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Nintendo NES Overclocking Guide
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
Does it run Linux? :D
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
I overclocked the NES to about 300MHz once. It was easy. First, I took the NES case itself and opened it up, revealing the delicate insides. Using a small screwdriver, I removed the mainboard and switches and power supply from the plastic case. Then I threw that shit away. I put in a small motherboard with a 266MHz Intel, hooked up a keyboard and mouse and monitor, and small HD. Downloaded an emulator. Used some fancy soldering to hook the NES controller up to the parallel port. Boom, there you go.
Think carefully before overclocking your NES. This procedure will most likely void the warranty.
That's pretty impressive - more than double clock speed increase.
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
which explains why you went up to 4.2mhz.....
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Ahh, back when all you had to worry about was dust. We've come so far. Now all we have to worry about are tiny scratches ruining your investment.
This space for rent...
I'm curious, the article summary ( or the webpage, I can't remember ) mentions that now all of your games will run smoothly. I don't remember any games not being very smooth, but then, I was a small child at the time.
What are some games that could stand to be played on an overclocked NES?
What if the entire Universe were a chrooted environment with everything symlinked from the host?
then we water-cool our coffeemakers...
You never know...Mega Man fans would love this. There were so many parts that dropped to 30 fps because of too much going on. Now if they could only deal with the 8 sprites per scanline limit to eliminate flicker (i.e the score counter in Jackal)
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
you no longer have to blow on the cartridges to get them to work
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).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
"The games do not run faster than they should"
So what's the point in overclocking it? Faster load times?
You weren't evil, you were just being an obnoxious little git.
...there would be some very significant side effects to such modifications:
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.
* Q
P.S. If you don't get this note, let me know and I'll write you another.
Buy some decent PC, download Snes9x, quickly peruse the source files to find the sync code and screw it up, compile, run and watch Mario jump through all the screens at mach 3.
How's that for overclocking uh? And if you're desperate to impress your friends (no doubt all over 35), buy one of these micro-mobos and stick it in a NES box as a clever disguise.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
If some more systems are donated, absolutely. :) My next candidates are the Sega Master System, Saturn, maybe the Game Gear too. Also the Sega Nomad / Mega Jet if I can get my hands on one. *hint hint*.
The audio hardware in the NES is partially included into the CPU. Raising its clock then, raises the audio hardware's clock and shifts up the pitch. Were I going to try and make a hoax I'd at least lock down the pitch when speeding up video, wouldn't I? ;)
Make no mistake, it's overclocked.
Why didn't Nintendo overclock this way in the first place? If there allegedly isn't any problems with overclocking it now with heat buildup and all, why not? They could have boasted they have a faster system than even Sega with thier "blast processing" Sonic the Hedgehog mascot thingamagig. I mean geez, c'mon!
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Can I somehow overclock the clock in my office, so I can go home early?
By reading all those overclocking articles on slashdot, I think clock is the only remaining thing to be overclock.
Now, please do not come back to me saying that overclocking the internal clock is the first step to done before overcloking anything.
The biggest problem I experienced was the flickering of the graphics when the screen became overcrowded.
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...
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
You call the lines on the board a trace. Is it correct to also call that a bus, like what you call those traces on a PC's motherboard?
Wow, way to be obnoxious. No one's making you download anything. Quit whining.
The SNES had 'load time' disguised with very long credits due to its absurdly slow 8-bit bus and 16-bit chips, also its need to drop CPU clock when it read from ROM (the cartridge). But aside from that, yes, load time is almost purely a CD-ROM thing in game consoles.
Go and download the Mario Brothers 3 vid from the site and watch the count down clock. Not only does he double the clock speed on the motherboard, he also cuts the time in half that one is able to beat a level!
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
'Truth' is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it...
So now the question is... can we fool the box's timer into running at a faster sync rate? ie make a 60fps game refresh at 80 or 90? Anyone know if (modern) tv's can even handle this kind of signal without crapping themselves?
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...
Do not confuse "Freedom of Choice" with "Free Will".
I have a little experience with the NES and emulation ;)
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.
Slashdot has gotten really slopppy. Wasn't this story supposed to be posted 15 years ago?
That's pretty off, sorry. The CPU is in the main unit. Putting that in the cartridge would be insane and make each cartridge cost massive amounts of money. The logistics would also be bizarre. As for the SNES, they put very little raw processing power in the machine (it was horribly weak, a hacking of the NES hardware really) and the games were enhanced by chips like SuperFX in the cartridges, which drove their price UP.
Nope, CPU was in the main system. A few games (SNES, at least) had coprocessors inside of the cartridge; I recall Star Fox being one of them. There might have been coprocessored NES games, but I'm not certain.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
As long as you're here, I have to ask - are those gigantic image watermarks in the center of your images really, really necessary?
Blowing DID help get problem carts to load, but only if you blew warm air. The moisture from your breath was often enough to give those carts and bad connectors the extra connection they needed to load. The problem with this method is that the same moisture that helped the cart load further corroded the contacts over time.
