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Saturn Sebs 50/60 hz and Region Mod Help Please

Tobyrieper

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Ok so it's me again with more problems :( Got two working Pal mk2 Saturn's both are the same motherboard revision. 171-7131A VA PAL SD 837-1235.

They both have sebs switch less 50/60 with region mod that I've done. They are both wired exactly the same mod wise and have the phantom mod chip installed.

The first Saturn I modded (been recapped) works flawlessly. The second Saturn just doesn't want to play ball.

It switches from PAL-C to NTSC-C and then to NTSC-1.
When I boot up a PAL original game it says disc not suitable in pal mode. When I boot a US game in NTSC-C it says the same. I then put my action replay in. It says cartridge not suitable when it's in PAL and NTSC -C. But...when It is in NTSC-1 mode (jpn) I can boot jpn games without the cart and boot any game as it recognises the AR 4 in 1 cart! The AR cart only works in JPN mode. I spent ages cleaning and checking the cart pins but they are all good.

I've also checked the resistance between all the conductors on the mod as well as compared values for each of the 3 jumper's gnds, common points and 5+ they are the same across both consoles.

What on earth is going on? I've double checked that the 3 traces are cut and the commons arnt connected to 5v or GND.
It's wired exactly the same as the one that works. I've also swapped the pic chip around in case it was that! I even swapped mod chips over. ? Driving me nuts any help would be amazing. Was up till 3 am trying to figure it out and I've had enough with the darned thing.
The most bizzare thing. .it won't boot an original pal game in pal mode!!

20190721_083233.jpg20190721_083223.jpg20190721_083223.jpg
 
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Trimesh

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The first thing is that the displayed region codes seem to be wrong. The standard values are

Japan: NTSC-1
US: NTSC-4
PAL: PAL-C

The only thing I can see is that it looks like you might have accidentally severed the trace coming from the pad of R107 while cutting the trace between the pads - check it with a meter and see if it's still connected.

Not being able to boot PAL disc is very strange though - C is the correct code for Europe/PAL.
 
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Tobyrieper

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The first thing is that the displayed region codes seem to be wrong. The standard values are

Japan: NTSC-1
US: NTSC-4
PAL: PAL-C

The only thing I can see is that it looks like you might have accidentally severed the trace coming from the pad of R107 while cutting the trace between the pads - check it with a meter and see if it's still connected.

Not being able to boot PAL disc is very strange though - C is the correct code for Europe/PAL.

THANK YOU! I was so tired I didn't even notice! I just jumped the broken trace between the pad and the 7th leg it went to in the nearby IC that had me stumped. I guess it's easy to do they are so tiny!

Everything works great, no problem's with the ar or booting any region. I get NTSC 1 and 4 and Pal C :D
Now me and the kids can play Fighters Mega Mix.
Youre an absolute super star! Cheers :D

It's that one tiny trace that goofed everything up .
 

Druid II

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The first thing is that the displayed region codes seem to be wrong. The standard values are

Japan: NTSC-1
US: NTSC-4
PAL: PAL-C

The only thing I can see is that it looks like you might have accidentally severed the trace coming from the pad of R107 while cutting the trace between the pads - check it with a meter and see if it's still connected.

Not being able to boot PAL disc is very strange though - C is the correct code for Europe/PAL.

1/4/C is the region code, NTSC and PAL just say that the machine is running in 60Hz or 50Hz mode. If the console says NTSC-C, then he is running European region in 60Hz.

However, the bios does not display every region code. From memory it only displays 1, 2, 4, and C (Japan, Asia, USA, Europe) - I tried them once but forgot to write down which values worked.

You can still set it to some other region code, but it will default to whatever is the default value of the bios. The "other" value you set is still in effect though! So you could set it to the invalid region code 0, and it would say region code C, but the active region code would stay 0.

This can prevent booting an Action Replay, since it isn't "region free", it just acts like it is, because it has all the valid regions from the BIOS listed in its header. But if you set the console hardware to anything other than region 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, A, C, D (bios codes: JTUBKAEL), then the bios won't allow the software to boot.

The region free boot rom can get around this since it knocks out the code path that checks these values.
 
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Tobyrieper

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That makes sense why the Action Replay was only working in Japanese region. Strange that games or AR didn't boot when it was on PAL C but it's fixed now. I'm a happy camper :)
 

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