Saturn's Curse..... on me. :(

I started this evening with a Saturn I bought off eBay. PAL model 2, VA9 motherboard.

As soon as I got it home, I put a bunch of genuine games thru it, worked fine.

Today I got my BIOS chip from Bad_Ad. I cracked the console open, replaced the BIOS, put it half-way back together (metal shield plate, power supply, CD drive), booted some import games, no drama what-so-ever.

Put the rest of the case back on, console is now dead. Pulled it right apart, double, triple, quadruple checked every solder joint, resistor, capacitor.... all appear fine. Console's still dead.

The power LED comes on, the TV syncs up, but there's no picture and no sound. The disk spins, but it's not seeking or anything.

Voltages are OK, but no sign of life.

Rrrrrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is my second Saturn!!!!!!! WTF???

Any suggestions?

 

"TV syncs up, but there's no picture and no sound"

Thats normally a sign of one of the bios legs not being soldered on correctly, the bios pins are physically bigger than the stock saturn bios making it difficult to solder to, and hard to tell if it makes contact.

Pictures could help

 

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of.

I've gone over it with a magnifying glass a few times and I'm reasonably sure it's all OK.

Like I said, it was working with the new BIOS chip, then suddenly not working when I replaced the lid, and it's not like I dropped or jarred the unit at all while simply replacing the lid.

I am definitely going to go over it again, but I'm fearful that's not the problem in this case... :-/

 

Well, it might have worked before due to surface tension holding the leg in place

You can check most of the bios points for continuity by tracing the track that leads from the ic to a specific VIA and measuring from that , if you haven't done so allready...

 

Also, make sure the signal cable is seated correctly. It can cause the no video.

 

i have a saturn that just decided to do this, i gave up on it as i have another one and just keep it for parts i couldn't get it going again.

 

I spent another hour trying to revive this system last night. I re-flowed every leg on the new BIOS chip, inspected it all with a magnifier, no go. I re-installed the original BIOS, still no go.

Tried two different AV cables (an original composite cable, and my RGB lead) no go.

Fuckity fuck.

 

I doubt this is your problem, but mine was *dead* after some mod installs, and it ended up being a wonky connection between the PSU and the mobo. Basically, I took it apart again and then put it back together, reseated that connection a bunch, and it came back to life.
Sounds like you've had it apart a couple times since its slumber, though, so...

 

Yeah, power supply has been inserted and removed countless times now. I even hooked the system up to a PC power supply's 5V rail, to no avail.


Whelp. I give up. If anyone's interested in buying or trading something for 2 non-working Saturns (one that is totally naffed, but has good SH-2's and other chips on it, and this one that is potentially revivable by someone with more time and knowledge than I), let me know, and I'll make a post in Marketplace.

 

There's also a possibility that your Saturn had cold solder joint that had disconnected after you applied some pressure somewhere and it can be somewhere far from BIOS chip. I had similar issues with SNES and SMS cartridge slots, one Dreamcast and dunno how many arcade PCBs, and also same happened with 30 years old RTR recorder, which worked for those 30 years without any problems but got no sound output after its owner pressed record buttons a bit harder than usual - cold solder joints cracked and one of those switches basically was desoldered. Took less than a minute to repair not counting soldering iron warmup time.

Also it can be one nasty little thing that really hard to spot - a drop of solder getting stuck somewhere under the chip and when you move/shake your console it falls off and makes a short circuit somewhere.

 

There are a few surface mount fuses on the motherboard, have you checked them?

I have a working motherboard here, but I think shipping prices would probably kill it for you

 

OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@(*&(@*^%$#(*&%#@$*&^#@&*^$%^&%#@$

THANK YOU!!!

With that advice, I went over every single leg of every single chip another time.

This time I noticed a teensy tiny itty bitty minuscule little metal shaving stuck between two pins of the ASIC back near the RAM expansion slot.

I guess it was always there, but maybe had a layer of oxide insulating it, and just took me knocking the thing about to bring it in contact again.

10 seconds with the tweezers, and it's come dancing back to life, universal BIOS and all.

I'm so happy right now!

 

Congratulations glad you got it working :very_drunk:

 

x

 

This has happened to me so many times before
Pleased you got it sorted.