- Howwy wrote:
- The problem is nobody knows the pinout for this version it uses a different chip which is completely unknown at this time. So no one knows how to wire the oscillator in. Hence why literally everyone but you says to just put the maskrom onto a board that we do know how to overclock.
The clock trace that you're hijacking connects to the
cartridge connector. The clock signal going into the mario chip is fed from the
cartridge connector. Read the pinout of the
cartridge connector to find the trace physically.
I never found the pinout of the mario chip or superfx chip(s) to do this mod, never have, never will, because you don't need to. I just spent the time reading to learn that the mario chip is fed its clock signal from the cartridge connector. From this knowledge I found the trace connecting to the cartridge connector after a quick google of the snes cartridge pinout. In the case of starfox, the clock trace connects straight from the cartridge connector to the mario chip which makes it super easy to figure out. The later superfx chips are fed a clock signal from an on board clock circuit. At the time the components of the on board clock circuit were all new and unknown to me. I read the part numbers on these parts and googled them to get a good enough understanding of what they do. It was still very obvious which trace was connecting this clock circuit to the superfx chip. The reason why I learned a little about the components of the on board clock circuit was just so I could identify that circuit I was looking at was indeed generating the clock signal and then it was just as easy as hijacking the trace connecting that circuit to the superfx chip.
When I first did this mod I did googling on how the superfx / mario chip is fed a clock signal. I read (no beginner friendly picture guide, just text oh noes) that the mario chip was fed its clock signal from the system cartridge connector. I googled the pinout of the cartridge connector and from there I was able to find the trace feeding the mario chip its clock signal. The trace even had this convenient series inductor I could remove so I didn't need to do any trace cutting.
The pinout of the snes
cartridge connector is very well known and that's all you need to figure out where your clock trace is on this cartridge. On the original starfox cartridge the clock signal pin of the cartridge connector is only connected to the mario chip. All you're doing is disconnecting that trace from the cartridge connector and feeding it a new faster clock signal from a four pin oscillator.
I figured this all out before any such guide existed just by taking the time to read about it and gain enough understanding of how it works to figure it out on my own. I didn't know what a four pin oscillator was so I googled it and read about it until I understood well enough what it does to figure out what it does and figure out the wiring. A four pin oscillator is just a self contained clock signal generating circuit. You feed the oscillator 5v power, ground, and connect the clock output pin to the device you want to feed that clock signal into which in this case is your mario / superfx chip. The fourth pin of an oscillator is unused. If you want to know how to wire one up and know which pin is which, google it, that's what I did.
Quite often to do these things you need to spend a certain amount of time doing research to gain enough knowledge to understand and know what you're doing and why it works. The whole reason why I'm against making these beginner friendly picture-y mod guide-o-s is because it encourages people to make things with zero understanding of how or why the circuit even works. Once you spend the time doing the research you don't even need a guide to figure out how to make this work, you can just make your own guide based on knowledge you've gained for yourself that already exists on the internet.
People need to break the bad habit of following these hand-holding guides and need to get into the habit of researching these circuits to a high enough level that you understand what's going on well enough to change it to your liking. This is my approach to any new idea. I research all the hardware / software components and the theory of what's going on until I gain a good enough level of understanding to be able to change it to what I want it to do. This approach can be applied to anything really, and is the only way people should be doing this sort of work.
"Everyone but me" obviously doesn't understand how this modification even works, which is why they're not qualified to be telling someone what to do. The problem with the internet is everyone likes to pretend he / she is an expert when really most of them don't even know how something even works or why it works. They only know how to follow the paint-by-numbers guides which cater to people who really aren't qualified enough to be doing this. All these people know how to do is regurgitate information that other people gave them without even taking the time to understand that information.
It was wise of you to come to me for advice, don't listen to stupid people who tell you the only way to get this to work is to painfully transplant your maskrom onto a different pcb. All you need to do is feed a four pin oscillator power and ground and feed its clock output into the mario chip clock trace which is conveniently connected to the cartridge connector clock signal pin making it super easy to find. Had I known you had some random undocumented pcb type I wouldn't have sent you to the beginner squad. Once you get this mod working on your pcb type you can blow their simple minds with your ability to read stuff and gain some actual understanding.
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