Overclocking the Retrocon

DK · Post by DK » Tue Oct 03, 2006 2:59 pm

I'm thinking of making a NESp out of the retrocon from lik-sang as it takes NES cartridges. After reading about overclocking the NES to make games such as Kirby run at full speed, I was wondering, would I just need to change the occilating crystal to increase the clock speed like on the gameboy and NES and if so, where is it?

Post by **gannon** » Tue Oct 03, 2006 3:10 pm

Can't unless the ppu is in a separate chip.

DK · Post by DK » Wed Oct 04, 2006 6:50 am

Thanks for that Gannon. Are there any NOAC's you can overclock then?

Post by **Skyone** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 9:35 am

DK wrote:Thanks for that Gannon. Are there any NOAC's you can overclock then?

Not that anyone knows of. If I'm not mistaken, the regular NOAC's (that I have tinkered with) run on a steady clock signal that is not generated by an oscillator, but set by a crystal. And furthermore, for size issues, I'm guessing most NOAC productors would have an internal clock generator or PLL, which would make it near impossible to overclock.

However, if you are lucky and if there is a crystal, which is external, you could increase/decrease it's value to make everything (gameplay, graphics, video and audio) go faster/slower. However, this may result in the game not powering on due to insufficient clock speed.

Post by **gannon** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:47 am

Sorry, but the problem actually lies in that if you overclock the entire NOAC, the graphics output would also be overclocked, resulting in an unusable video signal.

Post by **Skyone** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 10:56 am

That's what we all suspected at first with the Gameboy overspeeding, however, I got up to 6 times the original speed with out any graphical mess. I guess it all depends on what the video input can handle, and I suppose that it is different between a matrix display like the Gameboy's and an LCD like I believe DK will be using. I guess it's worth a shot, if you know what you're doing.

Post by **gannon** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 1:43 pm

I'd assume that since the gb and it's screen are on the same clock (I think), the screen still displays fine. I doubt the non-NTSC (or PAL) output signal from an overclocked NOAC would work.

Post by **Skyone** » Wed Oct 04, 2006 3:54 pm

Hmm... right, I didn't even think about the modified clock speed for the screen.