Neo Geo AES Power LED
It's odd, but the Neo Geo AES doesn't have a Power LED, making it very easy to not realise you've left it on. On this one (motherboard NEO-AES3-6) there is an LED on the motherboard to show it's got power.
Anyway, a common mod is to add an LED to the Reset button. The Reset button is slightly transparent which means it's ideal to put an LED in it.
Take the console part and pull the reset button off
You can see that I've removed 2 of the support bridges (I don't know what they're called!), I did this using some side cutters and needle nosed pliers.
I was too lazy to find the Dremel out, so I made a hole with a scalpel then used a drill bit and made the hole bigger by hand. Then attached it with the side cutters, scalpel and needle nosed pliers. Try and get as far down to the inside of the button as possible (otherwise the LED might glow with a pattern of the plastic you didn't remove)
You can see I'm using a CR2032 battery (or similar), holding the LED legs on it and then test fitting it to the reset button to see which colour I like best.
I don't really know how to explain but I bent the legs of the LED and then fitted it into the hole and wrapped the legs around the sides. I used some needle nosed pliers to do this, a bit like a needle and thread. Once in place you can see I cut the legs short and soldered them together. You can also see that I've scratched a + and - onto the reset button so I remember which leg is which when soldering it up.
I've used a piece of old IDE cable for the wiring, here you can see I split the ends, shortened one and soldered on a resistor then insulated the resistor using some heatshrink. I used this resistor calculator to work out what value to use. My LED is designed for 3.3v with a draw of 20mA, the power points I'm using from the motherboard is 5v - so I'm using a 100 ohm resistor. Don't forget to tin the wire, resistor, LED legs etc.
The resistor can be attached to either the positive or negative side of the LED.
The guide I originally found used one of the capacitors near the reset button for power and ground. I've labelled in the first photo above which is which after investigating with a multimeter. It's a bit of an awkward place though, and I noticed that my motherboard had a voltage regulator nearby, I did a quick search for the specs of it to find the pinout (it's an LM2567-5 model) and also measured with a multimeter to confirm which is Ground (middle leg) and which is 5v (labelled above). You'll notice that you can't see the resistor, that's because there wasn't really room for it here, so I swapped it around so that the resistor is attached to the LED.
And there you have it, a useful mod that looks great. I guess you could also do this to the original AES joystick, it uses the same button and switches for A B C D! I originally found this in NeoMegaMods.PDF which says it's from http://www.neo-geo.com (which I might add, is a great site)
Summary of Components needed
Some odd bits of wire
1 x Suitable LED (I used a 3mm Blue 3.3v LED)
1 x Suitable Resistor (I used a 100ohm one after using
this)
