Sega Saturn Not Playing Games only Audio - Can I FIX it?

In this video I look at a SEGA Saturn MK2 that somehow plays the audio from a game, but not the game itself. It also plays music CDs no problem at all. It was sent over by a viewer named Richard, and in the previous video I was trying to repair why it didn't display on the TV, you can see that video here • SEGA SATURN with NO DI...
Can it be fixed? Let's find out.
If you would like to support these videos, please click here / mymatevince
Remember that this is just for entertainment and I am not an expert in these repairs. The processes in the video may not be the best way, the correct way or the safest way to fix these things. I do love fault finding and trying to fix broken things, so I hope that comes across in this 'Trying to FIX' series. Many thanks, Vince.

[@dillonandon]

This is, by far, my favourite Sega Saturn repair channel on KZbin.

[@BikeyBekkers]

Cds/dvds are read from the inside out. The fist thing on the inside of the disk is the TOC (table of contents), this is the information of what is on the disk (number of tracks, name of tracks, length of tracks etc).

[@jonathanmartin3375]

I love all your content Vince, it's fantastic. You've inspired a ton of people to go out there and crack open their broken items. I know personally I got into electronics repairs specifically because of this channel.

[@GadgetUK164]

Great job! That's the sort of problem that's hard to work out unless you're experienced with all the revisions!

[@Mymatevince]

Thank you Chris 😎

[@davidryder6017]

Just a thought why not SD mod the CEX one and do a video on how to do it, i know there's some out there but they're often by experienced techs? The beauty of your style is that it gives us all hope of being able to tackle these things. Great content as always.

[@Boogie_the_cat]

I'd enjoy seeing that too

[@TheCod3r]

From my understanding there is an inner layer which is burnt onto special discs which contains some sort of data only replicatable by special burners. I dont know a lot about it but i think it's something to do with wobble protection

[@nemoex]

I know that Wobble Thing from the PS 1. Does Sega Saturn use the same Technic?

[@TheCod3r]

@nemoex I'm not sure, it probably uses something similar 🤔

[@petergilbert7106]

I remember in the early 2000s Sega Sports started re-releasing their sports games on the newer consoles which led to the magnificent headline in one of the games development magazines: Sega Sports sports sports ports.

[@fouroakfarm]

Good detective work. A hack to get the older driver working would be to provide 9V power to it. Could use a buck converter fed from the 12V rail

[@Aryx_]

I love these Trying to Fix videos, it inspired me to fix my old iPhone 5 and i was 10 or 11 now im 12

[@souprtek6926]

That was a more exciting journey than anything i've seen in the movies for the past 3 years. Well done. Cheers to you.

[@ErrorMessageNotFound]

The disk emulators exist partly because of a lack of repair parts. I wouldn't expect to see many parts come up and when they do it will probably be expensive. Mechanical drives all eventually fail. Sooner or later, new replacements like disk emulators will be the only thing keeping these units working. There are similar devices for most old computer or games console formats.

[@rfmerrill]

A few things to consider with CD consoles: 1. An audio CD typically spins at standard 1x while most game consoles spin their game CDs faster. 2. The audio CD format is designed to just keep going if it encounters an error, while the CD-ROM format will keep retrying a read until it gets it error-free (and fail if it doesn't).

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks RF, I thought the Amy Winehouse music disc was spinning slower than the game, in fact I was surprised at how slow the audio CD was spinning. Thanks for commenting that. So if there was a problem with the motor or resistance somewhere slowing the spindle down, it could also be another reason which could cause audio to work, but the games to fail 👍👍👍👍

[@rfmerrill]

@@Mymatevince Also if there was something wrong with the laser pickup or receiver circuitry, it could work well enough to play an audio disc at 1x, but fail once you're playing a data disc at 2x or 4x

[@Mymatevince]

@@rfmerrill Thanks RF 👌

[@113odyssey]

Good work sir! Always fun to share in the excitement of someone else's repair!

