The Fenrir ODE is a great way to play your Saturn in 2023, between its relative ease of installation and the convenience of having access to your entire library of games on a single SD card. But once it’s installed in place of the CD-ROM drive, the large empty space that remains next to the Fenrir is a bit unsightly, to say nothing of being a hazard for the less dexterous of us who might drop an SD card into the console’s depths.
That’s led the administrator of French retro gaming forum Delta Island, Xrider, to engineer a very professional mounting bracket to take up that space. Called the Saturn Tray, it’s a stylish black and white PCB with a micro SD card extension that links up with the Fenrir underneath.
It even includes LED indicators for power, card detection and card read/write access, not to mention a switch for setting the console to 50hz or 60hz — an important consideration for PAL consoles.
Xrider put 16 Saturn Trays up for sale on eBay on July 28 for 28 euro, or about US$30.75, with 8.60 euro (US$9.45) for international shipping. Those in France could get it for 32 euro, shipping included.
By Aug. 5, just eight days later, they were all sold out. Anyone looking to get one will have to wait until a new batch is made, which Xrider said will come in September.
Xrider previously made similar brackets for the Dreamcast. And the Fenrir itself was developed by a member Xrider’s Delta Island forum, Ced.
A 3D printed alternative
For those with access to a 3D printer, a more do-it-yourself alternative to the Saturn Tray exists.
Dennis van den Broek bought a Fenrir Duo earlier this month and took it upon himself to design a 3D printed bracket for his new purchase.
He chronicled his efforts on X, formerly known as Twitter, eventually coming up with three designs. One of them completely fills the space where the Saturn’s CD-ROM drive used to be, blocking users off from accessing the Fenrir — hopefully they’ve got all the games they want already loaded onto its SD card.
His second design has a pit that allows access to the Fenrir’s SD card and includes a slot for storing a spare micro SD card.
But his final design is the most user-friendly. It adds an SD card reader extension, similar to what’s in Xrider’s Saturn Tray, to the top of the bracket.
One part of that design that can’t be 3D printed, of course, is the SD card extender. Van den Broek said he bought this one off of Amazon.
All three 3D printer designs are available for download for free.
Van den Broek, incidentally, has a day job at Guerrilla Games where he worked as a senior designer on Horizon Forbidden West.
Leave a comment