Sega Saturn Kiosk Reset Circuit Board

On my Saturn kiosk I have a reset button that I cannot seem to get working. On the back of the kiosk there is some kind of control board for reseting the system.

The reset button is wired to to the board. There are two wires, one red and one black, which I am assuming it is positive and negative.

There is a cable that at one end is a regular Saturn controller cord that plugs into the Saturn controller port. And the other end is a nine wire connector that plugs into "Jack #1" on the reset board.

There are also two standard Saturn controller ports on the reset board that says "TO CONTROL PAD"

There is gunk on the back of the board because the the sticky pad that held it on the back of the kiosk. (it came like that)

I have the USA NTSC black Saturn with the circle shaped power and reset buttons.

How can I get it working?

For Pictures go to http://s992.photobucket.com/albums/af43/Digital_Anthrax/

Thanks in advance

 

Unique design. It looks like they're using the board as a multitap of sorts. Similar to the Dreamcast, if you hold down all of the buttons on a Saturn and press start, the system goes back to the system screen (soft resets). What the board essentially does is when you press the reset button, it triggers a timer which then sends the button sequence as if the player had pressed the buttons to soft reset the system. It looks like your board is set to reset after two minutes. Try pressing the button and wait that time to see if it resets.

 

Just making sure, you know the reset button that is wired to the reset board is on the actual kiosk. (I'm not talking about the reset button on the Saturn system.) I think you knew that though.

And I have tried that. It still will not work. Any other ideas?

Thanks

 

Yes, the reset button on the kiosk unit is what I was referring to. It plugs into the part that has the minute timing marks, right?

Does the controller work passing through the reset board? If so, the first step is to ensure the button still works. After being subjected to a retail environment, it may have just gone bad.

If you have an Ohm meter (or, a battery, some wire, and a small lightbulb / LED) and can check continuity of the switch, you should see conduction when the switch is either pressed / released and nothing the other way (released / pressed).

If the switch is bad, the next step is to find a replacement and determine what type the reset switch is. If it's normally open, the reset triggers when you complete the circuit by jumping both pins together. If it's normally closed, the circuit is looking for an open in the circuit by unbridging the two pins. To check this, use a piece of wire or something that conducts (if you have a spare hard drive / cd-rom drive, they usually have a jumper or two you could borrow) and short the pins together. If nothing happens, turn off the console and short the pins together. Turn the console back on and remove the jumper. If it resets, it's a normally closed switch, otherwise it's a normally open switch.

 

Yeah It plugs into the minute timing marks.
Yes, the controller works passing through the reset board.

I'll give your method a try tomorrow and update you.

Thank you

 

I just tested the switch/button with an Ohm meter and the switch is working. The switch is "open" normally and when I press the button it closes the circuit.

What would be the next step?

 

Not completely sure, I'm afraid. :/ Since the controller ports work through the board and the switch is good, either there's a special way you need to press the button (press and hold it in for a few seconds, etc) or the kiosk used a special kiosk edition console that is looking for a unique keycode combination made to reset the game and not go back to the system screen like the retail console does.

 

Ya.. I'd assume that they have a special kiosk edition console.

I have tried pressing the button a few times, pressing and holding, and such.

Also, when the board cable from the board to the console is hooked into port 2 of the Saturn console rather than port 1, neither one of the "TO CONTROLLER PAD" ports work on the board.

Another thing is that when the board cable from the board to the consoles controller port 1 is hooked up, only one of the two ports on the board work.(it's always the same one) I am assuming that is because the game I tried it on was in the 1 player mode.

 

Everything with the controllers looks like it's operating correctly. You're right that the console only uses the first controller port for multitaps and single player games. You would need a two player game to see if the second port works.

On second thought regarding the switch, it might not be the hardware as much as it is the software. It's very possible that the unit used a kiosk demo disc that looked for the command the reset board was sending to go back to either the main demo selection screen or reset the console.

A quick search didn't yield any information, but someone here might know if such a disc exists.

 

What part of the forum should I ask if those discs exist and if there is a special kiosk edition console?

 

Either general gaming or probably rare and obscure gaming would yield the best results.

 

User: Yakumo said they are just the normal Saturn system. And he also said, there is no special kiosk disc or kiosk demo disc.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25561
Do you think any demo disc would work? If so, I can try to dig one up.
Or, do you have any ideas on what I could try?