[@SHOGUNv07]

I love these follow up videos and your elimination of the various suggestions from the comments. It shows the dedication you have to the community youve built on here. Also, unbelievable that you had that board all along! 😅

[@gavinm894]

Brilliant result, well done Vince!

[@gaming_coffeebean]

What if the original drive had something spilled on it causing the corrosion.The person replaced it with another (wrong) disk drive, but it still was not fixed and then they just left it ? BTW love your content alot keep up the good work.

[@mitchd949]

About 27:25 how satisfying it is to realize you have the part you need already in your stash. More than once I've procured a replacement part only to later find I did in fact have the same part in my cache of parts. Alas, apparently the hording gene doesn't always accompany the memory gene.

[@nicoful86]

This is my go-to Sega saturn repair channel

[@xXBeefyDjXx]

A great follow up. Glad you managed to sort it in the end!

[@patrickallison4876]

The "solder blob" is because Sega had a common-mode filter on the power to the drive. Those are the coils there. But most likely in testing the extra inductance on the ground caused problems, so they probably just jumped around it. The extra ground in the middle is a chassis ground.

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks Patrick 👍

[@denniskubik7360]

The Saturn PCB is definitely a multilayer board, and certainly with more than just one layer (not single layer, as you considered in the last video). As far as I know, Nokia was already installing 7-layer circuit boards in its high-end mobiles at that time.

[@woollysoxx]

Great videos, super fault finding, I have a moto that someone told me years ago, Anything can be fixed if you fiddle with it long enough! Cheers Vince

[@beavis6363]

Enjoyable double episode. Another one for the "fixed" column.

[@vforvendetta7763]

There's loads of repair videos and channels in youtube but this guy man... Vince your passion makes me feeling like I'm there with you waiting for it to work lol. Fantastic work, waiting for the RR videos tho.

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks V for V 👍👍👍

[@marcellipovsky8222]

Thank you for yet another great entertainment time. I've sent you some goodies for the next repair ;-)

[@markderoller7645]

Very cool to watch how you resolved this

[@garrybishop2244]

Excellent work mate, so glad it's now fixed and fully working again after who knows how long being faulty. I also did take my va9 saturn apart today and I can confirm that the solder bridge is also in my console.

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks Garry for confirming that and also helping with the initial comment on the board being the wrong type👍👍👍👍

[@garrybishop2244]

@My Mate VINCE Anytime mate, so glad to have helped 😉

[@haactgaming9687]

I had low expectations on this one! 👍👍to The Comment section and “Console Master”Vince! Nice!

[@MARCSLASH]

On the other video I talked about crystal clocks and frequencies because I never seen before an incorrect installed disc drive even trying to read a disc, maybe that solder blob had something to do. Glad you found out what was wrong.

[@nikitaoake123]

Great work!! Watched both videos. So good!!

[@FreeportHometown]

Quite the powerhouse you got there! I grew up with PS1 but if i find a Saturn in the wild I'll definitely pick it up. Such an interesting 32 bit console.

[@lywoh]

this channel fixed my attention span

[@Tim_3100]

Been looking forward to second part of this fix

[@technixbul]

Good fault finding, but you shouldn't tamper with the laser's power, because once overpowered you can kill it within minutes, on the other hand the right potentiometers for tampering are Focus and Tracking, but you need an oscilloscope and service manual to set the correct pattern waveforms on test points.

[@godshand6822]

Not true at all. You can check the spec and adjust them to the correct ohm load.

[@CLC-1000]

Lovely to see part 2 to this. 👍

[@DJLKM1]

The lazer all cd/dvd drives first reads the TOC on the innermost section of the disc, it's this part that holds info on what type of disc it is and how it is structured etc. My guess for Saturn is that the TOC tells the lazer to do the outer rim check based on the info in the TOC.

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks DJ 👍

[@konean]

I would love a video about executing the SD mod on the driveless Sega. As always great video!

