Show your low serial number consoles (<500)!

[Tyree_Cooper]

Show your tasty low serial number consoles (500 or less) here! They have that special "close to the source" feeling, if you stroke them gently you will understand.

I wasn't looking for low serials but I happen to have two very early Saturn consoles.



White Saturn no. 000109, production year 1998. Working perfectly.

Grey Saturn no. 000315, production year 1995. Unfortunately not working.

 

[StevieGoodwin]

Hi everyone, I thought i might post this, I also have a low serial console.
I have a very early US SNES console with a low serial with 100% almost no yellowing and here's its serial

Also the console works perfectly.

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

That nice but I don't think 55251 is close to 500, unless it's actually 251?

 

[Druid II]

I've a Saturn with the serial 051000012, what makes it interesting is that it still has the "property of quality assurance labs" stickers on it (品質保証本部管理機材). Apparently it was a test unit for the first VA1 revision units.

I wasn't looking for low serials but I happen to have two very early Saturn consoles.

Not that early, I'm afraid. Just some of the earliest made in a specific production run. Though it's nice that you have both a first revision and a last revision unit! The alpha and the omega.

Also note that they are both HK units, for which the serials can be misleading. It seems they reserve some numbers at the start of a run for misc regions, which they fulfil at a later date. For example, some Australian units had very low serials but the motherboards themselves had timestamps showing a date later than units in the ~100k production numbers.

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

That's true, I meant a serial on the machine, regardless of how late it is in general production. It's fun to see a low serial. But I think the 315 unit is still early? Being 1995.

How to read a Saturn serial? My research gave me this:

B50-000315
B = Factory/plant
5 = Year (1995 in this case)
0 = ? Maybe the week of production?
000315 = The actual serial number


051000012 is pretty nice, I wonder how many units they kept for QA, maybe 20-30?

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

Answer found
Factory, production year, board revision, serial number
so a board revision "0" is the lowest there is

according to the list here http://nannanseisaturn.web.fc2.com/segasaturn/

your japanese unit is made in taiwan, my hong kong unit is made in japan...
and that 000315 rev.0 from japan appears to be older than your test unit, which is rev.1 from taiwan factory

here's a nice database

Saturn Serial DB

and pics of your test unit??

 

[speedyink]

For some reason this is a lower serial number than the sample units sent out in white boxes (closer to the 500 range for those)... It came in a standard retail Japanese box, but I guess it could have just been put in a random spare box

 

[Capt. 2110]

I learned the Sega serial number format a few years ago. It works on most systems afaik, but the 3rd number's meaning might have changed for each system.
E.G. from Sega Game Gear: 010133168 is
Factory 0 (Taiwan)
Year: 1991
Production Run 0 (first batch of the year)
Unit number 133,168

I'd be interested is seeing if it works the same for the Saturn, Nomad, Genesis, and Master System.

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

I just posted the meaning in my previous message, and there's a huge page with detailed info on Saturn serials

SEGA SATURN

that's a nice 33 Virtual Boy!

 

[Karl]

del

 

[speedyink]

I just posted the meaning in my previous message, and there's a huge page with detailed info on Saturn serials

SEGA SATURN

that's a nice 33 Virtual Boy!

Thanks! Mine's the lowest one is known hands, there's also an 18 spotted on ebay, but that auction got pulled and we're* unsure of its whereabouts now. Numbers that low have been unheard of until we spotted these two.



*The collective "we" at PlanetVB

 

[Druid II]

I learned the Sega serial number format a few years ago. It works on most systems afaik, but the 3rd number's meaning might have changed for each system.
E.G. from Sega Game Gear: 010133168 is
Factory 0 (Taiwan)
Year: 1991
Production Run 0 (first batch of the year)
Unit number 133,168

I'd be interested is seeing if it works the same for the Saturn, Nomad, Genesis, and Master System.