 

I'm not really sure where to start on that one. It's possible some demos were made with the kiosk in mind and others weren't. If someone can remember playing on a kiosk and the game that was being played, that would really help.

To the question in the other thread about what the board returns at a digital level, if the thinking that it's a key combination is correct, it will be a value of these combined button to reset the console (back to the system screen - if there's a combination to soft reset the game, I'm not sure what that is): press / hold a, b, c, x, y and z and press the start button. You have to wait until the game loads up a bit, though.

If a working demo disc can't be found, a SEGA Saturn to USB converter might yield some results. When you use an application PC side (Windows has a feature that lets you check button presses through Control Panel), you can see if it's a key combination that's being returned when you press the reset button. If nothing registers when you press the reset button, it's possible that it's not a keycode, but rather a flag that's handled at a lower level.

 

Wow, this is getting a bit hard to follow over three threads!

Firstly, congratulations on your purchase! I've had several opportunities to buy a US kiosk, but shipping to the UK is prohibitively expensive!

I don't remember the kiosks ever resetting by a button. What they DID do was play a game for a set period, and then reset automatically. That's what your board does. The reason it has controller ports is that, as mentioned, it uses the A+B+C+START reset method, no doubt. The board is like a pass-through for the pad when it isn't resetting the console.

JP1 is a jumper, used to select how long it is before the console resets. The pin configuration looks a bit odd (maybe it is factory set to a particular time). Putting a switch on it should NOT reset the console.

My guess is that the switch is either not implemented, or was intended for a modded Saturn which perhaps you don't have.

 

The main thing that makes it seem like the switch is supposed to go there is that the board has a coupling connector there that matches both the color and style of the switch's connector.

I think what happened is they repurposed the board from when there wasn't an actual kiosk cabinet. The store maybe originally had to hide the console in a cabinet or something themselves, and the board was a way to automatically restart.

When the kiosk unit we see today came around, they reprogrammed the board. Instead of checking each jumper to see if the internal timer matched the value there, they set it to automatically reset the system as soon as it detected a closed connection on the second jumper (just an arbitrary choice as far as I can tell).

 

It can't reset, though! Think about it from a design point of view.

A+B+C+Start are pressed = reset

The circuit does two things: counts to a predetermined limit, then activates said reset procedure.

Those jumpers were for setting the timer... therefore shorting them (with a switch) will just set the timer. It won't skip the timer circuit and activate the reset.

 

No, my thinking is that the programmable chip itself was programmed to function differently. So, instead of checking if the limit is reached, it just goes ahead and resets if it detects a short. Electrically and design-wise, the circuit can remain unchanged in that case.

The problem though is that, as you pointed out, it's not resetting. That leads to my other thinking that it's not sending a standard reset combination, because they didn't want it to return to the system screen, but rather, just reset the game. If that's true, there must be a demo disc somewhere that understands that combination. The only way to confirm this is to get a USB adapter and check the returned combination PC-side or run some homebrew code on the Saturn to see what's being sent.

 

Well, wait now. Is resetting of the system (as in the action on the system's behalf, not the user's) a hardware or software function? If it's the latter, then the reset combination could be the same and that the board just isn't cooperating, right?

I'd think if the software is what is listening for the button combo, then there's a chance that the reset process could possibly be controlled similarly.


I do agree, that the way to find out, is to get it plugged into a controller test program and hit the button. Is there a homebrew one somewhere?

 

That's hard to say (regarding hardware / software). The system only allows a soft-reset back to the system menu after the "licensed by" screen. One of two things could be happening there. Once control is handed off to the game, it starts looking for the reset combination, or the controller port's protocol handles the reset call but the system blocks its request until an application is running.

If I had to choose one, I'd say software so the developer could override it in the event that button combination would need to be used in the game.

 

Oh dear, we seem to be speculating here.

The Saturn effects the reset by the pressing of those buttons. The SMPC handles resets (and actually, has reset enable/disable commands). The reset button is a hardware reset and the A+B+C+START is a software reset.

This is all irrelevant, though, as the Sega Saturn Software Development Standards state:

In short, if a game doesn't allow reset, it doesn't get published.