[@andrasszabo7386]

Keep these videos coming, Vince! Nice job :) These faultfinding videos are the reason I came to KZbin anyway, to switch off from my main job. And what about the parts console? Will it ever work again?

[@DavidDeLuge]

I really enjoy these videos. I don't even know why 😂 but I do. Brilliant! Keep them coming... 👍🏻👍🏻

[@amonfermoso]

Brilliant Vince, well done for a very interesting video..

[@wilyawn]

That separate little board next to the Sanyo drive is actually a modchip.

[@HavingFunRepairs]

Well done Vince!

[@Mymatevince]

Thank you Shawn 👍

[@P5ychoFox]

Vince the Saturn saviour.

[@pherman8852]

Wow Vince… nice job

[@wisher21uk]

The discs TOC (table of contents) is in the middle of the disk Excellent fix I knew you would do it well done Vince 😊

[@Mymatevince]

Nice one Gary 👍

[@wisher21uk]

@@Mymatevince you’re the best 😊

[@mrjsv4935]

Interesting case, I guess knowledge, and/or service info is sometimes the key to get these things working, with right parts in certain board revisions.

[@skonkfactory]

Audio compact discs play as a spiral that starts in the middle and works out towards the edge. The table of contents is usually at the very start of the disc. Since there's no guarantee that the disc is a full 120mm 74 minute disc, you have to start at the middle since trying to move the laser from outside the edge of the disc to be underneath the disc could easily result in the lens getting clouted by the edge of the disc, especially if it isn't circular.

[@SparksNZeros]

its always a good idea to have a known working disc drive assembly around as a way of immediately ruling out if its a motherboard issue or not as most often the drive will just need the gear assembly deep cleaned and relubricating and the laser recalibrating, also the 220v caps on the drive boasrd do fail a lot and stop the motor spinning up fast enough for the copy protection to be read accurately (or the disc at all).

[@summerishere2868]

220v in the cd drive board or motherboard / power supply?

[@SparksNZeros]

@@summerishere2868 cd drive board, sorry i meant to put 220uf not v

[@summerishere2868]

@@SparksNZeros oh I see, that makes sense. thanks for making it clear.

[@TheSynrgy1987]

Ha, Cool, Didn't even think the drive may have been swapped, Always worth checking when someone's been inside one. BTW if you're keeping a saturn make sure you get a RGB scart cable for it, it does make a big difference on these machines with colour and detail vs composite or rf.

[@Waifu4Life]

The Saturn had an interesting way of region locking by going with the Jumpers, it was fun to make region switches back in the days.

[@Eric-Retro-Stuff]

Great video! I'm guessing it must have developed the corrosion at some point after someone swapped in the wrong drive trying to fix it. They wouldn't have been trying to fix the drive if they had no display right. I feel inspired now to try to fix a niggling issue I still have with one of my Saturns now (bad RGB output).

[@1LowSeventy3]

Good Job Vince. I enjoy Saturn games. Im a few games short to have a CIB complete North American relase collection

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks for helping out in the comments Section AI V to get this working. I hope you find the final few games to complete it 👍👍👍

[@TheSkaldenmettrunk]

The yyyyeeeeeessss!! Is back! As you found the other Sega with the same guts.. I mean how big are the chances that you have exactly that one sitting around?! How nice is that?! I think you are distancing from the title""Saturn Killer".

[@Viczarratt]

There are 2 versions of the Sega saturn, the model 1 with black oval buttons and the model 2 with grey circular buttons. The model 1 is prone to PSU problem's due to the powerboard getting quite hot, but its JVC built CD laser assembly is generally fault free. The model 2 on the other hand always have stable PSU circuits in exchange for a slightly faster but highly failure-prone Hitachi built laser block. The M1 is the harder one to fix, since i never succeeded with PSU repairs.

[@taffspace]

I don't care what you do or how you go about it. you are great and very good keep it up. Ian Williams, Electrical/Electronics Engineer

[@Eudksdjdj]

КЗЕАЖО

[@gbmruk123]

great vid vince mate :D iv never seen u do a repair on a defib yet could be a gd video vince :)

[@kernaltrap]

you did unsolder the solder blob, but that was to see if it would fix the VIDEO side, you didnt test the CD Drive in that video very much. great content as always Vince. also, i think you should mod the other console you took the drive from, might make a good video.

