Saturn single switch country mod...

[Lord_Magus]

After finding the information to add a country switch to the Saturn, I decided to try it out on one of the older model Saturns (the ones with the oval buttons).

I successfully located the 3 jumpers nessesary to perform the mod - one was on the bottom of the board (JMP 6-7), while the other 2 (JUMP 10-11 and JMP 12-13) were on the top side. (I will try to add some pictures to this topic soon)
I wired what I assumed were the "common" points and connected them to my circuit as decribed here.

Although I am 100% sure I made it correctly (I tested the whole circuit with my trusty multimeter), the switch refused to work. I was getting unexpected countries when booting, and sometimes it wouldn't even boot at all.
So I did what came naturally: I ripped the cables out of the circuit and started connecting them to 5v and 0v directly, depending on which of the three country settings I wanted. The result was still the same, as the Saturn refused to boot when on JAP setting, when on USA it gave me UK, and other similar oddities. Please note that this is not an isolated incident, as I have had similar experiences with all 3 Saturns (all old models) that I have tried to mod.

Is there anyone out there that has successfully done the country mod on an older Saturn model? Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

[NFG]

The mod definitely works, I've done it on every model Saturn that exists, I think.  You've certainly got an error in the circuit somewhere, but without seeing it there's no real way to tell where you've gone wrong.  

[Guest]

Once you're definite you've located the correct hole, take some wire, strip it and cut all but a few (1 to 3) strands of copper form the exposed bit of wire. Then solder this onto the small hole

Why cut the copper strands?? I don't get it. :|

[Lord_Magus]

Ok, here are some pretty bad pictures of what I am doing.



The wires and circuit have been removed, since I decided to set this Saturn back to its native PAL setting for now, but you will get an idea of what I tried.

The red squares denote the pads I use as "common" for the jumpers, although it doesn't really matter since I have tried pretty much all possible combinations. I even tried not using the circuit at all, by directly feeding JMP6-7 to 0v, and JMP10-11 + JMP12-13 to 5v, which would theoretically set the Saturn to JAP mode. All I got though was a blinking power led

I have tried this on 3 different Saturns, all which produced the same erratic results, so I must be doing something seriously wrong <_<

[NFG]

I think the problem here is that you don't understand what's going on.  One of each jumper pair: 6 + 7, 10 + 11, 12 + 13 etc, is common to both jumpers.  This means one pad on each jumper is connected to another pad on the other jumper.  This leaves two pads - one is +5v, the other is GND.

A blinking power LED could mean you've shorted GND to +5v.

Take your multimeter and figure out FOR SURE which pad on which jumper is connected to GND and which to +5v.  There's no guesswork involved, this is simple electronics.

[Sumez]

That's the problem with the mod on that site. It doesn't explain how the jumpers work at all.

Lawrence's page describes it well, with pictures of how the jumpers are places on various boards.

I don't see the one pictured above though. Is it a common Saturn board?

[Guest]

Ok I finally got it working

My main problem was that the ground pin of the 7404 IC was weakly soldered
onto the board, resulting in the IC not inverting the signals properly. Also, as you
can see from my pictures above, I had wired the wrong pad for jumpers 6-7,
which complicated things even further.

And Sumez, it is indeed a common Saturn board. Most of the pictures I have seen
on the net refer to the later models, which have the jumpers all grouped together.
Mine looks suspiciously like the HiSaturn Navi on Lawrence's page, although as you
can see there are still noticable differences.

Thanks for the information btw - it helped me gain a much better understanding of
how the jumpers actually work.  I am still new to all this and am still\always
learning. Keep up the good work

[Sumez]

Sounds like I'm in for some jumperfinding then >.<
My Saturn is an old model, too.

Once you're definite you've located the correct hole, take some wire, strip it and cut all but a few (1 to 3) strands of copper form the exposed bit of wire. Then solder this onto the small hole

Why cut the copper strands?? I don't get it. :|

Anyone? :\

[hippy dave]

i can only guess 'cos it's a small target you're soldering to, so you want to make the wire thinner by using less strands?

[Lord_Magus]

Ok, as I mentioned above, I got the mod fully working and combined it with the
simpler 50/60Hz mod, but now another problem has appeared. Every time I turn
the Saturn off, the power led blinks a few times before completely dying out, as if
it's discharging some static. I have double checked all my connections and there
don't seem to be any short-circuits anywhere, while I have also correctly
reassembled the Saturn as it was originally (even using another Saturn I have as
a reference, in case I forgot something).

Has this happened to anyone else before? Any suggestions would be greatly
appreciated.

By the way, happy new year  

[phreak97]

if the saturn works, why worry.. its probably something didnt like being done wrong repeatedly