Saturn - Flickering picture / disc reading issues

[chris1479]

I bought a Sega Saturn (in great condition, it pretty much just sat in someone's attic for 20 years) a few weeks ago and haven't played it much. I played it for a few hours for the first time today and yesterday, and after leaving it running for a few hours while I did other things, I came back to it to switch it off. I switched it off, then on again to see if it was ok.



I now get horizontal flickering across the screen, and when this is occurring, it also refuses to read discs. If I leave it to cool down for a while and discharge, it starts to work again.



So after working on a lot of original xboxes I kind of know what to expect with those, but I don't know a tonne about the Saturn. Could this be a bad cap issue? Power supply going bad maybe? Just a stab in the dark but I'm thinking the bad caps might be causing the power supply to go out of spec and that's why the discs won't read when it's in this state.



What should I do? Just toss it in the trash and buy a new one?

[zyrobs]

Known issue, the power supply needs the PWM chip replaced. It's labelled as TOP202YAI, and the modern replacement part is TOP234YN (TOP224YN also works).

[captainkael]

Zyrobs to the rescue as always!

[chris1479]

Thanks so much, i decided to buy a new pico psu in the end to save myself the hassle of soldering but I'll keep the original just in case I need it. Thank you!