[@RetroFixer101]

Well deduced Vince, I made a comment on the last video but didn’t get the issue right however I did get a mention in this video for the comment I’m feeling famous now as the Great Vince mentioned me 😅 Love the Retro Console Repairs but I still think you need to repair a faulty Neo Geo AES as that is pretty hard core and should make great content!

[@mattjcwig]

Legend! Helped me get ideas in my head how to fix mine, I have a saturn that works but intermittently will loop the boot noise and freeze on boot, sometimes gets past that bur freezes on segas splash screen, BUT in game the picture is really shaky near the top of the image and the shakiness calms down when no disc drive reads are occuring but when the next track needs reading on the disc it gets really unsteady, unsure whether it's the drive or the PSU 🤔 PAL Saturns just unsure on the VA variation

[@Boogie_the_cat]

My Mate Vince: "The Saturn Whisperer" I smell a prime time Netflix spin-off!

[@fcknkllr]

Great job!

[@hadesmcc]

Not everyone will sell their drives, I imagine some folks will keep them, some will toss them and some will get that adapter that allows you to have the Fenrir and keep the drive. Or just use a Satiator like me and not have to go anywhere near the disk drive.

[@todormiroleskov8663]

Giving a massive thumb up 👍

[@DodgyFPV]

definitely a contender for the mod ;)

[@AcornElectron]

Good man! Another one saved ❤

[@IamNotANumber]

Wooooooooooooo! Yay Vince!

[@r.a.w.talentart]

Order an RGB scart cable Vince, much better quality than a standard composite AV cable

[@filevans]

with a cartridge with pseudo saturn kai it bypasses the copy protection so that might work to get the one working to play the games

[@8bitwiz_]

10:10 22:18 Those jumpers are simply inputs that it reads to know what region to look for on a game disc. I think there are four (!) of them for the region select code. I did many switch mods back in the day, and the only difference between US NTSC vs JP NTSC was one on and one off, so it was just a simple switch to connect one or the other. The annoying part was that it took like half an hour in disassembly/reassembly time, but only a couple of minutes to do the actual mod. The other annoying part was that some board revisions had the two jumper points on opposite sides of the board, making routing the switch wires much more difficult. My big question is why the hell did Sega keep changing their boards so much? I understand tweaking things to make it cheaper to manufacture, and sometimes changing suppliers, but it seemed like they were just scrambling things around because someone really liked to play with circuit board routing.

[@StorminBriski]

Hi Vince, seeing as you have 2 working Sega Saturns. Why not do the SD mod on the last one that needs a new cd drive? Would be an interesting one to watch.

[@TurboTimsWorld]

The Toyota Celica in the game footage; Castrol had a demo rally vehicle that they put a large screen on the bonnet and swapped out the cars steering wheel for a Sega games wheel and took to "shows and advents" you would sit in the "rally car" and play the game. Also it was the vehicle in most of the Castrol promo and not the real rally cars. When Castrol "moved on" from that sponsorship deal the car was raffled off to staff of Castrol, I was tasked to make it road legal and MOT it so if anyone still owns it and the paperwork thats my name on its first MOT certificate ! and tested as a stripped down rally car,,,But not a real one !

[@hinny2005]

Would it not be possible to get 9 volts from somewhere else on the board and cut the trace for the 5v? So a incorrect laser model can work?

[@squiblleplaysthis1397]

I love this❤😊

[@rolandbaron5813]

Hello 👋🏽 great video. Need a little help (if possible). I would appreciate it. I have a model 1 Japanese saturn. When I turn it on it boots up fine up until it gets to a certain point and freezes. I'm guessing it could be a Lazer issue?

[@AcornElectron]

I’ll watch then comment, good luck.

