Action Replay 4 in 1 for Sega Saturn problem

[ashramkun]

Hello

I have a Action Replay 4 in 1 for Sega Saturn (ver 2.02), primarily used as a memory card. I know that this card can unlock region, and has 1-4Mb cart built in.

The save feature are working great, but when I tried to play games that need more RAM, I have glitches.
- Street Figther Zero 3 eventually freezes.
- X-men x Street Figther have sprite glitches and sound crackles in some places

If I use a original 4M RAM cartridge, these problems doens't happen.

Once the Saturn's cartridge slot isn't great, I would like to keep only one cart in the slot.

I read something about a problem that this card needs a mod to play Vampire Savior (http://www.shinforce.com/saturn/information/4MBRAM-mod.htm), but I bought this card around 2010, so in theory, I don't need this mod.

I know the Pseudo Saturn project (Kai too), but as I said, I need the memory card feature, and I don't need the ability to play CD-R.

Is there something that I can do to fix it? Maybe put Kai firmware and than re-flash the original firmware?

Just for reference. I took some pictures of the board.

 

[ashramkun]

I sent a e-mail to cafe-alpha, the developer of Pseudo Saturn Kai, and he kindly answer me what he thinks about it. Thanks a lot!
He asked to put his answer here for future reference.

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Expansion RAM is quite a troublemaker feature, and I heard that at the beginning of 2010's one PCB revision of Action Replay cartridges was causing glitches on games requiring 1MB/4MB RAM.

This was at the time DB25 communication port was being removed, which seems to match the revision of your cartridge because it still have footprint for it (and one communication-related IC) but left unsoldered.

If I'm right about the cause of this problem, then it is unfortunately not possible to fix it easily : the simplest (and AFAIK the only) solution is to purchase another cartridge but please note that in that case it have its part of gamble because I sometimes receive reports of expansion RAM problems on Action Replay or other clones.

And, I confirm that using Pseudo Saturn Kai won't fix anything, because expansion RAM is a cartridge hardware feature, which doesn't requires any kind of interaction from firmware.
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