^^^ Yep, I managed to pick myself up some a while back and they're fantastic items. Much easier not needing to buy and install a mod chip and if the saturn eventually breaks down you can just use them on the next one If you only get one boot disk colour though you can easily just use Madroms Saturn Region Patcher which allows you to change whether the game file is a 1st or 3rd party game thus allowing you to boot any game with either disk you own
Modchips are cheaper and if your Saturn "breaks down" you can easily remove it and put it in a new one. Sure the System Discs are easier to move about but the Modchip is cheaper, easier to get, and works better as no swap is required. If you can get a Saturn System disc for a good price then you should still jump on it, but otherwise a modchip is as good if not better for actual use. Ofcourse the disc is very collectible.
I guess you have a point. I'm useless with soldering although I'm sure it's simple enough I just never wanted to bother with opening the console up for anything other than cleaning. The fact I picked up a boot disc so long ago probably added to that choice.
You don't even *need* to solder chips these days. Originally the signal wire was required to be soldered to a chip on the CD-ROM controller board but someone figured out that the pin traced back to the ribbon the modchip connected to in the first place. A+B method requires a bit of soldering and you do need to source 5v. The latter can be fulfilled by cramming the wire into the power connector on the PSU.
I did the "A+B method" along with the "Wire Cram method". worked great for me. APE seems to know his stuff.
If you can't or are unable to solder you can also try to track down a Magic Card V2 and use that for imports and back-ups, just need to isolate the lid switch for the disc swapping.
When I got my Saturn modchip I wasn't able to solder myself yet. I just stripped the wire and put it in the power connector points which hold the wires firmly and I've never had a problem with it. If you have the boot disc though that's great. Particularly if you have to region mod the discs anyway it shouldn't be any trouble to patch the discs to 1st or 3rd party for your system disc I guess. Whatever works for you. I used the swap trick originally but then later got a Model 2 and picked up a mod.
