My Saturn became region-free :)

[Zed]

I hope this is the right section to post this.

Something weird happened with my Saturn. I don't know if it's unheard of or what, but I've never read nothing like it. I'm from Brazil and I have an US Saturn modded with one of Racketboy's modchips.

To make a somewhat long story short: the thingie suddenly became region-free. Out of nowhere. I didn't do a thing. I don't have a ST-Key cart, an Action Replay or nothing like it, but now my console happily runs games from each and every region.

The long version: I was burning a backup and when I finished the burn it came to me that I forgot to change the region code from J to U. "What the heck", I thought, "since I wasted a cd-r already, let's see if it works". Surprise - it worked.

I went back to my computer, checked the ISO with SRP and the region code was still 'J'. Hmm. I had a bunch of E and J backups lying around, which I had previously tested in the same console just a week ago and none of them worked (I got the default region lockout error message). Now all of them work just fine.

Unfortunately I don't have any original JAP/PAL games to run some tests, but my original USA games are working as smoothly as ever. I just bought a japanese game off Ebay to test it on the console, but I'll have to wait two weeks or more until it gets down here.

Weird, isn't it? Do you have a clue on what's happening here?

(Or am I being a moron and this is nothing new?)

Thanks.

[jemsic]

wow, never heard of that. It HEALED.

[Zed]

Yeah, I really don't know what to think of this. I hope it doesn't mean my Saturn is going to give up the ghost soon (I don't know, maybe it's a short or something)

Update: my battery just died. Maybe it's just a coincidence.

[grittykitty]

wow, let's hope the battery death was a coincidence...

when i modded my saturn with racket's chip in my japanese saturn, it mysteriously stopped doing a disk check for "import games" (which would be u.s. games to my console) when it goes into the console screen after the st-key screen. definitely a weird thing, but cool. i just hope my console won't suffer any damages and i wish yours the best

[racketboy]

Very interesting/cool
Thanks for sharing

I am very curious about what cause this though...

[Zed]

My japanese games finally arrived, and now it's official: my Saturn is indeed region-free

I noticed one thing: when I try to change game cds without turning off the Saturn, I get the "unsuitable for this system" message. All I need to do is turn the console off and back on, and it loads the game without complaining.

It's really strange, but I'm quite happy with this post-mod quirk

[lordofduct]

Well one thing we know for sure is that it has to be skipping the region checking all together... reason is because the system is hard coded to a region and matches it to the disk. This means, unless SEGA puts a hard code configuration that allows region-free (which they didn't) then it can only be one certain region at a time.

So easily we can infer it is completely skipping the region check all together.

Something I'd be looking into is exactly what batch of chips you put in there (as this is the only recent change done to the console... it is highly unlikely it'd just up and just stop performing the check for no reason), how it was installed (AB, wired to the IC on the CD board) and what version system you have and compare to some one with the same set up and see if they have the same thing occur.

I'm gonna test mine when I get home. I use one of Racket's chips and have never even bothered to test region specifics on the chip for the fact I've always accepted that'd I needed to swap regions via my switch (on my old system) or with my AR cart (on my new system).

... All though I do remember some quirky things along this line occuring back when I innitially installed the region swith in it.

[Zed]

I (well, not really; I paid $5 to a guy at the nearest electronics shop to do it for me, as I have no soldering skills whatsoever) installed one of the modchips sold by Racketboy. No A+B, both cables were soldered. It's an US Saturn, model 2, 32 pins.

[racketboy]

$5 -- good deal

[CurulleanCat]

Soooooooooooo, RB do all your chips have this new feature?

Im thinkin of buying another chip..........