Stuttering FMVs with Sega Saturn
All right, so, the last year or so all of my consoles joined hands and committed to a group suicide and one by one they've been offing themselves. Usually in the middle of my getting a moment to enjoy a break.
My Saturn burnt itself out last year, and after much painful research I discovered I had a rare variation, and which model laser to get to fix it! Easy enough, right? Pop out the old laser, slide a new one in! SegaHolic's video on the Made in Philipines model of the Saturn helped me a tremendous amount. Before my system was virtually unable to load any games at all, and now it does it every time!
The kicker is that it now functions, sort of, kind of. There are times when a game starts the opening cinematic will play just fine, and then other times it becomes stuttering Stan and lets out this bellowing screech of a dying leprechaun, and it is loud. Even still there are times when a game will hit a point where it needs to load a level and it goes absolutely nowhere. The games work fine in my friend's Saturn when I try them.
Now I tried to repair this situation by adjusting the potentiometer, and there will be times when it's smooth as a baby's butt, and others where it just reverts to the stuttering. However this is the first time I've done anything at all with adjusting a pot, or repairing a CD based system. PS2 shit the bed? That's fine, there's roads of them for dirt cheap to replace the busted one. Xbox explode? Whatever, there's a few of them and no one is willing to fight for that; yours for the taking. Sega Saturn died? Well knuck if you buck mother fucker, these aren't common in the wild at all! YOU NEED TO REPAIR THIS!
uH..
At what point do I rule out that the potentiometer needs to be continually adjusted? Is it possible to make it too strong and that's why the video and load times some times fail? Is it still too weak? I'll record video and upload it when I get the chance if seeing it in action will give any indication as to what's going on. My biggest worry is that I'll crank it up too much and burn the laser out, and that's pretty much the scenario I'm trying my best to avoid.
Outside of turning it a little bit at a time and checking games over and over again, is there any other advice? Is there something I might be missing? I've greased up the gears and guide rail with new silicone grease, and it's noticably more quiet, so I know it isn't getting stuck on anything, and the various cables and ports have all had a proper iso bath.
Thanks in advance!
My Saturn burnt itself out last year, and after much painful research I discovered I had a rare variation, and which model laser to get to fix it! Easy enough, right? Pop out the old laser, slide a new one in! SegaHolic's video on the Made in Philipines model of the Saturn helped me a tremendous amount. Before my system was virtually unable to load any games at all, and now it does it every time!
The kicker is that it now functions, sort of, kind of. There are times when a game starts the opening cinematic will play just fine, and then other times it becomes stuttering Stan and lets out this bellowing screech of a dying leprechaun, and it is loud. Even still there are times when a game will hit a point where it needs to load a level and it goes absolutely nowhere. The games work fine in my friend's Saturn when I try them.
Now I tried to repair this situation by adjusting the potentiometer, and there will be times when it's smooth as a baby's butt, and others where it just reverts to the stuttering. However this is the first time I've done anything at all with adjusting a pot, or repairing a CD based system. PS2 shit the bed? That's fine, there's roads of them for dirt cheap to replace the busted one. Xbox explode? Whatever, there's a few of them and no one is willing to fight for that; yours for the taking. Sega Saturn died? Well knuck if you buck mother fucker, these aren't common in the wild at all! YOU NEED TO REPAIR THIS!
uH..
At what point do I rule out that the potentiometer needs to be continually adjusted? Is it possible to make it too strong and that's why the video and load times some times fail? Is it still too weak? I'll record video and upload it when I get the chance if seeing it in action will give any indication as to what's going on. My biggest worry is that I'll crank it up too much and burn the laser out, and that's pretty much the scenario I'm trying my best to avoid.
Outside of turning it a little bit at a time and checking games over and over again, is there any other advice? Is there something I might be missing? I've greased up the gears and guide rail with new silicone grease, and it's noticably more quiet, so I know it isn't getting stuck on anything, and the various cables and ports have all had a proper iso bath.
Thanks in advance!
Comments
All right, so, the last year or so all of my consoles joined hands and committed to a group suicide and one by one they've been offing themselves. Usually in the middle of my getting a moment to enjoy a break.
