So I bought a Cross development kit, and have a few questions :)

Hi!

I accidentally stumbled upon this piece of electronic wonderfulness at a car boot sale (flea market), and, without really knowing what it was (I'll shamelessly admit I thought it was just a "chipped" Saturn to begin with) I bought it. I now realise it is part of a development kit made by Cross for Sega?

Here's a pic:



I just had a few questions about it, hoping some of you guys could help

It seems to play retail games just fine, and the little region selector on the bottom works fine ubt, will it play CD-R backup games?

I've noticed a small blue button next to the cell battery located in the rear flap, pushing it just seems to reset the console, does it do anything specific?

How much are these things worth?! I know it's a strange one, but I've never come across anything like this before where I live. Ever.

Thanks for your time

Steve

 

That blue button is on retail Saturns, too. I think it just temporarily disconnects the battery to reset the system settings and wipe the internal memory without having to remove the battery.

 

OK, it's basically a retail Saturn with a bunch of mods done to it.

1) Region selector switch wired to the jumpers on the board
2) NMI cable to plug into the CartDev box (used for breakpoints)
3) Target board for the CD emulator

It's difficult to say what it's worth - it's not very useful on its own. It would be most interesting to someone that had the Mirage CD emulator box but not the modded console since the other modifications (NMI cable and region switch) are pretty easy to add to a retail Saturn.

Edit:
And it doesn't boot CD-Rs - the CD-controller is still standard retail. In fact, even booting images from the CD emulator requires the use of the system disc. This caused me a lot of confusion, since everything seemed to be working OK and the image was valid, but it wouldn't boot. What you have to do each time you power the console on is switch over to "CD", boot the system disc and then switch back to the emulator. Then it boots.

 

interesting. I had one similar many moons ago. Mine had NMI cable and VCD port but no region switch.
it came with another one as a pair and that one had region selector and NMI cable but no VCD port.

as by itself it's not much of value. maybe with CartDev box it'd be attractive for people who's into development...

 

Thanks for the information guys much appreciated. It'll no doubt just go on the shelf, it's a nice little oddity to have. And I suppose it's nice to own a region free Saturn so I can experience all of the good stuff Europe missed out on.

 

It's a cool thing to have - incidentally, the switch marked "CD/VCD" selects between the CD drive and the external Mirage CD emulator - lots of people have (not unreasonably) thought that it had something to do with video CD - but in this case the "V" is "virtual".

 

I must admit I thought it was a video CD adapter of sorts. I had no idea what it really was until I got home and Google'd it. The guy at the market thought it was just a Saturn some kid had messed with to try and play copied games, it had no wires or controller so I bought it for £10 (about $16?), hooked it up and it's good to go

 

x

 

Let me know if you're interested in a matching CartDev to make this a fully working development unit, I have one of the Revision A models surplus to requirements.

I've also got a CD emulator, but it's not explicitly marked "Mirage", I think it's either a third party knock-off or it's for PlayStation development. It's got the same SCSI connector, hopefully they all communicate with some sort of standard.

 

Yup, it won't do much without the CartDev (and Mirage) and isn't worth much more than a retail Saturn. £10 was a good buy, though - I'd have picked it up for that, certainly!

Headcrab - ahh, I'm looking for a Rev A - if he's not interested! What does the CD emulator look like?

 

Wow, I can't believe the PC-based CD emulator board cost more than twice as much as the Mirage! I would have expected it to be the other way around.

 

I need to get out my big box of Saturn stuff and total up what it would have been worth back in the day.

I wonder what would happen if you fill out the form, and post it with a cheque...

 

The Mirage was intended as a cheap solution to the expensive kit.

Nothing would happen if you sent a cheque, as that's no longer Sega's address. It's now a Filipino television network's headquarters.