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Post by thegamesensei on Jan 26, 2015 3:23:22 GMT
So I bought a used Saturn almost a year ago, but have procrastinated fixing the pins until tonight.
I bought an action replay 4-in-1 soon after I got the Saturn and it worked the first time, but when I reset the machine, it wouldn't work again. I tried everything... I cleaned the pins, wiggled the cartridge, and pulled the pins out with a toothpick.
When I started pulling out some of the pins with a toothpick, I noticed that a few pins were pushed far down into the slot so I got my knife out and tried my best to pull them up. It worked for a few, but not so well for others. I kept trying to put the action replay in and try to turn on the console. Sometimes I would get a blinking power light and other times the bootscreen would read "Reading disc" or something like that, but it would never end.
Anyway, one time I was pulling up a pin with my knife that was stuck really far down and it just snapped off. It was unusable before, but now its completely broken.
So what do I do? Is there anywhere I can buy new pins or anything? Or am I just SOoL unless I buy a new saturn?
I am not opposed to buying a broken saturn and stealing its cartridge port if that's what I have to do. If there's a way to solder the action replay to the cartridge port or even the motherboard, I wouldn't be against that either if there were a good guide.
I can send pictures of action replay or of pins if needed. Thanks!
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Post by thegamesensei on Jan 26, 2015 23:35:24 GMT
I decided to try and solder the Action Replay directly to the motherboard. If it works, FANTASTIC! If it doesn't or if I mess something up, then I guess I will have just lost a cartridge port (which wasn't even working in the first place apparently.
It may take me a while because of the huge about of unsoldering, soldering, and resoldering I will have to do... but hopefully it will be worth it!
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Post by thegamesensei on Jan 27, 2015 17:15:58 GMT
UPDATE:I will do my best to update with pictures every so often. Even though there's probably nobody watching this now, I want this to be recorded somewhere for any other future tinkerers that might find it interesting. 1/26/15Last night I started to desolder the pins of the cartridge slot from the motherboard. It was a long process that was not very clean. Some of the pins removed very nicely, while others had to receive a little extra work later on. The pins I am removing are on the middle right. Just a picture of the motherboard with the cartridge slot on the middle right. Here I actually had to take scissors and cut the pins out which took a little bit of force. It did leave some pins stuck in the holes which I am in the process of cleaning up now. As soon as I get all the holes clean, I will begin working on attaching wires to the leads on the Action Replay and hope that I can make this work somehow! Midday UPDATE 1/27/15:I had a little trouble trying to get the last pins out of their sockets, so I devised a plan to take my kitchen knife holder to hold the board while I solder on one side and pull with tweasers on the other. It worked well and with a little wiggling the last of the pins came out. Here's a picture of the finished removed cartridge port with a little bit of solder left in some sockets. Took a long time, but it feels good to be done. I decided to go try and plug in the console just to make sure that it was still functioning and active and that I didn't accidentally scrape something I shouldn't have. When the power light wouldn't come on and the access light started blinking I got pretty freaked out. I kept turning the machine on and off and I would hear this clicking sound. Anyway, eventually the power light came on and I got a little relief until I realized there was no image on my screen. Then I realized that stupid me forgot to plug it into the TV, so when I did... Sonic R works fine! So glad that at least so far nothing is messed up. My next step will be to solder wires to all of the contacts on the Action Replay, then solder all of those wires to the, now empty, cartidge port sockets. It will get pretty confusing once I get to that step because of the large amount of wires involved.
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nemozero
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Post by nemozero on Jan 27, 2015 18:39:28 GMT
that's a massive project best of luck:) hope it works for you
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Post by thegamesensei on Jan 27, 2015 22:02:54 GMT
Thanks so much! I hope so too cuz I don't want to have to be worrying about pins for the rest of this consoles life.
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Post by gamesbluetiger on Jan 28, 2015 9:50:37 GMT
Wow you are much braver than me! Good luck this could be an answer to a major problem. Not sure many people would want to try it.
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