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, you never have to blow more than once. My friends always wondered why they could blow a dozen times in a cart and it still not work, and I was able to do it the first time - everytime.
Not that I suggest anyone do this on a regular basis. The alcohol/q-tip method is the correct one, as the parent pointed out. Someone else asked if this is really safe when the carts and manuals specificaly say not to use alcohol to clean carts. Well, I learned this method by calling Nintendo customer support in the 80s. They said to mix a half part water with a half part alcohol, but that got to be too big a hassle for me. I've cleaned hundreds of carts (and other electronics) with straight rubbing alcohol for years. Works like a charm.
That was probably it.
Even though I was young, I knew it made more since to put the main processor in the system.
Donkey Kong 3d and Doom for SNES did this. I remembered the nintendo power article when I was curious as to how they got the game to run several years later.
http://saveie6.com/
In my experience, loading program/data to the SPC-700 chip can be pretty slow. And all the RAM in the system allows for more compression, so more time for unpacking..
Other than that, SNES loading times should theoritically be shorter than on NES (if the game was coded similarly).
I'm surprised there wasn't a Zelda demo on the site. Whenever there was a room of those Jumping guys that turned into bats when you stab them, the system would lag like hell if you made too many bats. Also if I remember correctly, those pancake guys (?) that ate your shields never did much for the framerate either. ...Finally, a better solution to killing those guys than the Magic Sword
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
With the Master System, Game Gear and Nomad, would it not be easier, as they use stock CPUs, to simply upgrade the CPUs? I think the Nomad is a Genesis derivative, right? and I think 68000 and Z80 CPUs twice as fast as the Genesis' 68000 and Z80 exist...
Moll.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
(this makes me wonder why 3d PC games
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 up (as the drawing limits of the GPU are rarely exceeded or even met).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
NES carts used special ASICs so the NES could address more memory, and added various other features.
The first NES carts just had 2 ROMs and the 'lockout chip' (which actually is a little CPU, running in sync with the other lockout chip in the system to thwart unlicensed game publishers).
What about a 2600 overclocking mod? Pac Man, MS Pac Man would be so much better then you couldn't run through the ghosts to cheat.
Rusty,
I'm not trying to contradict you or be a smartass.
Ah, the good old days. How glad I am that I will never, ever have to live through them again.
Today is the good old days for tomorrow. Kinda sucks to think of all our current cool shit in that context, but back when it was the good old days, we thought our cool shit was as cool as we now think of our cool shit.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Come to think about it, you probably didn't mean the jump from 60 FPS to 2 FPS but the game running on at the same speed. That's because of time dependant physics as opposed to frame dependant which allows the games to run on varying framerates without a difference in speed. A NES game running at 200FPS would be unplayable, a modern game at 200FPS is merely more fluid. This kind of behaviour is necessary with 3d games as framerates tend to be less stable with 3d grapics (and varying amounts of free ressources).
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
When we were kids and didn't know better, we thought the slowdown was a special effect in the game.
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Since console CPUs all run at the same speed, the games make no effort to have consistent timing. Thus, under load (which is functionally the same as the CPU slowing down) the gameplay itself slows down. PC games need to run at the same speed regardless of CPU speed and framerate. As the framerate drops, the visual difference between frames becomes greater, which exaggerates this so-called "slideshow."
As it happens, some PC games have poor or no timing code. Example: Parts of FFVII for PC are unplayable on modern PCs (ie. motorcycle chase.) Also, Need for Speed: Underground speeds up annoyingly when there isn't much action. To me, that is unacceptable for a modern game. Then again, I don't have a wing on my '86 Dodge Stratus, so I didn't really play it much.
"[A] high IQ is like a Jeep; you will still get stuck, just farther from help!" --Just d' FAQs, c.g.a
Yes, I think they got them up to 12mhz or so. The problem was not really an issue of the proc so much as an issue of the ISA bus timing.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
If you want to go that route, there were variants of the 6502 CPU (the one used for 8-bit nintendo, yes) that are clockable at least to 20MHz. Part of what makes this interesting (at least to a twisted soul such as myself) is that he didn't replace the CPU.
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
SMB, the game I keep going back to again and again and again after more than... 16? years, sometimes slows down when there are a lot of things happening on the screens, like on the "open" levels such as 1-3.
This would explain why i could leave it on for a couple week straight and not have a complete melt down. It way under clocked.
I once read that the NES contains a Commodore 64 CPU (or something like that). That is why some other company made a NES clone that used the same cartridges.
Yep, DKC did it, as did (I believe) Super Mario Kart. Basically, any game that emulators used to have lots of trouble with, you can bet it might use a coprocessor of some variety, whether it be 3D (SuperFX) or even just something like sound, which was (I think) the issue with SMK.
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Mod me down, you fucking twits. Go ahead. I dare you.
(I read with sigs off.)
