Sega Saturn Region Free BIOS

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Does anyone know if the Navi bios can be made region free?

 

If you have it, give me a link and I'll have a look

 

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what is meant by "byte swapping" here?

you exchange two consecutive bytes? so the first byte with the second, the third with the fourth and so on?

and which tool do you use to perform this? (hex editor?! but can't find anyone with byte swapping for free).

 

Eidolon's inn has a byteswap tool for DOS. It works on NT command prompt but you need to stick to DOS filenames 8.3 filename format for it to work.

 

You can also use the Willem Eprom programmer to byteswap Link

 

Ok I have a failure on my hands, I just got my Wellon 496 programmer in today so I wanted to try these region free bios and I did what was supposed to be done by mirroring which I used HxD program to copy the whole data and paste it at the very end of the file.
I then used the Wellon program to byte swap but it has 2 options 16bit which is what I used and a 32bit, but after burning and verifying and reading the burn back and comparing it to this new mirrored and byte swaped file it all matched.
After installing it on the motherboard I turned it on to get a black screen, I'm very confident in my soldering and all connections look good (I used hot air to solder it back on the mobo).
I also did solder pin2 to ground and 43&44 to VCC like the images in page 2. So more than likely the byte swap is the problem, could someone upload a mirrored and byte swaped Hi-Saturn bios so I can compare it to what I have or someone check against my file to see if it's the problem.

Edit: I'm using M29F800AB90M1 for the bios.

Edit2: I redid the soldering just to be sure and had the black screen again but this time I decided to wait and it booted up fine, I guess I didn't give it enough time to boot since the battery is dead it goes to the Time/Date Screen so it took a bit longer than I figured.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28488139/swapped_1mb_RF_Bios.rar

 

Thank you my good man.

 

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Damn and I just soldered that bitch on too. What's the major difference between this new version?

 

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Hi,time ago buy bios chip AM29F400BB-50SE from Bad_Ad84 for Sega Saturn JAP VA10,you can know how to install it ?

 

http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/sega-saturn-region-free-bios/

But you can ignore the connection to pin 2. as thats not required when using a 4m chip

 

My Saturn started to hang when trying to read discs of any kind on the menu until I opened the cd tray then the system ran ok but will not load anything. Do you think it's the ram or possibly a bad joint? I reflowed the chip where the old one was using a hot air rework station and not a giant heat gun like people use on xbox 360.

 

got my saturn bios chip through the post this morning, cheers Adam, within 2 hours it was installed and working perfectly...
my saturn is a PAL model 1, VA0, with rev B laser unit and 40 pin DIP bios...
i knocked up a 40 pin DIP socket using a pair of 28 pin sockets and a craft knife and soldered that into place, i figured this would make life easier if ever there's an update to the region free bios or if i wanna use one of the other bases for the bios (the one i bought was based on the Japanese bios), before i started i wasn't sure there'd be enough room under the shielding for a socketed chip but there was a good 2mm clearance after it was all installed and screwed back together...
i documented the install with photos and they can be found here if anyone's interested... https://www.facebook.com/iddod/media_set?set=a.10154216513625224.1073741832.559440223&type=3
but because i was looking for a picture to confirm that the RF bios was a direct drop in replacement, and couldn't find one, here's a pic of that, in case anyone else is looking for the same thing

 

I have an unmodded VA0 US console. The bios was installed in a pin socket at the factory. I guess they only socketed them on some of the boards? I will probably pick up a RF bios chip for it soon, but it also needs a modchip.

 

I too have a VA0 but I don't believe it's socketed. As for the RF BIOS, I probably have an appropriately sized EPROM for Saturns somewhere. I need to double check that the EPROM needed is what I think it is.

 

I wonder if its "rare" for it to be socketed. I snapped a couple of pics:





zero-2k11 has the dip bios in stock so I had sent him a pm a bit ago about getting one.