Weird rom in Saturn MPEG card.

I opened up the saturn MPEG card i bought a year or two ago and found this:

Is it normal to see a chip replaced in one of these? Also the date, or what I think is a date, is (can't read)/1/04, which is long after the saturn's life time.
Any info?

 

I would've read that label as (version) 1.104, with that blotch being a 'v'...?

 

That would make a lot more I sense,

I forgot to say that the solder job is also pretty ugly. I actually don't know how it is connect because I don't see any pads. The pins may be at the extreme edge if the pads, and just because of the way It is solder they look like part of the pins.

 

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Past cool - The best finds are by accident!
If anyone knows it'll be @Druid II
*Runs off to check all my Saturn VCD cards*

Edit: He's already here! He's in the machine!

 

You can use very small pads with those J-Lead PLCC packages - the only part that needs to contact is the bottom of the "J" so as long as you have enough pad around that to form a solder fillet it will work. It does make them a pain to hand solder, though - which is likely why there is all that flux residue around. The rest of the parts looks like they are from '95

 

where there ever any custom vodo for the mpeg cards?

Maybe it's the ark of the covenant?!

 

It's HSS-0119 Sega Saturn Movie Card. The copyright on the label is 95 for Sega, Hitachi, and some other name that is in a mixture of hiragana and kanji(ok so I only took one quarter of conversational Japanese ten years ago so that the best I can do). It came in near mint packaging with all the inserts and stuff. I will take some better pictures once the battery on my dslr charges up. Should be a lot better then picture from my aging S4 cell camera

 

Ok better and more pics:

Nothing weird going on in these next two:

 

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Could you send me a message on how I could send the card to have the rom dumped?

 

Definitely interesting. That EPR- font on the label is identical to what is seen on many Sega arcade PCBs.

It'd definitely be strange, but maybe they somehow accidentally sent out a test board in a retail shell? Or, perhaps it was a repair job done by Sega themselves?

 

could you take a picture of the back of the box ? And is there a white dot sticker on the back of the box or the back of the card ?
It seems to be the first version of the box 671-6271 and not one of the later ones (with A or B).

V1.102 and V1.106 were released with updated version of the box, so this version seems to be an earlier one (so not v1.104), a test/proto one (could be v1.104), or a bootleg (they made some in China with exactly the same box as the one used for the Sega JPN card).

So dumping the bios, or using a saturn program to id it is the best to do to be sure.

Btw, do you see the red letters: J.T.U ? No MPEG card is compatible with 3 regions at the same time (they are J, E or JT, no other combination known). So definitely interesting.

 

More pics!
Ok sorry about this one, have a tripod but not a remote for my camera so it's a little blurry on this one:

Here is the back of the box:

and everything:

 

This is very strange indeed.

 

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I thought vcd cards could work on a USA console.
You can use a action replay to boot the discs.
Could someone tell me if I'm wrong?

 

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