Repairing a broken Saturn

Decided to take some pics and video just so you can hear the noises and tell what needs to be done. (I think Sera had this problem too?)

First, take the hood off.



Or maybe not!

It helps to have another Saturn handy which was through the same ordeal to give the broken one a bit of moral support.



Here's the offending part, blurry to obscure the horror.



Pop it off the metal bar it sits on and swear at it if you want.



Put it back on the bar, but high enough so that it spins freely with a disc on it. Just to note that without the top on the console, it refuses to read a disc (piracy protection and all that jazz). So you'll need to hold a switch at the back beside the power supply to make the console think the lid is down. (You'll see this in the video)

The laser should start to work and then the disc will spin -



As you can hear though, it's too high! You can clearly tell the laser is struggling to read the disc. Still, you've now confirmed that the motor works fine. Thank feck!

Try pushing the spindle down a bit now. This is the tricky part, as you're trying to get it to go down far enough for the laser to read, but high enough so it won't meet any resistance and will spin.

Here's what it sounds like if you've pushed it too low, but just high enough for the disc to spin. The first time it happend I freaked out thinking it was scratching the disc, but the disc is always fine. I think the sound is the spindle itself rubbing off the edge of the console. It shows how little resistance the thing needs though to stop it from working. Look at it struggle in the beginning.



If you push it too far and the disc stops spinning, pop the whole spindle off and try again from the beginning. This can become a real pain in the arse

Anyway, just keep trying, and trying, and trying.

Eventually, after all your hard work, this should happen -



Reassembled. (and a bit of me playing Soukygourentai with one hand while holding a camera!)



Delighted with that so I am! I can now enjoy Saturn games in 50hz glory!

You can also adjust the pot on that laser too. Something else I did before messing about with the spindle. Not sure if it made any difference in this case, but worth trying out.

Thanks!

I think it's in the mm. I guess it depends how good the laser is in the console too.

The NTSC Jap one I did before this one took me hours to get at the right height. Plus in that case, I was working on the asumption that the console was broken. As I'd never fixed one before, so as far as I knew it was gone. Just kept at it though. Had a gut feeling!

At one point, I was pressing the spindle down and the metal rod which goes through the middle of it went under my thumb nail at a very high pressure (you have to press this down with a lot of force) and I bled. A lot.

Something to be careful of folks!