Voltage question

[tahrbow]

I just bought a Japanese Saturn system, but I think it was actually an Asian system rather than Japanese. The voltage for it is 220-240 V, 50/60 Hz, which is obviously not the Japanese voltage.

I live in the US, and just for fun, I hooked it up to my AC outlet. We run at 120 V so I expected the machine to barely start and work only in fits and bursts.

To my surprise, it ran perfectly fine.

Obviously, I'm ignorant of some basic principles of electricity. How is it that a system calibrated for nearly twice my AC voltage can run fine with what seems to be only half of the juice it needs?

I know that you shouldn't run a true Japanese system (100 V) on a US outlet (120 V) but how can a 220-240 V system run on 120 V?

[termis]

It could've just had the power supply unit changed over. Another possibilty is that it has a multi-voltage power supply unit, though I understand that Samsung saturns are the only saturns that originally came with such a PSU (and is clearly labeled multivoltage)

By the way, what color & style is the saturn (grey with oval power buttons, white with round power buttons, etc...)? And does it have the US/EU style boot-up, or the Japanese style boot-up? If you're not sure which is which here's what each look like:

US/EU style boot-up screen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCBYdwbOWV4

JP style boot-up screen:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ka6FmzQDzO8

[superdeadite]

Aug 17, 2009 19:51:51 GMT tahrbow said:

I know that you shouldn't run a true Japanese system (100 V) on a US outlet (120 V)

Actually you can run a JP system on a US outlet with no problems. The extra 20V isn't much of a differece. When I was in the US, I ran 2 JP Saturns and a JP PS2 off the normal outlet for years, never had a problem.

[hype-g]

(US user)
I need some voltage help myself. I recently lost the non-polarized (figure 8 style) cord to my Japanese white Saturn and had been scrambling all over the house looking for it.

I haven't tried it yet but a few minutes ago I found an identical cord that connects to the power brick to my non working IBM Thinkpad. It says 7A/125V on the end, but that little small white print on the cord itself says 300V.

Any help is appreciated.

[mick_aka]

The figure 8 leads are all the same, just cable directly from plug to end, the voltage on the cord is it's maximum operating voltage (the most you can pipe through it before it melts)

[Deleted]

I'm thinking about picking up one of those new old stock model 2 asian 240v saturns on ebay, but I am in the US so I use 120v of course. I have a broken US model 2 saturn with a working power board. Can I install it into the asian saturn? I'd rather do that than mess with a stepdown converter if I can.

[mick_aka]

There's a very good possibility that you can yes, you will only run into trouble if you have a very early model 2 yourself, then it can have the older power board in which wont fit.

[termis]

I can remember a quite a few motherboard variations on the model 2 power supply units -- though I do think some PSUs were interchangeable with different motherboards.