My Saturn burnt itself out last year, and after much painful research I discovered I had a rare variation, and which model laser to get to fix it! Easy enough, right? Pop out the old laser, slide a new one in! SegaHolic's video on the Made in Philipines model of the Saturn helped me a tremendous amount. Before my system was virtually unable to load any games at all, and now it does it every time!
The kicker is that it now functions, sort of, kind of. There are times when a game starts the opening cinematic will play just fine, and then other times it becomes stuttering Stan and lets out this bellowing screech of a dying leprechaun, and it is loud. Even still there are times when a game will hit a point where it needs to load a level and it goes absolutely nowhere. The games work fine in my friend's Saturn when I try them.
Now I tried to repair this situation by adjusting the potentiometer, and there will be times when it's smooth as a baby's butt, and others where it just reverts to the stuttering. However this is the first time I've done anything at all with adjusting a pot, or repairing a CD based system. PS2 shit the bed? That's fine, there's roads of them for dirt cheap to replace the busted one. Xbox explode? Whatever, there's a few of them and no one is willing to fight for that; yours for the taking. Sega Saturn died? Well knuck if you buck mother fucker, these aren't common in the wild at all! YOU NEED TO REPAIR THIS!
uH..
At what point do I rule out that the potentiometer needs to be continually adjusted? Is it possible to make it too strong and that's why the video and load times some times fail? Is it still too weak? I'll record video and upload it when I get the chance if seeing it in action will give any indication as to what's going on. My biggest worry is that I'll crank it up too much and burn the laser out, and that's pretty much the scenario I'm trying my best to avoid.
Outside of turning it a little bit at a time and checking games over and over again, is there any other advice? Is there something I might be missing? I've greased up the gears and guide rail with new silicone grease, and it's noticably more quiet, so I know it isn't getting stuck on anything, and the various cables and ports have all had a proper iso bath.
Thanks in advance!
What you have done already sounds exhausting. After reading I feel compelled to buy you a working saturn and ship it to you. :-)
All right, so, the last year or so all of my consoles joined hands and committed to a group suicide and one by one they've been offing themselves. Usually in the middle of my getting a moment to enjoy a break.
My Saturn burnt itself out last year, and after much painful research I discovered I had a rare variation, and which model laser to get to fix it! Easy enough, right? Pop out the old laser, slide a new one in! SegaHolic's video on the Made in Philipines model of the Saturn helped me a tremendous amount. Before my system was virtually unable to load any games at all, and now it does it every time!
The kicker is that it now functions, sort of, kind of. There are times when a game starts the opening cinematic will play just fine, and then other times it becomes stuttering Stan and lets out this bellowing screech of a dying leprechaun, and it is loud. Even still there are times when a game will hit a point where it needs to load a level and it goes absolutely nowhere. The games work fine in my friend's Saturn when I try them.
Now I tried to repair this situation by adjusting the potentiometer, and there will be times when it's smooth as a baby's butt, and others where it just reverts to the stuttering. However this is the first time I've done anything at all with adjusting a pot, or repairing a CD based system. PS2 shit the bed? That's fine, there's roads of them for dirt cheap to replace the busted one. Xbox explode? Whatever, there's a few of them and no one is willing to fight for that; yours for the taking. Sega Saturn died? Well knuck if you buck mother fucker, these aren't common in the wild at all! YOU NEED TO REPAIR THIS!
uH..
At what point do I rule out that the potentiometer needs to be continually adjusted? Is it possible to make it too strong and that's why the video and load times some times fail? Is it still too weak? I'll record video and upload it when I get the chance if seeing it in action will give any indication as to what's going on. My biggest worry is that I'll crank it up too much and burn the laser out, and that's pretty much the scenario I'm trying my best to avoid.
Outside of turning it a little bit at a time and checking games over and over again, is there any other advice? Is there something I might be missing? I've greased up the gears and guide rail with new silicone grease, and it's noticably more quiet, so I know it isn't getting stuck on anything, and the various cables and ports have all had a proper iso bath.
Thanks in advance!
What you have done already sounds exhausting. After reading I feel compelled to buy you a working saturn and ship it to you. :-)
But I need to preserve this! Keep it ALIVE! I REFUSE TO LOSE ANOTHER!
I'll be messing with the laser a bit more after I wake up some more though...
