Sega Saturn Region Free BIOS

That is what I'd prefer but on the other hand when I sell one of these it's nice for people to actually hear a difference.

 

Finally I fixed my frequency switch on my Jap Saturn.
I lifted pin79 from 315-XXX chip until I see there were many 315-XXX chips inside a Saturn...
I lifted the correct pin 79 and it works now.

Actually I tested Jap Region free bios on Pal and Jap Saturn.
Both are working flawlessly, hot frequency switching working, modchip working.

Switchless frequency to go and Segata will be happy.:Rock:

 

Mine is not working. Only black screen,however laser moves... Pal VA9 console.
I removed the bios using a hot air station. Cleaned the traces, soldered the new bios the Soldered pin 2 to 13 and 43&44 to 23, just like described. What am I doing wrong?

 

My current method is:

Remove the chip with hot air.
Remove old solder with braid
Apply flux to pads
Tin all pads with small amount of solder (I use leaded solder)
Place chip so part number is on your desk and legs facing up
Apply small amount of flux to legs
Tin each leg where it would touch the pads
Place chip onto pads, carefully making sure its central (latest batch of chips are even more slightly wider)
Using hot air, reflow chip onto pads - pushing down on the chip once a few legs/pads have connected so it holds the chip in alignment.




This gets you a good connection when you can't see the pad very well. As I said above, the latest batch of chips are slightly wider than the last and those were still wider than the original maskrom.


Hope that helps, was a bitch to write on my phone

 

Sorry it's a va7. I did what you exactly wrote, I'll measure the legs tomorrow with a multimeter. Thanks for your help.

 

You will need a picture of the board without the chip installed so you can see where the pads lead to. Some are test points, others are direct to nearby chips.

You will probably find a bad joint somewhere.

 

Oops, I found that I forgot to plug the scart cable to the TV... I forgot to change the DC scart cable with the Saturn one... How dumb I am!
It's working perfectly, games from all regions are playing now.
After hours of efforts removing all the components, and reassembling, I couldn't believe that small mistake...

 

oops

 

Happy ending though ... :thumbsup:

 

the bios us, euro and Hi saturn free region have been tested?

 

On an emulator yes. I only just received a programmer and I can program a chip with the requisite BIOS if you like.

One of my two chipped Saturns refuses to boot now, wanna bet its the 64 pin seen earlier with 40 odd wires?

 

Both Action Replay 4in1 and Video CD cards are working properly with this BIOS.

 

Not sure if this has been touched on yet, so apologies if it has..

Was playing my Euro modded Saturn earlier, and noticed that my Japanese Dynamite Deka now has some text in English rather than Japanese Noticeably on the QTE events, I'm 99% sure on my previous Saturn which had Sebs switchless mod in, the "Press Punch" etc was in Japanese, it drove me mad and *ahem* borrowed a USA copy to play it to get those bits in English. Now the QTE events in Dynamite Deka are English.

This ties in with the setup screen if your battery has died, now it defaults to English in my Euro console. I know on previous machines I've had with Sebs mod in, it would default to whichever language the machine was set to. (I did also have a Euro Saturn which had been hard-wired to Japanese mode, and this would default to Japanese with the stock bios and the regionfree bios).

So I guess the JP points are used to select region and language and the game detects it, much like the MD carts with dual languages on etc.

I wonder if there's other Saturn games that have dual language on them? Anyone else spotted any?

ta
Pete

 

x

 

This give a good reason to install region free bios + seb's region switchless mod.

 

Then there is no point installing the region free bios.

 

I'm not sure, for exemple:
If you want to play a pal original disc in japanese mode, then you lock your saturn in jap mod with seb's switchless and the game will boot with the region free bios, no?

 

Yeah but this a bit kill the whole goal of having that bios install, not having to switch anything.

 

Is the jp region free bios from d4s the only available? I'm asking, because I want to mod my V-Saturn and keep the original boot sequence, instead of the regular jp...

 

v saturn. untested, but should work.