It's not "Factory 0", it's the manufacturer code. 0 is EFA Corporation. Each manufacturer can have multiple factory lines.
The serial number format works for everything post-Megadrive 1. For Megadrive 1 and older, the motherboard number was different.
The Dreamcast used a new serial number format.

your japanese unit is made in taiwan, my hong kong unit is made in japan...
and that 000315 rev.0 from japan appears to be older than your test unit, which is rev.1 from taiwan factory

Having different region models made elsewhere is pretty common. European Saturns were mostly made in China or Indonesia. But you also had Japanese Megadrives made in China. It doesn't really matter.

Your B50000315 is most likely older, but you have to take it apart and check the motherboard stamps to know for sure.
For ex.
MK-80200A-50 AD65 043955 has a mobo timestamp 1996 June 08
MK-80200A-03 AD65 003046 has a mobo timestamp 1996 July 17, it was made later, despite the lower serial. Since it is an Australia unit, the serials were most likely reserved in advance.

here's a nice database

Saturn Serial DB

and pics of your test unit??

Yup, that's my unit.

Also, my website

 

[Capt. 2110]

It's not "Factory 0", it's the manufacturer code. 0 is EFA Corporation. Each manufacturer can have multiple factory lines.
The serial number format works for everything post-Megadrive 1. For Megadrive 1 and older, the motherboard number was different.
The Dreamcast used a new serial number format.

Wow, that's cool! I never knew that. Do you have a list of all of the manufacturer codes by chance? I'd be interested in seeing which companies tended to make more reliable systems (I see more EFA systems working than whoever made the S and B systems, at least with Game Gears).

 

[FamilyGuy]

Also, my website

You're the first person I though about when I read the title of the topic.

Funny how he unknowingly directed you to your own website, I guess it's flattering in a way!

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

MK-80200A-50 AD65 043955 has a mobo timestamp 1996 June 08
MK-80200A-03 AD65 003046 has a mobo timestamp 1996 July 17, it was made later, despite the lower serial. Since it is an Australia unit, the serials were most likely reserved in advance.

Maybe, but it's understandable that motherboards, even those of the same revision, were made over a period of time, so motherboards made a bit later can end up in lower serial shells. Like, first box of shells fitted with last box of mobos at the assembly line, and you end up with your example above.

If they were reserved for later mobos, I'd think those mobos would have to be different in some way? Or like you say, they assembled units for Australia separately, a bit later, so they ended up using mobos made later. ? Of course if you end up with hundreds of similar cases for a certain region, it's probably not a coincidence.

 

[Druid II]

Wow, that's cool! I never knew that. Do you have a list of all of the manufacturer codes by chance? I'd be interested in seeing which companies tended to make more reliable systems (I see more EFA systems working than whoever made the S and B systems, at least with Game Gears).

I'm not familiar enough with the GG to say, but doesn't that machine suffer from bad caps universally?

If they were reserved for later mobos, I'd think those mobos would have to be different in some way? Or like you say, they assembled units for Australia separately, a bit later, so they ended up using mobos made later. ? Of course if you end up with hundreds of similar cases for a certain region, it's probably not a coincidence.

I think they just planned on producing x number of units for each region in advance, and then produced the ones with higher priority first, eg. Japan.
It's a bit muddy because some production runs alternate between, for example, PAL and JP units very often. Some between PAL, JP, and USA units. It is unclear yet if those were two runs running in parallel, or if they indeed switched types every few thousand units or so. I have yet to see any serial number collisions yet, but that could just be due to a lack of samples on my part.
I need to streamline the site at some point to make it simpler to add serials, perhaps add some way for users to submit serials, so the db can grow exponentially faster... lot of work, not enough time to do so.

Either way, to determine the manufacturing date the units also need to be opened.

 

[Tyree_Cooper]

ok that's cool, sounds about right, i.e. it's hard to figure out what happened exactly, but a large database like yours is a great resource regardless

but this is not a saturn thread so feel free to post any low serial console

that virtual boy sure looks crispy, i'm also curious about low serial n64 consoles

 

[Capt. 2110]

I'm not familiar enough with the GG to say, but doesn't that machine suffer from bad caps universally?

Yep, but typically I have a higher success rate fixing the 0 models, and the 0 models tend to work longer before the caps fail. B models are the least reliable in my experience, since I've never seen one working.