Saturn Country Mod (Continued)
Next prepare some wires for the power, strip the wire and tin it (heat the wire up and apply a tiny bit of solder to it). Make sure the wires are long enough to reach from where ever you decide to place this board, to the underside of the Saturn motherboard where the +5V and GND is taken from. Again, solder the wires in place according to the diagram and the following photos. Remember to trim any excess wire from the underside of the board.
The second column of holes is used for the switch, cut 3 pieces of wire (make sure they are long enough), and solder them into place on the board, double checking the diagram. The third column of the board is used to connect to the relevant pads on the underside of the Saturn motherboard. Solder all the wires into place, following the diagram and this photo.
That's the board complete! If you're also doing the 50/60Hz mod, then you could solder the necessary +5V and GND wires to this board (top row for +5v, fourth row for GND) instead of the Saturn motherboard, you could also power your Saturn modchip from this board as well (a modchip is necessary to play backups).
Prepare your switch by tinning the contacts, be careful - if you hold the soldering iron onto the contacts too long it could melt the plastic, causing the contact to move out of place and be useless. mmmonkey usually melts a blob of solder on the soldering iron tip, then runs it along the contact quickly. Tin the wires coming from the second column of holes, and follow the diagram and colour coding of the photo's to solder the correct wire to the correct contact.
Now it is necessary to take the Saturn apart, take to top off and decide where you are going to mount the circuit board (this is easy as there is loads of room). Then remove the motherboard and look for the necessary pads to solder onto. mmmonkey has performed this on a couple of Saturn's, they were all VA9 model motherboards - there are lots of different motherboards though, please read the guides on Mameworld and GamesX, mmmonkey's guide only complements them. With the Saturn in pieces decide where you will mount the switch, mmmonkey decided to use the door for the Battery/VCD Card compartment.
It is necessary to remove the links from JP7, JP10 and JP12 (on a Euro Saturn anyway, it will be different on Jap/US consoles), soldering the wires is easy, make sure you've got the the correct wire soldered to the correct pads - you've built the circuit board, so you should now which wire is for JP6/7, JP10/11 and JP12/13. You may want to add a little bit of solder to the pads to make soldering the wires easier, melt some solder onto the wire (tinning) and trim the tinned wire so it's very short. mmmonkey must stress that if your board is not a VA9 model, then you must refer to the guides on Mameworld and GamesX to make sure you've got the right pads.
The photo above shows the pads that you can choose to solder onto. For JP6/JP7 you can solder onto either of the pads highlighted in Red, the same applies for JP10/JP11 and JP12/JP13.
We need to power the circuit board, we've already soldered some wires to it, we just need to solder them to the underside of the motherboard then re-assemble, and test it out! Make sure you insulate the circuit board!
The completed picture above also includes a Modchip, useful for CDR's - great for those scratched discs from eBay!
Of course, all credit must go Mameworld for their original guide here and GamesX.
If you're performing this mod before you've even got any import games then you can test it by checking the System Settings menu, in the bottom right-hand corner it will have a code that tells you the following info (thanks to chaoticjelly for confirming the codes), of course - the BIOS version part of the code may differ (I don't think this is on the Japanese BIOS):
| Region |
Code (Video Mode-Region-Bios Version) |
| Euro | PAL-C-V1.01a |
| USA | NTSC-4-V1.01a |
| Japan | NTSC-1-V1.01a |
UPDATE, check here for some more photos showing different motherboards
Summary of Components needed
2 x 1K Resistors
1 x 7404 Hex Inverter
Vero Board (cut to 12 holes wide, 8 tracks tall)
1 x Single Pole, Double Throw, Centre Off Switch
Some wires!
