The short answer is that you remove the old chip, solder the new one in its place and hook the extra pins up to the power rails (the original ROM is a 40 pin device and the flash is 44 pin). On a practical level, it comes down to how comfortable you are with soldering and what sort of Saturn you have. The early machines used a DIL packaged ROM with through-hole mounting - easy to remove if you have the right equipment, but you can cook the board if you don't. The later ones used a SMT ROM device, and in some cases the chip is staked down to the board with adhesive. They are easy to remove with hot air, since it both melts the solder and softens the adhesive. If you don't have hot air, then it's probably safest to cut the leads off and remove them individually, and then if the chip is glued down use either a heat gun or a wood or plastic scraper to lever the chip off - but you need to be careful with the traces on the board. Once you have the part removed and the board cleaned up, the actual soldering is not very challenging - the DIP part is 2.54mm (0.1") pin pitch and the SOIC one is 1.27mm (0.05").
The smd ones aren't as easy as it initially looks as the footprint on the PCB is too small. The pads are actually behind the chip and require some decent soldering. Or bending the pins in quite abit
A Saturn weighs over 2 kilos (the limit for SAL / small packet) so postage might cost people more than an entire new unit. =/
That's how I feel right now. At this point I'd have to send it overseas for a mere region switch, let alone install the bios I just mentioned.
I've done (and can do) both. Plus I've still got your Gamecube; trying to locate a laser that doesn't suck turtle eggs.
Yeah you can tell I'm not all that fond of burned games. Even my chipped DC is due for work someday, flaky at retail Sonic Adventure 2.
With your GameCube I can't say I blame you - particularly with the trouble I'm having sourcing something that works across the board rather than "sorta works". Though in my experience Saturns are a bit more robust than most consoles.
I guess so. Not exactly a finished project if it only reads originals. Still have two cubes capable of that.
Got the 20 pin connectors and 20 pin ribbon in yesterday. At first I tried to fit the connector to the first chip I found only to get flustered when I found it was missing a pin on the connector! Then I realized I was trying to fit a 20 pin connector into a 21 pin set of holes. Now to figure out what orientation these sockets should have on the modchips.
Probably the easiest thing is to look for grounds. According to my notes here, the gnd pins on the 20 pin Saturn CD connector are 2, 8, 10, 14 and 19 Reset is on pin 1, and should go to pin 11 on the 21 pin connector Pins 3,4,5,6 and 7 go to the same pins on both connectors
I've never really bothered to check it out but many of the chips I've got have sockets with pins on both sides of the socket which makes it difficult for most end users to work with. I've assumed both sides are identically wired but I've never probed it to check things out. But I'll try to confirm those notes, I have modded a SSIC8B before and some pins needed no modifications. Might just have to be a trial and error with a few chips worst case. What is somewhat annoying is that a decent percentage of these things are model 2 only so if there is some sort of compatibility issue with a specific model 1 I won't know if the chip works or not until I try it over and over. I also have the strong tendency to over think things and go through every possibility before even trying the simplest thing first.
There are a significant number of pins that are relocated between the models - although all of the signals that are used by the modchip are present on both types of connector. I just had a look, and if your boards are like this: Then pin 1 of the connector aligns with the "20 PIN" text and the spare pin is at the top where it says "IN" and "OUT" .
Some of mine look like that. At some point in the near future I'm going to take high resolution images of all the revisions I have listed above for Druid II and likely post them as well. I'll see about giving it a shot later today and pray I still have a working model 1 that isn't a 21 pin.
I can probably help with that once I see what you've got. The most confusing thing with the 20pin drive is that the CD drive and the Saturn side list the pins in backwards order... Pin 1 on the CD side is marked as pin 20 on the Saturn side, etc. Very annoying.
That one is very easy to figure out - look at the white marks around the pinout. You see how one corner is crooked? That's your key on which direction to install the connectors. Many chips don't have such markings though... Pin 6 and 7 are exchanged between 20 and 21pin connectors, but the rest of your notes are correct. Also, pin 14 is the clock input from the cd drive on 21pin machines, on 20pin machines the corresponding pin is pin 17. However there is another 8mhz clock source in the ribbon, coming from the PLL on the Saturn, it is pin 9 on 20pin drives and pin 1 on 21pin drives. Modchips usually take either one of those clocks as input, so they should be BOTH connected to the same clock input pins on either the PIC or the PAL ICs, making them the easiest to spot. From the top of my head, the clock input is pin 1 on the PALs. ... and for extra fun, pin 20 on the 20pin drives is the CD Access led, and pin 9 on 21pin drives is the corresponding pin. BUT, later 21pin drives, the 32pin IC ones inside the later model 2s without access led slots, instead duplicate pin 14 on pin 9 (which is why 64pin and 32pin drives are incompatible with each other). So if a chip uses pin 9 of the 21pin input as the clock source, it won't be compatible with 64pin drives!
I was going to mod the one I was buying today but my soldering skills are ATROCIOUS. I'd rather not ruin a perfectly good Saturn because I suck.