[@TheOmegastoopreme]

FYI although that is now working it is unlikely to have been the mismatched drive that caused it. I'm staying that as I used to have a Saturn that developed the same audio CD only issue an that was on it's original drive without any parts ever being swapped. I was never able to fix it and this was some years ago so I no longer have it, but just to give fair warning I don't think the issue was what it appeared to be. A quick search online shows this is VERY common with drives getting temperamental as they age. In fact it's one of the main reasons people do go down the sd route.

[@Tigerhawk1981]

wonder if the cartridge slot works on the repaired Saturn. never owned one myself & always wonder how that all worked.

[@jumpingmanjim]

I wonder if a modchip like the phantom would solve this issue, seeing as the unit was reading cds but failing at the copy protection stage. They are pretty cheap and only require soldering one wire.

[@mch2007uk]

Vince, how is that ps4 pro under your telly breathing?

[@bullshitdetective1]

i said you would fix it didnt i? cos you are a very clever man.

[@Mymatevince]

😂 You did BS!!! 👍👍👍

[@ericblenner-hassett3945]

Windows " Mixed Media " CDs have a few tracks to say it is a mixed media and where the data starts. It has been a long time, however, I believe it has that for all the CDs in various versions for games with sound tracks ( Sega starting it ). It may not be reading it correctly or region locked to non US. Edited after the end of the video: ok, I was mistaken. I have scavenged parts from PC CD ROMs and a lot had voltage controllers that worked from 5-9V to make the issue ' moot ' and somehow Sega didn't. You may want to look into Mixed Media and the standard as it may have helped get to the CD being an issue.

[@artur3edd]

What will happen if you install a small dc-dc converter, get the 12V from power supply, step it down to 9V and feed it in the wrong drive instead of 5V? I wonder if it will work. Looks like the voltages are the only differences, the signals that will go to the ribbon cable should be the same.

[@TwiLightVids]

From switches to Saturn master 😁

[@seguramlk]

AWESOME

[@JohnGotts]

Did you get your Ministry of Silly Walks inspection done yet on the Rolls?

[@Mymatevince]

😂 Not yet John, I still need to put more of the interior back before I bring it in for the MOT 👍

[@vintagesegaoz4411]

Great video as always, Vince. But please, if you are going to do more Saturn work, spend 30-50 quid for a DC power supply mod and get that AC out of the picture entirely. I have about 12 Japanes models I've been working through over the past 9 months, and having a DC supply makes things eay easier, safer, and quicker. You can always put the AC back in once the repair is finished. One thing, though, if you feed the SaturnPSU (the dc boards I have experience with) with a crappy 12VDC plug, you might get video artefacts from noisy power. YMMV on that.

[@devttyUSB0]

Awesome! :D

[@jontaylor1423]

I would love to see you mod the the other console

[@dungeonseeker3087]

Haven't made it very far but at a guess, it would know whether its a game or not depending on whether track 1 is data or audio.

[@stuartbrooks5734]

when is the next rolls royce video coming Vince ?

[@pepealexandre]

Nice!

[@edgardovigo147]

You should mod the one with the 9v drive.

[@gadgetmadlad6691]

I think that burned cable near the disk drive is just dust gathered by the disk spinning.

[@ralphvargas6415]

Does that one have solder blob too

[@ctrlundo]

I have an extra JVC ENR-013A I would be willing to donate to the channel. It came in a VA9 Ntsc Saturn that was sold as powers on/won't read disks. It does read music cds but I didn't have a game to test. I have since replaced it with a fenrir, so I won't be using the drive

[@UltimatelyEverything]

A Sega Saturn is a great console to have in your house there's a lot of good games for it

[@outbackchillin5628]

23:38 top right pin not soldered ?

[@KraftyLive]

try pulling the psu changing to the 12 5 3.3 version and remove the blob that links the grounds ;)

[@ronlevon4294]

What will happens if you give it 9V from outside source ?

[@Revex_Gaming]

Where can I get 1 of those blue mats?