Console powering itself off

[martin91]

Bit of an odd problem, was looking forward to playing through Shining the holy ark again, had about 2 hours good gameplay, then tried it again today played about 5 minutes then the console switched itself off or seemed to lose power.

I tried turning it back on to no avail , but was able to get it back on after about 10 minutes or so and changing power cable but when trying to play again, same issue.
My Saturn is a PAL model 1 and looked to be fairly unused when i purchased it 3 years ago (still had the tab over the back up battery slot)
Im going to assume this is a PSU issue? so its probably time for a new console (my 3rd one after my original model 2 console died of laser failure)

Cheers in advance. 

[darkman01]

Yeah its probably a PSU issue , though I don't think you necessarily need a new system if you can get a hold of a spare PSU.

[HennessySlick]

This occasionally occurs on the Dreamcast - since the Saturns and Dreamcasts are quite similar in terms of physical layout (PSU and CD drive on top of motherboard; power pins on mobo power the whole console), it could be the same thing.

The pin header that connects the PSU to the motherboard may not be contacting properly with the pins on the motherboard. If this is the cause, there are two things you can do to help:

1) Unplug the console, unscrew the five screws on the bottom and lift the lid. Use a small screwdriver (ideally an insulated one, especially if you've only recently unplugged the console) to bend the metal prongs in the pin header closer to the pins.

2) All of the above, but unscrew and remove the PSU too. Now add a small amount of solder to each of the pins; not too much or the PSU pin header won't fit back on. Now that the pins are effectively thicker, they should make better contact with the header.

If those two fail, your other options are:

3) Replace PSU as mentioned above - could be tricky as they're not always on eBay and even if one did show up, you would need one that's built for your specific revision of Saturn.

4) Do the Pico PSU mod to entirely replace your PSU. Tutorials on Youtube are helpful for this, and will be better than me explaining it to you with no images for reference.

If those don't grab you or if you're not used to digging around inside the console, find someone on this board that will do these repairs for you, or sell it to someone that can fix it.

Hope that's helpful/not telling you things you already know/tried.