post...i truly thought it was properly implied by the fact that i asked for Oval HiSaturns or GREY japanese saturn systems....then there is an assumption of what kind of mod i'm doing, and that motherboard wise they are all the same....well, i'm doing a case mod, not a motherboard mod, but thanks anyway.

I knew you were the one to ask, but i really didn't expect this kind of reaction to such a simple question. I'm not trying to be an asshole, i'm trying to get you to stop being one, listen to what is being asked, and instead of being so self important, take a look at what i was actually asking for the whole time, and be accurate in your answers.

Identical means the same. if a motherboard is identical, then there are no differences, be it resistors or buttons or leds. you are using the word incorrectly almost every time you use it, and tried to justify your use each time, which detracted from what i actually was looking for: an oval button case and button swap that will take my current motherboard and allow me to mod its motherboard in the same way i have my current one done, on top of the case mods i want to do. I needed whatever japanese models exist that use a case that a US 1996 motherboard would fit in to and still have oval buttons.

i pretty much feel like you were being stubborn and dickish for no reason. Yes, at the time, i classified models by pin count, modboard compatibility, and manufacture date on the bottom of the case, which i quickly learned didn't happen for every region of saturn anyway. At the time, all that mattered was 20 pin vs 21 pin to determine what modboard to get.

so yeah, my project sucked, never finished, was headed in the wrong direction, and probably helped no one but me. but again, at least i fucking tried to get some info out there.

 

x

 

Both of you are wasting far too many words on something the first post is more than clear enough about.

All he wants can't be any simpler, a Japanese case that the board he already owns will fit into. There's no reason to go out and buy a model 2.

 

There are two people who you would ask specifics about Saturn model differences - Druid II and myself. Both of us have taken apart countless machines, and I own all the PAL service manuals (although that doesn't really help you in this instance, they DO have version differences in them). And I generally turn to Druid as I haven't been inside one in a while now.

Technically, Druid has a point - if you're just looking to switch motherboards, there are quite a few models that will fit other cases. And he's right in stating that you're barking up the wrong tree identifying consoles by date - they are meaningless. The date tells you when the plastics were moulded. Nothing more. The plastics were then most likely boxed up en masse, shipped to an assembly plant, unboxed, then put on the assembly line. Effectively, the assembly line would grab a case from a pile, grab a motherboard from a pile, grab a PSU, CD mech etc. and whack them all together. So you could have a VA2 board in a case from October 1996 and a VA3 board in a case from January 1996. Sega didn't identify models by date, the date is meaningless. So - what's the VA number of your US machine? It would be a lot more helpful to identify the board.

If you want to be really picky about what IDENTICAL means - you'll never find an identical board. The Japanese console will be set to Japan, the US console will be set to USA. Don't they have different BIOSes, too? So if you want to be picky about there obviously being a difference to warrant the VA number change, you'd have to take such differences into consideration, too. From what I remember, the VA number actually identifies the unit as a whole, not just the motherboard. That's why some motherboards have the same model number, but not a VA number, I would assume. My memory might be a bit off on that, though - and I'm not sure where my manuals are offhand.

 

x

 

If you really must know, i'm doing some case swap stuff between an april 1996 US saturn, which is an oval button system (and has the manufacture date on the bottom of the case, which is what i was basing the whole FAQ on btw) to get some different case button and general case color combinations with my already modified motherboard. I would love to get both a HiSaturn and a Grey saturn case mixed to be able to use my 21 pin modboards as well.

Right, but i have run in to many april 1996 US systems, and so i can tell you with quite a high level of certainty that US april 1996 systems all have essentially the same hardware internally, at least as far as my criteria counts: Motherboards that fit any other US april 1996 case, power supply, and cd-rom board.

And again with being a dick. Who the hell are you to judge which direction MY project was going in? Yes, you were far more successful in your project and there were similarities, but i feel we had very different overall goals. You weren't there back then. You've not had a single positive thing to say about it. You say with some form of authority that i was going in the wrong direction, instead of saying that you FELT like the direction might have been wrong. To me, this is being a dick.

No, he doesn't. He failed to read the original question. I was being quite specific about the fact that only oval button cases would work, and nowhere did i state that i only wanted to switch motherboards.

