Slashdot Log In
Overclocking the Super Nintendo
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Apr 30, 2006 11:55 AM
from the because-you-can dept.
from the because-you-can dept.
Robert Ivy writes "The Super Nintendo is a tricky piece of hardware, but I have finally managed to overclock it up to 5.1 MHz. At this speed, the sprites scatter across the screen; this is likely a sync issue since the CPU is running so far out of spec. I plan on trying lower speeds soon and I will update the guide on UCM." Thank god we got that out of the way!
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
But does it run Linux!?! (Score:2, Funny)
An A for the effort (Score:5, Insightful)
But if the plan was to get "more" out of your console, I guess it wasn't too bright. Console proggers always relied on the fact that consoles, unlike PCs, were set in stone. You had THAT CPU, THAT GPU, THAT memory and that's something you can rely on. I.e., they didn't do what PC game creators have to do today: Take into account different hardware specs and take care of timing.
More often than not, they used the CPU clock as the timing device (everyone who ever played Wing Commander on a 486 knows the effect you get when you do that on a platform that can very well change the hardware). So if you tweak the CPU, you get a game that runs "too fast".
But little else.
End (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:An A for the effort (Score:5, Informative)
This is known to be useful on the Dreamcast, where it improves emulator performance.
Re:An A for the effort (Score:3, Funny)
Hey, when you've got ten cows in the barn, the day's over and it's time to slow down.
Re:An A for the effort (Score:5, Informative)
Emulation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Emulation (Score:5, Insightful)
From the looks of this mod, it appears as if it would be far easier to see what would happen by modifying the hardware, as opposed to modifying a supposedly cycle-accurate emulator, as the emulator might not be setup for such modification, and it might contain bugs that would lead the experiment to the wrong conclusion.
On a related note, Nestopia [sourceforge.net] is a NES emulator that takes accuracy seriously. It goes beyond being just cycle-accurate, as it goes as far as to emulate the analog video signal generated by the NES's digital-to-analog converter, which turns the NES's frame buffer into a human visible video signal. Hence a side-by-side comparison of a real NES hooked up to the PC via a TV-tuner or video capture card, and the emulator running on the same PC... even a hardcore NES fan will have difficulty telling the difference. Check out a screen capture comparison [xbox-scene.com] of a real NES, Nestopia, and FCE Ultra.
Test it out for yourself. Follow that last link and try to determine which screenshot is a real NES and which screenshot is Nestopia. Meanwhile, the screenshot of FCE Ultra sticks out like a sore thumb, even though it is comparable to what many consider to be highly accurate console emulation.
Re:Emulation (Score:4, Informative)
As far as accuracy goes, the C64 emulator Hoxs64 [btinternet.com] is pretty damn accurate, going so far as to emulate analog stuff in the disk drive. Wow.
All right! (Score:3, Funny)
Whaddaya mean "what purpose"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why?? WHY?? Because he's a GEEK, Dammit! Just because it doesn't have a buzzword associated with it, or because it's not to do with google, or didn't come out in the last 15 minutes, doesn't mean it's not cool.
*wanders off mumbling about these younguns..*
Re:Whaddaya mean "what purpose"? (Score:3, Insightful)
A True Geek would've waited till he had a fully functional overclocked SNES.
And would've benched his improved SNES against a regular one, too.
Re:Whaddaya mean "what purpose"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not agreed. I don't know why so many replies have been modded toll. 'Why' is a completely justified question because the hack is trivial (you only have to know the pinout of the processor), not particularly elegant and doesn't serve an obvious goal. It is an insult to real hacks, be them in software (e.g. trying to run Linux on everything) or hardware (e.g. making a super high-res camera of a flatbed scanner) that anything anyone does is automatically wonderful.
*wanders off mumbling about these younguns..*
Can't believe an old-schooler would be impressed with this.
Ps: don't want to bash this mod, but take it for what it is, a simple mod.
Secret of Mana (Score:5, Interesting)
This may actually be useful! There are a number of games, among them that holy-of-holies, The Secret of Mana, that during very busy scenes with all three characters and a number of enemies, will experience slow-down and flickered sprites as an error. Does a sped-up CPU do anything at all to remedy this?
Once he's got it so it's only sped (and not fucked) up, I'd love to find out if that would help prevent those slow-downs
I'll bet nobody was expecting an actual response to this story, heh
Re:Secret of Mana (Score:3, Informative)
Headline should read... (Score:4, Insightful)
Next: Hot-Rodding Your 1899 Stanley Steamer! (Score:5, Funny)
Next up: Adding neon to your Whitney Cotton Gin.
Amusing but impractical (Score:4, Insightful)
for (int i = 0; i < SOME_BIG_NUMBER; i++) { int fakeval = 0; }
In fact, I don't know how many consoles, especially old consoles, would even have a system timer, let alone one (a) sufficiently high resolution and (b) with low enough access costs to make it practical to use for game timings.
Anybody remember the "turbo" button - ie the "underclock my PC when this is off" button? That was necessary for older games written for the 80386 that assumed a small range of clock frequencies and did delays that way. You'll run into the same issue with this console - it's going to be like turning "turbo" on for an old game. Well, probably.
Re:Amusing but impractical (Score:4, Interesting)
Experienced hacker? (Score:3, Interesting)
- apparently the system does not run very stable
- he is rather desperate to get an oscillator in between 35 and 25 MHz. You can just _buy_ these things in most electronics part shops and I can think of at least four people including myself who have a high chance of having one in their garbage collection.
On top of this it would surprise me if he was a very experienced electronics hacker as those would never punt ground high and power low in circuit (of course I don't know him).
Kudos to the guy, but get real people: he changed an oscillator. That's it.
Why is this so silly? (Score:4, Insightful)
When I did a project well I wanted to tell others and show them, because at my level of skill it was cutting edge cool, for me. To all those that ask "why do his to a SNES?," I say this. There is no crime here, this may be one of the few simple projects that could have mass appeal to a certain subset of the slashdot crowd. Heck, thinking back, I wish I had tried doing something this cool as an undergrad. Keep up the good work.
Re:Just imagine (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Great Job! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Don't know why I'm commenting really (Score:5, Interesting)
Wrong, and dead-on. The SNES was woefully underpowered next to the Genesis, TurboGrafx, Jaguar, etc. That Nintendo made intelligent design decisions to make games playable on the SNES, and leveraged their success with the 8-bit NES to lure in players and developers to begin with, made it a sweet gaming platform.
What Nintendo has always understood (Virtual Boy aside for a moment) is that the gameplay is really the most important element. That's why experiments like the DS worked. That's why the GameCube was routinely profitable, even though it was an also-ran in the marketplace.
What? (Score:3, Informative)
Anyway you can't update the sprite data on the SNES during h-blank reliably because the PPU pre-fetches sprite data. Also the sprite memory address selector is invalidated outside V-Blank so you can't write to the sprite