The person who made a portable Saturn, as Shiro reported last fall, is now creating a bit of silicon that would slot into a Saturn motherboard and provide 4MB save memory and 4MB expanded RAM, essentially providing a built-in Action Replay type of cartridge without having to fiddle with a cartridge slot.
TZMWX, who lives in China, posted a short video on Twitter this week showing off plans for a board with save memory and expanded RAM chips:
Using the DeepL machine translator, the tweet translates to:
Sega Saturn’s cassette slot is too difficult to use, making a Sega Saturn built-in 2-in-1 card (including 4Mb memory card and 4Mb expansion memory card, compatible with motherboards: VA6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 15), Bye! FM1808.
TZMWX
The person followed that up Thursday with another video showing the finished board as he lays it over where they likely planned to cut a space into a portable Saturn’s motherboard and solder it:
This revelation led to questions in Shiro’s Discord server about how such a board would work — both the save RAM and the expanded work RAM found in cartridges use the same address space in terms of how the Saturn’s processors see and access them. So they can’t be accessed at the same time if both are present in, say, an Action Replay cartridge.
Ateam, a member of Shiro’s Discord and the project lead on Dreamcast fan translation projects like Sakura Wars Columns 2 and Rainbow Cotton, took the initiative to reach out to TZMWX on Twitter. He asked in Chinese how such a device might work — by using a physical switch, or by some kind of new software solution.
TZMWX replied with a new video that apparently shows off the board already installed in their portable Saturn, using a physical switch on the unit to swap between functions.
In the video, the person plays Street Fighter Zero 3 — a game that requires the 4MB expanded RAM — then shows the save game manager not detecting a “save cartridge.” They then flip a tiny switch on the bottom of the unit and show that the save game manager now detects what it thinks is a save cartridge. All without turning off the Saturn!
According to DeepL, the tweet’s text translates to:
Yes, a switch is needed to switch between Memory Card M and Expansion Card E
TZMWX
Ateam then asked whether this new board is only for a portable Saturn or could be used in a standard one, but TZMWX has yet to respond.
This isn’t the first time this person has added a hardware expansion to a portable Saturn. As Shiro reported in May, a Fenrir was crammed inside one of the units to provide ODE support, even though a Phoebe ODE had been shown off inside a different portable Saturn the year before.
TZMWX created a guide to teach others how to cut up a Saturn into a portable one at a forum thread here.
Danthrax is a contributor to the Shiro Media Group, writing stories for the website when Saturn news breaks. While he was a Sega Genesis kid in the ’90s, he didn’t get a Saturn until 2018. It didn’t take him long to fall in love with the console’s library as well as the fan translation and homebrew scene. He contributed heavily to the Bulk Slash and Stellar Assault SS fan localizations, and has helped as an editor on several other Saturn and Dreamcast fan projects such as Cotton 2, Rainbow Cotton and Sakura Wars Columns 2.
It’s starting to look like something anyone might want to put in their consoles.