Overclocking your GBA

[windwaker]

i might have them on hand.do you know what goes through an oscillator or what im varying to change the speed in otherwords

[Master Kirby]

FYI
Do not use a wire to short out any of the capacitors near the crystal.
I was shorting out some of the components in my GBC to see if it would affect the speed, and when I shorted out a capacitor it blew a fuse. If I had tested the voltage first, I would have noticed that there were 5 volts across the capacitor. Now I have a wire connecting both contacts of the fuse so the GBC will turn on.

[Kyosho]

For anyone who has done this mod: Does overclocking the GBA like this affect GBO and GBC games played in the system as well?

I'm not familiar with how the backwards compatibility was integrated into the GBA and whether the old hardware was actually included in a separate setup on the board or not (like the PS3 60gb with PS2 chips in it).

[Master Kirby]

Overclocking the GBA affects all games that are played on it. Apparently the oscillator crystal is used to provide the clock pulse to both the GBA and the original GB/GBC circuitry.

The same goes for the DS. If you overclock the DS, it speeds up both GBA games and DS games.

[Kyosho]

You've got the forum set to auto-notify you, don't you?

Thanks, dude.

[gamemasterful]

So I noticed that my gba has the can style crystal already in it, instead of the kds black rectangle crystal. On the top it says D419G3I but in the opposite direction that the kds crystal is written in. Also that smaller chip isn't even near the crystal, just a blank spot. Can this mod still work? I did notice the 419 correlates with the 4.19 on the other chip.

[Master Kirby]

Both the GBA and GBASP use a 4.19 Mhz crystal, so you should be able to perform the mod by using an 8Mhz crystal. Do you have any Photos you could post to show what the crystal looks like, and to give us an idea what you are talking about when you say the smaller chip isn't near the crystal? Most likely, you just have a GBA with a different revision board than I do.

Your ability to perform the overclocking mod would depend on how this crystal connects to the board. Is this a surface mount or a through-hole component? If you can see surface mount contacts on the sides, the same as the black crystal that is on my GBA, then you should be able to connect the wires to it.

[gamemasterful]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v290/ ... CN2463.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Yeah I was mainly just wondering if the revision mattered, and since the numbers/letters were written in the opposite direction, which points to solder to.

[Master Kirby]

I see what you are saying about the other chip being missing. I think that is a voltage regulator, so it is probably in a different location, or replaced with some other components on your board.

It doesn't matter that the text is printed in the other direction on your crystal. An oscillator crystal works the same way, when used in either direction (like a resistor). You should be able to connect wires to the solder contacts the same way I did. The top two on both sides are the same connection, and the bottom two contacts are the same connection. The single connection on each thin end (top and bottom) are just ground connections connecting to the metal shell.

I would recommend soldering to the contacts on the left side so there will be less of a chance that you could accidentally mess up the connection of one of the tiny resistors or capacitors that are close on the right side.

[gamemasterful]

Wonderful. Thanks for your advice MK. Especially around these crazy holidays.

[iamn1ck]

Is there any place I can buy oscillators for cheap and fast shipping. I've looked on Ebay and all of them ship from outside the US.

And what is the max clock on a GBA I've done 12mhz and was wondering if it could go any faster.

[Rokkuman]

Hi, I tried to overclock my DMG with an 8 MHZ crystal, I solder the wire to the older oscillator, but... nothing happens. The Gameboy runs at normal speed. If I put the wires to the original crystal while the console its on, it won't do anything, or it will crash and erase my savegame (I lost my 250 Pokemons in Blue that way)
What do I have to do? I followed every step in this guide....
Hope you can help me!

[Guckymeister]

Any idea if this crystal will work? http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/ECS ... beWS4g0%3d" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[HotDog-Cart]

Thats like 11.5 mhz. Pretty fast.