Mislabeled Voltage AES in Australia?

[Neo Alec]

Is this one of the fabeled AES systems that says to use PRO-POW on the bottom (5v), but the coil and voltage regulator is inside? I always hear about needing to check the components inside because the label can't be trusted, but I haven't really seen this myself.

Anyway, someone in Australia posted this on Reddit, and I was curious. Supposedly this was in storage 20 years. Why does the area around the clock crystal look melted? Supposedly this boots to a blue screen with a sketchy universal 9v PSU, but games won't boot.

https://imgur.com/a/75nUy7a

 

[ack]

You mean the metal bracket that goes over the crystals? Its pretty common for it to be soldered to the crystal housing.

In the 2nd picture it looks like someone replaced that crystal (and swapped that PAL/NTSC jumper), but didn't use enough flux and heat for the solder to flow and bond the bracket and crystal housing together.

 

[Neo Alec]

Ah, makes sense. Also, someone melted the edge of the card reader.

 

[maki]

regarding wrong PSU (POW instead of POW-3), mainboards have been swapped ("shell swap"), but also its possible to retrofit the internal regulation

I don't know how many if any of the AES3-3 PCBs did not have the internal regulator, but guessing from the coil it looks original

here is the thing:
thats not a JPN model you have, its definitely either PAL or US model, JPN do not have shielding as yours
Australia had PAL 50Hz, obviously someone changed the PAL/NTSC settings, there is a NTSC crystal in there now, quite crudely soldered, same for the jumper bridge top left (marked as NTSC1)

 

[joe8]

The AES was never officially released in Australia. But when they were imported (by specialist game stores) back in the 90s, they tended to be Euro consoles (rather than US), as they were PAL/50hz, which suited Australian TVs.

 

[venchia3]

Ah, makes sense. Also, someone melted the edge of the card reader.

That happened because who made the solder job was probably kinda inexperienced and touched the plastic with the soldering iron while working around the area

 

[wyo]

You have to plug it in upside down in Australia.