Saturn proof-of-concept bootloader Pseudo Saturn

Thank you Omega. Translation is correct.

 

ahh, i thought this game was asking to use the 1M Cart or not lol

 

I would love to try this, but I'm afraid of losing my "Action Replay 4M plus" region free feature. Would it still support it after installing Pseudo Saturn on cartridge?

 

It doesn't lose the region free and if u dont like it u can always flash back to the standard firmware so there is very little risk trying it out.

 

You can always re flash it back afterwards

After flashing with PSEUDO you keep the 4M Ram but loose the codes and backup save support

As far as I know it is still region free but I have only played backups from other regions I don't have any retail disc imports to test with but on my PAL system I have been playing PAL NTSC-U and NTSC-J games without patching the disc images or anything else to bypass any region locks

 

Well, thats a relief
I think I'll try PSEUDO then, and make backups of retail titles to check (both PAL and NTSC-J).

 

I was playing virtua cop and was thinking it would be cool if i could start the game with 2 guns plugged in and not need to swap to a controller and back again.
Is there any way u can make the trigger confirm the first menu choice?

 

If it does not already, I'm sure Cyber Warrior X could implement that easy enough, in a future update.

I wouldn't know if it does or does not though as I don't have any light guns for the Saturn, that and I use a Plasma TV that does not support Light Guns.

Shame if I had the room in my House I would of been happy to have a large CRT TV, just for Light Gun game support, for a few consoles as I do have Light Guns for PSX, PS2 and Dreamcast, as it is it's only the Wii and PS3 I can play that sort of games with on my current TV

 

Hello.

I am curious if we can flash a RT key with Pseudo Saturn.

I am asking because the project was for AR, but now, we can use other cards like GameShark and other clones. This topic was asked 3 weeks ago, XeCuTioNR did some tests and we don´t have a clear answer yet if its possible or even if we can flash something different in this card.

Would be great to have this option too.

 

I don't own ST key, but looking at ST key pictures shows that something is connected to its full data bus and that enough address lines are used in order to guess that some flash memory can be found inside it.

Can you try the attached flasher utility with your ST key ?
You will need a modchipped Saturn, or using swap trick in order to run the utility.
If you don't want to reflash your cartridge, simply indicate what is written on screen after pushing start button. It should display flash chip vendor and device IDs, like in this example picture. (if you don't go further, utility won't write to your flash memory, so your cartridge contents won't be modified)



To everybody interested : please find latest pseudo Saturn flasher utility attached here, or on my homepage.
What's new in this version :
- Added support for SST29LE010 flash chip
- Added memory verify after flashing
- Fixed erase/write operations AM29F010 flash chip
- On startup, inform user that 3D pad and multitap pad are not supported
Thanks to dgist71 and XeCuTioNR for beta testing

Disclaimer : You will loose your cartridge backup data after reflash. And, I'm not responsible in the case I brick your cartridge and/or damage your Saturn.

 

Sure. I can try. But I don´t have a modded saturn... and I don´t know if it is possible to swap the disc with the card inserted, once this card boots (Sega logo + STKEY screen) and then return to the control screen.

I already read that someone just do the swap disc (without the card) and then, put the card. I don´t know if its safe or even work to get these numbers that you are asking.

Just got your utility and I will try tonight.

 

It's safe enough to boot the disc then insert the cart, but it should work doing the swap trick with it inserted also, but the timing of the swaps may be different, but at a guess boot with CD-R inserted let the ST load, change to the retail disc, watch the lights flicker 3 times in rapid succession I think it is for model 1, or listed to the drive for a model 2 (You can add a drive access light to a model 2 but it does not come with one hence you just have to listen to the drive), then change back to the CD-R

The swap trick though does involve taking the Saturn apart though so you can modify the disc lid switch to think the lid is closed at all times

There are tons of different lid switches though, even just for a model 1 console, I own 2 PAL model 1 Saturn's and both use a slightly different method to see if the disc lid is open/closed

For this disc though at a guess you could possibly just boot it using a single swap from retail disc to CD-R at that access light flicker point, it's not as important for the correct LBA to be read as it is for games (the LBA is smaller than games and CDDA in not part of the disc either), I can't guarantee that will work as I have not tested that.

 

@cafealpha2, just letting you know I just burned your latest flasher utility iso and it still tells me the same thing as last time when trying to flash the Gameshark (unrecognized flash chips etc.)

@zorlon - cafealpha2's flasher iso disc does work using a single swap.

 

Hello.
First: @zorlon thanks for these information.
And I could test 2 cards:
- ST-Key (the gray one that in the screen says 1.0).
- Magic Card V2

both cards had the same result

 

5345/4741 IDs (=SEGA in ASCII) a mechanical problem : cartridge is probably not correctly inserted.
Can you flash your cartridge by using other flash utility ?

5345/4741 IDs (=SEGA in ASCII) a mechanical problem : cartridge is probably not correctly inserted.
Or, maybe the cartridge is read-only ? I don't know, because I never could see the inside of ST-Key / Magic Card V2.

BTW, can you wait a couple of months before flashing your cartridges ?
Before flashing them, I would be glad if you could dump their firmwares

 

Ok I understand now, so basically it's because the Gameshark is not inserted just right.

Yes, zorlon's Pseudo flasher disc works for flashing to Pseudo and back to Gameshark 1.96.

I will try again and see if I can get your flasher disc to recognize the cart. Thanks for clarifying!

 

I hope Save function will be implemented in future releases, using battery can be quite troublesome

 

Let me explain What i did:

About the Magic card v2, I have sure it was connected, once I use it to boot your disc.

And I could not be able to do the swap disk with the ST-KEY inserted as zorlon said. So, I inserted the card after your disc was loaded.

As you said, maybe the card wasn´t inserted correctly. So I tried again to have sure.

The first try, I have the same result. But the secont try I got something different


strange.. isn´t it? Maybe I would have another result with a modchip, once I could boot your disc with the card inserted.

Maybe, next week I can test using a system disc (lets say thank you to my post office for the delay). I will let you know.

And I am afraid that I can´t dump these cards, once I don´t know how or even have a specific hardware to do that. But I don´t mind to share if was possible.

 

scan/photo of st-key (ss-239)

 

ST-KEY is 64kb so maybe not enough for PSEUDO ? and the chip could be read-only ?