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Nintendo NES Overclocking Guide
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Dec 26, 2004 03:18 AM
from the what-everyone's-been-waiting-for dept.
from the what-everyone's-been-waiting-for dept.
Deven "Epicenter" Gallo writes "I've perfected a process by which to overclock the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to run games smoother without slowdown. The NES CPU normally runs at 1.79 MHz, I've reached a stable maximum of 4.2 MHz, about a 230% overclock. The games do not run faster than they should, the CPU never overheats, and most games are perfect up to 3.3 MHz!" Here's the guide on how to perform the modification, along with photos and demonstration videos
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That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't think so.
Parent
Re:That's nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
1998 called, they want their generalization back.
Parent
Warning! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Warning! (Score:3, Informative)
1.79 to 4.2MHz on air cooling (Score:5, Funny)
I wonder how far it could be pushed with heatsinks & active cooling. Time to being those finnish guys and their liquid nitrogen in, see if we can push it past 6MHz
Re:1.79 to 4.2MHz on air cooling (Score:3, Funny)
ohhhh..... (Score:2)
which explains why you went up to 4.2mhz.....
Re:ohhhh..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:ohhhh..... (Score:2)
I think you mean "went down" to 4.2mhz, right?
Jumpy games? (Score:2, Interesting)
What are some games that could stand to be played on an overclocked NES?
Re:Jumpy games? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Jumpy games? (Score:3, Informative)
It certainly wasn't a big enough problem to affect the games' playability. It was noticeable, however, on the rare occasions that it happened.
Re:It dosen't slow down-slide show style.... (Score:3, Interesting)
often suffer the slideshow effect, intead
of gracefully going into slow motion.
From what I've seen that comes from running out of texture memory and trying to stream the textures from the main memory through the AGP. Because the AGP is too slow to do that while pushing through the scene data and maintaining a good framerate you see a sudden jump as the data per frame increases tenfold. Some games do gradually go into slowmo but that's usually because the CPU can't catch
Re:It dosen't slow down-slide show style.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It dosen't slow down-slide show style.... (Score:5, Insightful)
often suffer the slideshow effect, intead
of gracefully going into slow motion.*
because of timing. in pc games most of the time(all the time now if it's what is considered properly done) the game logic(the game itself) will run same speed on every computer(that is, the enemies and everything else move regardless of if there's time to draw them on the screen).
it's not just with modern games, it was a 'problem' or a feature on some older games as well. stunts(or 4d sports driving) could be played on a 8mhz pc.. but damn if the track was complex or if there were an ai driven car on the track... you would basically have to drive 'blind' as after the start it could take quite some time before the screen updated the next time(but, everything moved anyhow).
basically it's about how you choose to do things. and if you're intending to add network play at any stage you basically have to keep the engine running regardless of if you have time to draw things or not at speedy rate enough.
Parent
Re:Jumpy games? (Score:3, Informative)
Next, we start overclocking coffeemakers.and then: (Score:5, Funny)
Why? (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm (Score:3, Insightful)
So what's the point in overclocking it? Faster load times?
A nice concept, but... (Score:5, Informative)
1. NES audio is generated within the 'RP2A03G' (CPU) chip and is based on clock cycles, so doubling the CPU clock will cause the audio to go up an octave (assuming it even runs). The site mentioned in the article actually pointed this out, so it looks like it's legitimate.
2. Games which use cycle-timed code will no longer work properly - Battletoads is the first that comes to mind.
3. Some NES cartridges only used 250ns PRG ROM chips, which is only good up to 2MHz; go any higher and the game may not run at all.
Re:A nice concept, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
The biggest problem I experienced (Score:2)
I think that this would not be solved by this hack, because that has to do with maximum bits per scanline, rather than clock speed...
Re:The biggest problem I experienced (Score:2)
OMG! Time is moving faster! (Score:3, Interesting)
Either that's the explination, or some wierd time warp has opened up and defied the laws of relativity via NES. Perhaps that's why I got the orignal Zelda for christmas.
So wait.. why does this matter anyways? Just get an emulator. Still..Hella sweet mod. Right up there with softmodding an xbox.
HoHoHo - Simrook
Refresh mod? (Score:2)
It would be nice to mod my NES to make the games a little more... challenging.
I'm still waiting on the NES Linux kernel hack...
Temperature and timing (Score:3, Interesting)
The music gets out of whack and the time in the game doesn't work correctly...you can see it happen in the video of SMB3.
I'd also like to have one of those laser thermal sensors take the temperature of the chip on the normal clock speed and the overclocked speed.
Geek factor = 10; usage factor = 2. If you can find your NES, let alone have it work, all the power to you. If you give up, you can always hit zophar.net and emulate them.
