Its now possible to play backups by flashing Saturn Carts!

[Anthony817]

That is right, if you have an Action Replay, Gameshark or Memory Card Plus, you can flash the firmware to be able to play backups now. This also lets you play imports as well!

I flashed my GS this morning and have been going through my library of the Complete NTSC-U library of backups. Other carts that have flash memory should work too.

I could only flash my GS with the Atlas disc, but you can try the others you own as well. The codes and backup save function will be unavailable in this version, but it is on the to do list, so if you have important saves on these carts please back them up before attempting this!

Watch this video for instructions on how to flash with the Atlus disc.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DujYFV1t5zY

There are 3 different disc's you can try if the others do not work for you.

You can find the original Pseudo Saturn flashing utility on the main page of the thread.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... udo-Saturn

Grab the Atlas Disc here.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... post766461

And lastly the flasher from cafealpha2 here.
http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/sh ... post772276

Your Saturn will need to be modded for disc swap or have a mod chip to do this exploit.

WARNING! You could brick your carts if anything goes wrong, although I haven't seen anybody brick theirs. This is just common sense when flashing any devices firmware. Just keep this in mind!

[Ziggy]

So let me get this straight: You can flash new firmware to a GS or AR and then use that cart to boot burned games?

[bryan_65]

I was wondering what people were gonna do when all of Rackets chips were gone.
This is great news. I need to track down an extra cart now.

[Anthony817]

So let me get this straight: You can flash new firmware to a GS or AR and then use that cart to boot burned games?

Yes Sir!

[Ziggy]

I wonder what the cart is doing to allow the console to boot a CD-R. The guy that hacked the BIOS said he removed the region and authenticity checks, but burns still wouldn't boot (although it did make the console region free). So I'm just wondering what people found out to make this work.

[Anthony817]

In the beginning you had to patch backups, but now it has been fixed. Note the thread was created over the summer, and he has released another version which he edited the attachment on the OP to have the latest one for download.

Like said before, sadly it removes the save function and cheat codes, but it absolutely lets you run backups, utilize your built in ram on AR carts and is still region free. I just burnt a Japanese game called Gale Racer and didn't have to patch the region on the disc to NTSC-U, it simply booted right up.

In the future he plans on adding back the code and save functions, hopefully that means the good old Interact bios can be used but just hacked, as I love seeing the screen the GS and AR carts have.

[Hobie-wan]

I might try this with an AR I have that locks up while starting a game at some point.

[Anthony817]

If you ever want to reflash them to the original bios you can. The Atlas disc has tons of bios files for the various carts out there, but it is incomplete.

[ninjainspandex]

wow this is amazing news, but I think I'll wait for the inevitable release of an action replay cart pre flashed to it with the backup ram working. The disabling of backup ram is kind of a deal breaker for me.

[Anthony817]

Luckily I have a Mega Memory Card Plus, so I have that for backing up all my saves.

If you only have a single cart then I could see not wanting to risk it. For me, I got this Saturn in February from a friend in Canada, who burnt me every single NA game, so I had close to 300 official games, homebrew and a few emulators on disc's so I was itching to finally play all my games instead of the touch and go nature of doing disc swap.