Hullo, hew person here :o
For a while now, I've had a saturn which I jumpered to run japanese games (since I game my euro games away, but not the console), but it's started to look tired and scratched up, so I went onto ebay, and picked up a euro mark1 saturn (the one with the CD access LED).
Since this is the place I got the region jumper info, I came back, and found the switchless mod, and thought "great, no drilling for me!"
However, I opened up this mark1 saturn and came across a couple of surprises (to me). Firstly, this thing seems to have the same PCB as the HiSaturn Navi, with a seperate board the joypad connectors, and secondly there is no resistors soldered to specify the region, from JP6 to 13. As a test, I dropped in a japanese game, and sure enough, it refused to start with the usual error message.
So after all that, I suppose my questions are:
were "mark1" saturns known to use the HiSaturn PCBs? and since there's no resistors where I excepted them to be, where can it be possibly pulling the region info from?
Thanks :)
If there are no resistors you'll probably find that there are traces on the PCB connecting the two pads. Cut them with a sharp knife (be careful!).
Yes, the board is well known. I should prolly update the page...
doh! so there is. The thought never even entered my head.
Thanks :)