I finally got my white model 2 Saturn in - seemed almost brand new to me. Even came with the original japanese manuals still sealed. Just needed to replace the cmos battery from a spare pc I had. Anywho, I havn't got a chance to install the chip yet (no soldering iron
) but I did want to try out the swap trick.
After watching a couple videos of how it is done I figured I'd give it a try. I tried burned versions of both Panzer Dragoon Saga and Radiant Silvergun - nothing on each, though the Saturn detects the music tracks fine. Since five original japanese games came with this unit I tried a few of them as the original, but none made a difference.
Then I noted something interested - when the Saturn was trying to read the burned cds it would make all kinds of noises (I'm assuming this was the cd laser) like it was struggling. When I would boot up one of the originals there would be two noises when the laser kicked in but that was it. Both swap videos had the same two noises - none of the sounds of struggling with a burnt copy.
Both images were downloaded from CoolRom and burned with Nero 7 at 8x speed (I wanted to go lower, but it wouldn't give me a choice). Both cds were Memorex. I even tested both physical CDs (not images) with the SSF Saturn PC Emulator and they ran fine.
So what is the best way to burn? Are there any "bad" brands of CD-Rs to avoid? I'm going to try to find an old burner tomorrow and see if I can burn at a lower speed.