Yes. There used to be PC clones that had a "turbo" switch on - that changed the CPU clock from whatever they were normally clocked at to 4.77MHz so that software that required precise timing loops would work correctly (step forward Sopwith...) on newer machines.
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.
This guy "reclocked" it.
1. Disconnect CPU clock line from current clock.
2. Install faster oscillator.
3. Connect CPU clock line to new oscillator.
Why has this taken 15 years? And why is this a "perfected" method?
phozz
How about overclocking this NES baby with Kyrotech! Maybe then we will have enough performance to run Linux on it.
And, the real question of the day is... "WHY?"
The "jumpy guys" are called Vires.
The "bats" are called Keese.
And the "pancake guys" are called like-likes.
Working from memory so spelling may be off a bit.
XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
Yeah, Donkey Kong Country doesn't have anything extra in terms of processing. And as for Mario Kart, it didn't have extra processors either. It just used the snes's built in mode 7. If Mario Kart had issues being emulated, it's probably because they never got around to emulating mode 7 in whatever particular emulator has the problems.
*(this makes me wonder why 3d PC games
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.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Not exactly, but close, the NES CPU is a 6502 compatible type CPU, I guess its the 6527 or 6528, all of them are close relatives, the commodore 64 used a 6502, the same as the apple II, and nintendo used a binary compatible one the 6527, difference is the sound registers or SAPU ,some registers in the 6527 that took charge of making sounds, by the way commodore 64 used a separate cpu for sound, the 6508 SID = sound interface device, a superior sound making method, and still a cult soundchip in europe, dont believe me? search SID chip in google and youll see...
If you have an old Game Genie, you'll never have to blow on carts again. The connectors in the Genie are of high quality. I use mine on previously unplayable carts and they work great. Just bypass the Game Genie code-entry screen, and you're ready to go!
is this same thing for Nintendo 64. Perfect Dark with 4 players and 8 bots at 60 FPS would be a dream come true!
Slashdot wasn't around in the late 80's
on my dreamcast. NesterDC can process 1024 roms on a cd, and apply game genie codes and do save and load game states...
~~ Please keep your arms, legs, and outright stupidity inside the ride at all times. Thank You ~~
Wow, what a great addition to my collection of my nes mods. Faster cpu, green led, black paint, no lockout, TAKE THAT XBOX(2?)! ninja gaiden runs faster :)
Really though, NES is a kickass system, which I can still turn to for fun times, gj nintendo
thanks a lot for correcting me...
any other info in my reply inaccurate?
thanks in advance
Forgive me for linking to the file directly, but here's a direct link to a demonstration video showing the overclocking differences in Super Mario Bros. 3.
;-)
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
Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths....
The C64 did use a 6510, but it doesn't have any extra opcodes. What it does have over the 6502 is an 8 bit io port (but only 6 bits of it is availible from the outside, they ran out of pins on the 40 pin chip package). This io port is mapped to memory adress $0000 and $0001.
Has anyone duplicated this after reading? Just wondering. Instead of praising / dissing the article, it would be nice if someone actually used the information. Maybe provide some new information for those that are interested, like testing new games (Zelda?).
Granted this is not a very useful mod today, but who cares? If it doesn't do it for you, move along, nothing here to see. For those of us that do dig it, it's a great lil' holiday read.
Must-not-watch TV!
.... the terrorists will have already won?
I assume this is the same problem suffered by "solitaire" on Windows where the victory animation zips by at an absurd rate on any non-ancient computer.
Argh. What's the point? A television screen in the USA is 15hz, but the signal is interlaced for a total perception of 30fps.
That's right, your TV can only do 30fps out-of-the-box. If you send it a signal from a unit outputting a 60fps signal, you're just throwing bits to the wind.
This is the sort of thing that drives me nuts. My monitor runs at 85hz, any framerate over 85fps is wasted CPU/GPU cycles. LCD monitors run at 60hz, for the most part.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
The version in Windows XP (and 2000?) appears to have had that fixed, as well as having those awful new card backs, the ending animation now runs at a sane speed.
10 PRINT "LOOK AROUND YOU ";
20 GOTO 10
All the timing loops were roughly 25% faster, making typing a bitch.
It's just the NES - Nintendo Entertainment System. The Nintendo Nintendo Entertainment System? Get a clue people.
"There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter," Jeeves, (Jeeves and the Impending Doom)
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) 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.
Are there any resources for overclocking other game systems (ie. famicom, sega genesis, SNES)? And what would be some real, practical ways that these systems could be put to use for?
Almost everyones got one in barely-working condition...! because you can beat the record time for completing the game! duh!! BTW--can I overclock my 2XL *hee*
NECV20 is 8088 - 8-bit bus interface
NECV30 is 8086 - 16-bit bus interface
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Since I've had people steal my work, I don't deem it excessive.
Aww, You're just mad I didn't invite you on TechTV, Seth. Thanks for stealing my Dreamcast, that was really awesome.