I haven't adjusted a Saturn but if it's doing a screeching sound I'd tone down the laser potentiometer to see if that helps. I've seen some cheap laser replacements that are really noisy, some had to be tuned high in order to be useful but they're very loud, that can't be a good sign but at least they were cheap. Are you using original discs, burned copies, or both?
Original discs, and the laseris the same production model of the Sanyo for my system. I may have finally got it squared away today after much adjusting (and over adjusting and scaring the shit out of myself), so I guess the tipping point is when the laser stops picking up the fact that there's a disc, and you just sort of pull it back! ITTY-BITT-MOVEMENTS!
Well let's start from the beginning.
When I'm adjusting the pot and testing the games over and over and over again, I'll hit a point where I successfully load each of the games I'm testing with time and again with no issue.
Then I'll put the shell back on the system and the games just go back to their usual ways.
Take it apart, adjust, rebuid, repeate process.
Last night I was able to put the shell back on and had all three of my games load and play just fine.
This morning when I got home from work I went to play Street Fighter the Movie (it's a fun waste of time, you wanna fight about it?) and good ol' Gomez starts stuttering and skipping during his turn, Jean Claud has his gun magically appear in his hand, and then I get to the game and it plays.
Cleaned the lens off, it booted just fine.
My concern is that I'll now have to adjust the spindle itself and that sounds like a great big pain in the ass.
The system was recapped when I purchased it back in 2009, and I don't suspect that it'll need to be recapped again; though I may as well do that after I adjust the spindle if it kicks up the issues again after this cleaning.
Brand new lens shouldn't require cleaning...
Wouldn't hurt to buy another one because it's only 15 bucks.
This is just going to be an active jounal of my attempts to repair this.
God speed to the person searching in 2022 on how to repair their Saturn that was made in the Philipines.
Adjusted the spindle, still dealing with the random stuttering. It's so very odd because it doesn't happen all the time. The games I'm playing are all in immaculate shape. I've even gone blind staring into a light to make sure there were no surface scratches in the artwork side that usually signals data damage. No such thing. The games function just fine with my friend's Saturn like I may have said before.
Without the ability to do a proper hardware diagnostic I can only assume the processor, RAM, and GPU are in tip top shape.
I fear my only remaining option may be to purchase another laser as this one appears to be a sanctimonious asshole from a part of some islands I never heard of, only to be the largest disappointment in my life outside of discovering that strippers aren't as lithe and agile as I had imagined.
Apparently it's the pole that spins and not the striper herself.
I've only gone to a strip club once in my entire life and I brought in my fucking Game Boy Pocket to play Pokemon Gold because I wasn't going to pay for blue balls.
Still, it was an illusion I appreciated.
Wait.
Oh. Right. The Saturn...
Now I have zero useful knowledge on how lasers function, or what can happen if too much or too little voltage goes to the laser. I would assume that too little means it won't be able to read and too much means it can read directly to the core of your soul.
From this constant tinkering and adjusting it would actually appear that giving it too much juice can actually cause more than a simple case of early death.
I decided to try and turn the potentiometer back instead of pushing forward, because I hit a point for a moment where I thought the laser was fried. Fortunately it wasn't and I found it immediately after dialing back, but even with it sitting at the edge of limitless power it continued to stutter, and it made me think that the laser may have simply been bunk on arrival.
I made an offer on eBay to get a whole new laser and sled unit with it. Replacing drives and all else wouldn't be a terribly bad idea, I thought.
However waiting for the offer to be confirmed or denied I decided nothing bad would come from tinkering again. So I did. As has been stated several times I dialed the power back. The system is now behaving as it should, it turns out there's a bit of a scratch I didn't notice the truth depth of on my copy of Robotica and I will never see beyond level 4, but my other games are now loading with corrected load times, and there is no more FMV stuttering.
Tl;dr some times the god damn thing may just be getting too much juice. Choke it like you've got an autoeroticasphyxiation fetish and that could be a cure to your freezing and stuttering issues.
On a plus side if I win the offer I'll just have a spare laser assembly if this one decides to shit out.
This is my catalog. The laser is a 15 pin SF-P101. Do NOT get the SF-P101N as it isn't compatible with the Saturn made in the Philipines.
Shin-etsu silicone grease is god.
Darwin bless ye who finds this down their path of Sega Saturn repairs.