This page explains the features of the menu, as of version 68.

You can find all releases of the menu, and a CHANGELOG, here.

When you start up your console, the Satiator menu will start in the disc image browser. This shows all of the folders and recognised images in your SD card.

Press A or C to launch a game or enter a folder. If you enter a folder with only one disc image in it, it will be automatically launched.

Power cycle the Saturn to return to the menu from the game.

Press B to move back to the parent folder. Use the left and right D-pad to jump a full screen at a time.

You can nest folders if you like to organise things that way.

The following disc image formats are supported:

• ISO files
• CUE files, with any combination of BIN, IMG, ISO and WAV data files

CUE files can have an arbitrary number of track files - there's no need to merge them. MP3 is not supported.

Pressing B from the top menu will take you to the Satiator tools menu. (This will change to Start in a future release.)

For multi-disc mode, the Satiator supports switching disc images on the fly (added in firmware 161 / menu 68). To use this feature:

• Place all the CUE+BIN or ISO files into a single folder. There must not be any other bootable files in the folder.
• Ensure the main CUE or ISO files have exactly the same name, except for the disc number, which must start at 1. Most releases are named like this already.

When you select the game folder, the menu will ask whether you want to start on Disc 1, Disc 2 etc. instead of showing the individual filenames.

To change discs while running, just open the CD drive lid and close it again, and the Satiator will cycle to the next disc image.

This feature does not support CUE+ISO images, as there's no simple way to tell whether the ISOs are independent titles or part of the CUE.

You can play CD-Rs and out-of-region retail discs using the Satiator (as of firmware 161 / menu 68).

Just insert the disc before powering on the console. For the fastest boot, hold A during power on; otherwise you have to wait for the drive to try and fail to read the security ring, which can take a while.

The Saturn will boot to the CD player screen, then contact the Satiator (LED will turn green). The disc will then display as a Saturn game and you can boot it from there.

The Saturn will stay in modchip mode across resets until you power cycle it.

This feature introduces on-the-fly region patching of disc images. For this to work, the Satiator needs to know the correct region for the console. The menu reads the region from the SMPC on boot and writes it to a file on the SD card. This means you have to have booted menu version 68 or higher before modchip mode will work. If you move your Satiator (or your SD card) to a console of a different region, you need to boot the menu again to update the region on the card.

The tools menu currently gives you access to:

• Action Replay tools, for backing up and flashing AR-type cartridges
• Diagnostics for your system
• Formatting your SD card

If you'd like to transfer games between your Saturn's save memory and your SD card, options include:

• slinga's Save Game Copier
• cafe-alpha's Save Data Manager

The AR tools are intended to help you work with Action Replay style Flash cartridges, including those used for Pseudo Saturn / Pseudo Saturn Kai (PSK) / Satiator Menu Kai (SMK).

Selecting Backup AR will dump the contents of your cartridge to a file on the SD card.

Selecting Erase AR will completely blank the cartridge. This allows you to use an AR cartridge as a pure RAM cart. For AR versions which store save games in Flash, this will also wipe any save data on the cartridge. “3in1” or “4in1” carts with a switch should not be affected. A successful erase will not show a confirmation message.

Selecting Flash AR will let you choose a new file to flash to the AR's Flash. The file name must end with .bin to be shown in the chooser.

If your cartridge is not making good contact, you may get a Flash ID error. Simply wiggle the cartridge to reseat it and try again - you don't need to reboot.

If you have a cartridge that hangs on boot - perhaps due to flashing the wrong firmware - you can boot to the Satiator menu without the cart inserted, then carefully insert the cart and use the flashing tools to erase/reflash it. Keep the cart straight while you insert it.

As of menu 64, the only diagnostic available is the SD card latency test.

This does a set of 1-sector random reads on your card, and measures the time it takes to complete each operation. Long latencies, or errors in this test, indicate that your card may not work well with the Satiator.

For reference, the cheap SanDisk cards I use for testing have a mean latency of around 1500µs, and a maximum latency of around 3000µs.

The Errors count should be zero. If you get errors, your card probably needs to be replaced.

For ease of comparison, you can hotswap SD cards for latency testing - running the test again will reinitialise the card, although you may need to run it twice to get a stable result. If you hotswap the card, I recommend that you power cycle the console before proceeding to play games, etc. to avoid problems loading other titles.

This option will wipe the SD card using either FAT32 or exFAT. This is intended to allow you to get a consistently formatted card for comparison with other users.

The cluster size used for FAT32 is 32KiB; for exFAT, 256KiB.