I'm not at all convinced that you need to change the firmware to be able to load Asian course maps. I'm unable to confirm the PCB P/N for either the Asian or US versions of S3 although i suspect they're the same even though the HWID's differ. The EU version of the S3 is the same HWID as the US version [1469] and they all come preloaded with all world courses except Asia and some parts of Africa/ME, although they do include Australia and New Zealand:
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The identical unit is sold in AU/NZ also.

The Asian versions that I've checked have HWID of 1597 and seem to be identical [eg SG & TWN v2.10 fw is exactly the same]. The Asian models come preloaded with Asian/Oceana course maps which like the US/EU model also includes Australia and New Zealand, and additionally Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, China, Thailand, Indonesia & Philippines:
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However, with a few minor additions, these maps are sold separately as 'CourseView Pacific' for G3 in EU:
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and although Garmin US state: 'Currently, there are no golf courses available in Asia for Approach S-series devices sold outside Asia', they offer the sale of the Pacific map in EU as evidenced above for the EU G3 which is identical in every way to the US G3. The G3 and S3 maps are probably interchangeable, but may require a TYP file change first perhaps.
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I'm quite certain that there is no need for you to do a risky fw change to enable the use of Asian maps on your US/EU S3 and that loading an 'out of area map' is no more difficult than loading a CNNT street map of SG/MY to a US/EU/AU nuvi for instance. Garmin are often a great source of mis-information on their own products at times, usually intentionally.

The current CourseView Pacific Version 3.10 map is available here: [Only registered and activated users can see links. ], courtesy of kenta 2.