1003 - Why wasn't the launch model released in Asia? As 1000, 1001 & 1002 were all released and 1003 would have been for a BIG market. 5002 - Already a thread on it but I figured to include it, weird how 5000, 5001 AND 5003?!?! exist.. or does 5003.. really exist?? is that perhaps a SCPH-H04X too? and finally, 9903.. a fascinating one with a STICKER and a PIC of the sticker too. if there are more rumors, please let me know.
My thought would be that at the time Sony didn't think about that and released the 1000 model for the entire Asia (except the North Asia (the Asian Russia)where there were 1002 since entire Russia = PAL). It's a mystery for me too. I haven't heard about the 5003 but the....5903. SCPH-5903 is actually a early revision 1001,because it uses English menus,while the console itself is NTSC-J (which isn't different at all from NTSC-U anyways). What it has over the standard early 100x machines (PU-7 motherboards) is that it also has a Video CD daughterboard attached,and it's not your usual addon board like those used on the 9002 machines. It's made by Sony,not 3rd party manufacturers. That's all I know for now. As for 5552 euro models,I have no idea why Sony made them if the 5502 existed already. However,700x series intrigue me a lot. While the CD-ROM is your usual 55xx drive,the motherboard is nothing like the 55xx.
I've never seen a SCPH-5003, and neither has anyone I've ever talked to. The first "Asia region" PSXes I ever saw was the SCPH-5503 model, based on PU-18. I guess it's possible they existed but never made it to HK. The reason for the confusion with the SCPH-500x numbers is that the Japanese one was a PU-8 (with RCA jacks) and the US one was a PU-18 (without RCA jacks) - I suspect the reason for changing the number to SCPH-5501 was simply to get all the numbers lining up again. That "SCPH-9903" is a bit of an oddity - it has the wrong power supply in it (with a polarized plug) for a SCPH-000x unit, the CD controller seems to be retail (it identifies as version "c3" - and the debugs are normally version "dx"). It would be very interesting to see inside it, but it apparently has a Sony seal label that the guy who has it doesn't want to break. At that point, it wasn't being officially distributed as far as I know - the machines were widely available in places like HK, but they were all grey imports. It has a different main board in it, too - I guess there just wasn't space on the main PCB to fit the Video CD parts on it and they had to use that sub-board. SCPH-5552 is identical to the SCPH-5502. The only difference is that the SCPH-5552 was supplied as part of a "Value Pack" with two controllers and a pack-in memory card. The SCPH-700x is a cost reduction model - a bunch of parts were merged to reduce the component count: CD DSP + CD interface merged into one chip Video DAC and encoder merged into one chip CPU and GPU clocks merged into a single oscillator with a PLL
The reason that he won't open it seems quite stupid to me. If for example I can break a slim PSone's warranty sticker,then I could also do that to that SCPH-9903. In fact,if I was to have that Playstation I'd just open it straight away to see if it's chipped or not. For the 5903,I still think it's just a normal early PU-7 PCB but with a VCD daughterboard installed.(obiviously made by Sony) Why? The fact that you can do the swaptrick using the CD Player.
I think it's marked as a PU-16 - it's actually closer to the PU-8 than the PU-7; it has SGRAM on it and space for both reference oscillators (although only the NTSC one is actually fitted) - it also has a much (physically) larger boot ROM than a standard PU-8 (44 pin, IIRC). Annoyingly, I actually had one of them, but it seems to have evaporated...