Re:Temperature and timing (Score:2, Informative)
Just in time for Christmas! (Score:2, Funny)
Has everyone forgotten about the Legend of Zelda? (Score:2, Informative)
Not necessarily a *good* thing... (Score:3, Informative)
Instead of observing the obvious improvements in fluid animation (and gameplay), listen to the audio differences in both before and after overclocking. The original is exactly how I remember SMB3 to sound, while the overclocked version sounds kind of whacked.
To me, the audio from these classic games is JUST AS important as the video, so I won't be overclocking until a better method is found that won't screw up audio.... but I'd imagine the bulk of people who still have *working* NES units, wouldn't want to mess around with their precious vintage systems anyways
Overclocking... cool. (Score:3, Interesting)
NES folks have difficulty replacing processor because the sound unit is integrated to CPU...
...otherwise, we would have already seen some mods that would stick in a 65816 (as with Commodore 64 [cmdrkey.com]) and take the homebrew games to the next level. =)
Yet, it's cool to see someone actually overclocking the thing and seeing what that does to the games! At least that will deal with the slowdown a bit. And, of course, it's at last a chance to see how well Nintendo games were actually coded - the games should work if you make the hardware different, even when the consoles traditionally never have to take hardware differences in account... or even if hardware differences were an issue at all in those days.
Re:What to do with old Nintendos! (Score:2, Insightful)
Blowing is a waste of energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Gah, this old myth.
Again, blowing on the cartridges generally does nothing. You're not getting a bad connection due to an infinitessimally thin layer of dust, unless you've been letting these carts sit around for a decade or more.
The reason NES carts don't work nicely is the poor connector in the console itself, and the fact that using 2 different types of metals in a connection leads to massive corrosion. The way to fix this is to scrub the hell out of the cart connections using a Q-tip soaked in rubbing alcohol.
Why did blowing seem to work back in the day? The corrosion isn't uniform, and odds are the removal and re-insertion of the cartridge not only removed a tiny bit of the corrosion, but also moved it over a tiny amount, thereby establishing a strong connection. Remember having to remove-and-blow 5 or 10 times before it would work? Could THAT much dust have accumulated?
Trust me, I've spent the past 5 years re-conditioning old NES decks and cartridges. Haven't blown on a single one, but short of a dead deck the rubbing alcohol trick has led to every single cart I own working (several hundred and counting).
Parent
Blowing works, but hurts more than it helps (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember having to remove-and-blow 5 or 10 times before it would work? Could THAT much dust have accumulated?
When you blow warm air from your lungs and get enough moisture in there,
Re:Blowing is a waste of energy (Score:3, Informative)
The reason that blowing the carts worked (and still does for the most part) is that you're applying moisture to corroded terminals. Moisture = connectivity. That's why after you blow in a cart and put it in your system, sometimes it works for 5 minutes and then the game starts blinking. The moisture has evaporated from the terminals.
Bad thing about blowing in the carts (the
Re:Blowing is a waste of energy (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to do it all the time. Perfectly safe.
Parent
Re:Blowing is a waste of energy (Score:5, Interesting)
Always worked.
I seriously think most of the corrosion these carts suffered from was caused by excessive humidity due to all the spitting and hot breath. The kids who spit on them all the time were doing it out of habit, not because of a real reason.
Parent
Re:Good (Score:2)
Re:Good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Other Systems (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Other Systems (Score:3, Interesting)
Moll.
Re:Fake Overclocking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pfff, what a lot of work for nothing (Score:2)
Trust me, this guy's true overclock mod looks much much easier. Jamming that CD-ROM drive under the cartrige cover looks tough.
Re:Pfff, what a lot of work for nothing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why not in the first place? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why not in the first place? (Score:3, Insightful)
though, now they have coined up using 'overclock' as a marketing term..
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
All copper lines on a PCB are traces. This includes power and ground lines, excepting large areas of copper, which are usually called planes. Also, there are things called "ground shields", which are actually not connected to ground - they're electrically isolated continuous bits of copper used to provide electromagnetic shielding.
Anyway.
Traces are the copper lines on a PCB - buses are composed of multiple traces carrying a collection of related signals (for example, an address bus is N tra
Re:The main cpu is in the cartridge if I remember (Score:2)
Re:What else can I overclock? (Score:4, Informative)
If you find that your CPU doesn't work at above 6MHz, try swapping it for an NEC V20 or V30 (can't remember offhand which) - this was faster even for a given clock speed, went to around 10MHz, and 8086 compatible into the bargain.
I used to have (probably still do somewhere) a Compaq 286 with a 6MHz 287 fitted instead of the 8MHz part. Worked just fine.
Parent