Faulty Ram Cartridge? Advice needed

[talkingbook]

Picked up a copy of Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter (JP), which requires a 4mb ram cartridge to run. So I loaded up the game, but it keeps telling me that I havent inserted the cartridge, even though I have, and cannot continue.
My 4mb catridge came with Xmen vs street fighter, which I purchased a while ago, and had always worked perfectly fine.

Next, I tried to play The King of Fighters 96, which also uses a Ram cartridge, though I think its less powerful than the 4mb version. This also failed to work, despite working fine in the past.

So, to my question! Is it possible that there is a problem with my Saturn reading the cartridges, as opposed to the cartridges themselves? Although, my saturn reads my memory cartridge without a problem. If so, has anyone experienced this problem before, and is it easily fixed?

It would seem to be a bit too much of a coincidence that both of my ram cartridges would stop working at the same time.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
Cheers.

[mick_aka]

The cartridge connector on the Saturn motherboard is made of cheese.
It's never advisable to be regularly swapping carts in an out nowadays as the connectors are easily bent or broken.

If you're lucky you can open the Saturn up, and with a flat jewelers screwdriver or something similar bend the metal connectors on the cart slot back in, although they do sometimes break off!!

The best thing you can do for your Saturn is buy a 4 in 1 cart (giving you 1mb ram, 4mb ram and save space al in one cart) and take it out as rarely as possible.

[talkingbook]

Thanks for the info.

Time to get out the screwdriver!

Still, I think its odd that while the Ram cartridges no longer read, the Saturn reads the memory cartridge without a hitch.

Worse comes to worse, ill just buy a new Ram cartridge or a new Saturn. Not a huge price difference between the two here.

[termis]

It's not uncommon to have to jiggle the cart around a bit, take it out maybe a mm or so after it's fully inserted, do a rain dance afterwards, etc. to make the right connection.

My 4MB cart isn't so bad, but I sometimes had to play with the 1MB RAM cart for a good 10-15 tries of jiggling and repositioning to make the cart work correctly.

[blackbeltjones]

Jan 15, 2009 13:20:24 GMT talkingbook said:

Still, I think its odd that while the Ram cartridges no longer read, the Saturn reads the memory cartridge without a hitch.

yeah i would get the same behaviour too, saturn would read the memory backup without a hitch, but the 4mb cart would have to get jiggled around a few times to get it going. you're not alone there

[talkingbook]

Thanks for all the advice.
Found an easy solution. Picked up a JVC saturn for only 1300yen yesterday, and after about 10 attempts at playing around with the 4mb card, i got it to read and the games played fine. I will now keep this 2nd staurn just for games like Xmen vs Street Fighter and wont touch the cartridge ever again!

[snow-katt]

Jan 15, 2009 14:11:06 GMT termis said:

It's not uncommon to have to jiggle the cart around a bit, take it out maybe a mm or so after it's fully inserted, do a rain dance afterwards, etc. to make the right connection.

My 4MB cart isn't so bad, but I sometimes had to play with the 1MB RAM cart for a good 10-15 tries of jiggling and repositioning to make the cart work correctly.

loath the things
does anybody know if its possible for an st key to warp the conenctor so much out of shape that when it sinserted the saturns screen output begins to warp ( stripes on the screen ) and it refuses to read cd's ?

one of my model 1's suffers from that untill i fling the st key out ( while swearing a lot ) and leave it for awhile after that the saturn works just fine
and tentativley works fine with my 4 in 1

[mick_aka]

The ST Key is the WORST cart u can use on your saturn IMHO, the PCBs (on the ones I have anyway) are way too thick and damage the cart slot.

The Saturn CD+ region carts have the same issue.

[snow-katt]

yeah i figured i looked at the beefy pcb and thought whoa that aint good
its even thicker then the ones in my 4 in 1 's
the saturn works fine for now so hopefully the damage isnt too serious

[Yart]

Jan 29, 2009 12:10:15 GMT mick_aka said:

The ST Key is the WORST cart u can use on your saturn IMHO, the PCBs (on the ones I have anyway) are way too thick and damage the cart slot.

Crap. Now I know why my cartridge slot is so loose...

[mick_aka]

[nickellingworth]

It's all that sort of stuff that makes me glad I can just leave an AR in my Saturn.

[Yart]

Mick, maybe you should put a small warning about the thick PCBs on select carts that have them in the "Cartridge Slots Expansions" section of the site? Not everyone would come to these boards to find out if they're good or not and someone browsing for Saturn info could find it quick and easily.

[mick_aka]

Grea idea Yart! noted ;D