Madlad cuts motherboard in half to create portable Sega Saturn (and it works!)
Website Bitbuilt specializes in console modding, and have a lot of forum topics dedicated to turning retro consoles into portable versions. It’s a world I’m very unfamiliar with, but the hardware skills involved with turning a decade-old console into a smaller version of itself are impressive.
“Trimming” the Sega Saturn has always been a bit of a problem for modding enthusiasts though, given all the chips sitting on the motherboard.
Many have asked if I will ever make a Sega Saturn handheld. It has more than 20 chips, 8 of which are processors. No. pic.twitter.com/2heitxkuEe
— Shank (@ShankMods) March 27, 2019
But user tzmwx over at Bitbuilt has posted detailed schematics on how he’s created a portable Sega Saturn, beating impossible odds.
Beware, this is not for the faint of heart, as the process involves literally cutting the motherboard, then resoldering hundreds of circuit traces.
In a series of Videos, tzmwx details the process, from the motherboard modifications to the outer shell and accessories. The videos alone are not enough to reproduce his feat, though, but on the bitbuilt forums you’ll find a series of schematics that might help, if you’re up to the task.
Splitting the motherboard in half is not the only thing required to trim a console, of course. In this mod for example, the games are loaded as isos through an sd card, rather than the original CDRom format.
The end result is impressive (compared to a game gear, below).
As a Sega kid this is just jaw dropping. I would pay damn good money for this to go with my Nomad and Treamcast.
Nobody cares dude. Simple as that.
I care, so you’re wrong
1. Don’t be a ***. 2. Plenty people care, myself included. This is dope as heck.
Go away Reggie
I care and others do too, maybe, just maybe you are just too young, and just saw 7th generation onwards, who knows…
I own a Saturn and I couldn’t give a sh.. it.. been around since 1st gen Atari’s and still couldn’t give a wa.. nk.. about some tw4t chopping one in half.
I wouldn’t do that, this is a perfect example of how not everything on the internet is made of gold. To keep this simply put, the longevity of that thing is questionable at best. Without knowing the specifics and going purely off of this article I would have to speculate that there are about 100+ points of failure in that handheld that the original Saturn didn’t have. This wasn’t done for the utility, it was just done to see if it could be done (which of course it could, it just was a matter of who was willing to waste their time.) this thing just was not built for the market, or to last for that matter. All these DIY projects you see on Youtube or online that jam old motherboards into a plastic shells most likely end the same way, a broken piece of junk that cannot be recovered because it was heavily modified. We just don’t see those videos because who would post it?
I think a lot gamers (like yourself) see this as some type of idealized version of the Saturn because it looks kinda cool from the outside and now its portable. In reality this is a mangled motherboard that is basically duct-taped back together and stuffed into a plastic shell. It’s not worth more than a Sega Saturn, and it would be a miracle if it made it 5 years.
Don’t make this a market, it’s a bad one. Emulation is the ideal way to play these older games portability, not hardware modifications to a 20+ year old piece of hardware.
this is really nice
Yo jimbo, how’s your momma? Ain’t seen her for a while now.
Nice one. Pretty straight forward if u know electronics. Cut trace and retrace with wire’s. Has long has u wire traces back to ho it was it should work.
How’bout just running a saturn emulator on a smart phone? Is that portable enough for ya?
please be joke
no, no, he has a point, why this, when you can simply emulate, the answer, because he can.
Listened to an interview with Shank on RetroRGB not long ago, and I think he’s too humble to admit his genius. It must be really hard to to figure out what to cut around on the motherboard and assemble it to look nice. (Even with the schematics.)
I installed GC loader on my Gamecube recently. There was no soldering and I was still sweating.
Nice and now a old ps3 fat portable lets see it That can be done
Old FAT PS3 has a 200 watt power draw so no.
worst konsola ewer
No it wasn’t, still have both original models (modded of course) and still play it occasionally
Was a great console, just poor support. Tomb raider on saturn looked better than ps1. Didn’t suffer as much from polygon bending
I’m just here to say your mommas are belong to us. Very nice. Great success!
Your momma is still in my basement dude… I keep telling her to go but she won’t take the vacuum pipe outta her a$$…
From the makers of flex tape, comes flex wire. Watch, Im so confident about Flex wire, I’m gonna saw this motherboard in half. Now that’s a lot of damage.