Sega Saturn MK-80200A-50 (PAL) Freezing/Crashing

I have just got my old Saturn out that I bought in the 90s, haven't used it for 10+ years. I replaced the coin battery as it kept coming up with the clock settings every time I turned it on. But it has another problem, it often freezes on the boot/BIOS screen. It usually freezes during the initial logo animation, but also sometimes freezes when it gets to the CD audio screen. It seems to work better after the machine has been running for a few minutes so has warmed up slightly. The first 4 or 5 times I try it it almost always freezes.

I have done some Google searching and found a few possible causes - dust, faulty power board, or faulty CD tray open/close detector. All these seem to be fine to me, I have opened it up and there's little/no dust, can't see any broken solder joints or leaking capacitors, and the CD spring is also not broken.

So has anybody else got any ideas what can cause this freezing? Google searches reveal lots of people with the same problem, but very few answers.

 

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Update, I fitted a mod chip today. At first it would keep crashing when I put any discs in the drive, so it seemed the freezing was linked to a faulty drive as it would display the CD audio screen just fine. After it warmed up and a few tries, it started to read some discs. I've now been using it for most of the day and it reads all games and hasn't crashed for hours.

So it seems it was drive/lazer related, maybe using it for a bit has kicked it back in to life? Will report back if it starts freezing again.

 

Actually, most consoles I've seen that on had modchips fitted!

 

This one didn't have a chip before, but it hadn't been used for maybe a decade so maybe that had something to do with the freezing? Seems fine now though

 

Another update - OK so it's not fixed, still crashing. Tried it this morning and it's the same as before. I have however now identified what crashes it.

When cold (first turned on) and with the drive door open, it will get to the CD audio screen, and won't crash. However as soon as I close the drive door, it crashes. Then if I reset it with the drive door still closed, it will either crash during the animation, or while the game loads. If I reset it with the drive door open, it won't crash.

So it is definitely linked to the CD drive/door, and only seems to work after it has been on for a while - yesterday it worked for hours without crashing once it had warmed up, playing many different games. And it was freezing before I fitted the mod chip so it's not that.

Any other suggestions/ideas? I've heard people mention there's a CD lens adjuster or something.

 

Well I took it apart today to check for dust. It was very clean anyway, very little in there, but I gave everything a good clean (including the lens) but it's still crashing. But it does work after a while, so I guess I can live with that. If I get sick of waiting for it to warm up I'll just buy another one I guess.