Not quite so for US systems. But again, you guys seem to assume that i'm looking up the date by the case molds, and not by the Manufactured in sticker on the bottom of the system. Believe it or not, the US manufacture date sticker is a fairly good indicator of what hardware you'll find inside of a US system. I found out rather quickly that the same information doesn't apply to JPN or PAL machines however, which is part of the reason why my own project was abandoned.

Not likely in the US. All the saturn systems i have owned, including the 8 or so in my closet right now, follow the date of manufacture sticker pretty consistently:

March 1996 and earlier had a different motherboard (20 pin cd-rom to motherboard interface cable) than April 1996.
April 1996 systems are all oval button with 21 pin cd-rom to motherboard interface cables.
May 1996 through i believe July 1996 all had very similar hardware to each other, particularly round buttons, 21 pin cd-rom/motherboard interface cables, and a 64 pin chip on the cd-rom drive where you would hook up the modboard to. They were completely different motherboards from the April 1996 systems
August 1996 until december 1996 had similar motherboards to the may-july series (though i never looked close enough to say that they were exactly the same), but instead of 64 pin cd-rom drive chips, they had 32 pin cd-rom drive chips.
January 1997 had a sanyo cd-rom drive.

This has been pretty much consistent with every US saturn i've ever touched. Yes, someone could do a case swap and throw that whole thing off, but i'm fairly confident in the data i gathered.

The point of the identical argument is simple: Something isn't identical if there are changes. I never asked for identical. Druid repeatedly stated that certain motherboards from round button systems were identical to certain motherboards from oval systems, EXCEPT for some missing resistors, a memory clear button, and an LED. I argued back that the definition of identical doesn't allow for those differences. He continued to argue his point, but he was wrong. I even mentioned that i wanted no discernible differences, not identical. But whatever....if you guys just read and answered the original question instead of trying to impress with your knowledge, none of this would have happened. How is it that Lum is the only person thus far to completely understand what i was asking? Is there something wrong with my use of the english language?

 

At times lack of technical knowledge is a good thing. It helps one not overthink questions like this.

 

x

 

Just like the date etched in the plastics, a manufactured date label is, in fact, an ASSEMBLED date. The parts aren't even made in the same factory.

I'm not sure where the American consoles were assembled, but it's most likely to be the Far East. Probably in the same assembly plants. So yes, they'll be a mish-mash of parts. (Just found a photo online that had Malaysia on the back sticker.) It is, of course, fairly likely that a particular board revision, plastic revision etc. was introduced at roughly one time. However, if you have more than one plant assembling them, one might get their stock sooner than another, or have more surplus plastic parts that they want to use up... so you can't say with absolute certainty that on 1 April 1996, all manufacturing plants downed tools, sent the old boards and plastic parts back, and started on a fresh batch that specifically were all brand new. Assembly plants use different parts all the time, especially where the bottom plastic is the same but the top plastic has changed, or something like that. On at least some models, they were supposed to use certain revisions of certain parts, according to the service manuals.

Interesting notes, though. I'm sure you could tie them up to Druid's findings on VA revision to work out what's what.

So, you can see that a manufacturing date is quite vague, as is "only oval button". If you want to be specific, as I said before, tell us the VA number. I'm sure you'll agree that if your Saturn is a VA3 board with a certain amount of pins on the CD-ROM and a Hi-Saturn is a VA3 with the same number of pins, it's highly likely to be a match. It's highly likely that at least some of the parts were made in the same moulds, regardless of colour.

 

x

 

Now this was incredibly helpful. Let me make sure i've got this right:

So, on HiSaturns, BC52 and B62 are the starting points.
For VSaturns, the ones i'd need appear to start with 160
On Grey saturns, as you mentioned, i've got a wide range of serials to look for, starting with 6620, B520, and B52 for va2 systems, and 0630 for va3. The only difference between these va2 and va3 boards is the use of SD ram vs SG ram, so for my purposes these board should have no discernible differences and the parts of the cases and motherboards should be 100% interchangeable with the us system i have, assuming i can provide some numbers for you to verify this.

this helps a lot and narrows my search down considerably. Thank you, druid.

I will gather my saturns today and take photos of everything i have, if you're interested in seeing them. Many of my systems have been torn apart waiting for me to find new cases for a VERY long time however, so i truly don't know that the serial number will be correct with the boards i've placed into those cases, for varying reasons.

i might be interested in that system you've got depending on price and cost of shipping.

 

x