The Pencil Trick Is Annoying!


Shadow of Chaos

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Well, i successfully managed to get the pencil trick working, i managed to get it stable 166mhz in Dr md which i couldnt do before as it would crash shortly, i tried higher.. 172, but i got a black screen. So i tried more graphite on the resistor and managed to surpass 172 and get up to 200Mhz (Which i was surprised about..) and i actually think it was stable, i let Sonic 3 run for about 20 mins or so and i stopped it.. so i assume it was stable at that speed.

The only problem is, i got greedy and tried higher.. 204mhz didnt last long and crashed, so i added yet more graphite and my GP Wouldnt start.. at all, so i took a little off, this time the gp came on but restarted when i tried to load a program.. so this time i took alot of it off, added a bit more and now i cant pass 166Mhz.. i tried 172 and the damn thing kept giving black screens as soon as i applied that clock speed.. I tried applying, taking off.. constantly for around 30 mins with no luck at passing that mark..

I have no idea how i attained 200Mhz but would like to get it back, or get even more if possible :rolleyes: .. every Megadrive game that i played had no slowdown, it was completely smooth when running sonic with fast movements..

I was NOT using a meter to check the voltage, so someone just give me some advice if possible..

cheers
 
That`s just plain your fault :p why didn`t you stick with 200 MHz? :rolleyes:

...same thing happened to me :D
 
I just gave it another go, used the rubber on the end of the pencil and took as much graphite off as possible :lol: ..

With trial and error.. this is my result so far:

I ran DR MD and loaded up SOR 3, i assume it doesnt matter which game you load up as they all will have just as much strain on the CPU as any other i guess.

Creeped past 200Mhz, got to 220.. i was very surprised my GP was even running at this mark, 224Mhz right now.. been running for 5 Mins!.. I will leave it run at least another 10 mins then try higher, i am very greedy when it comes to overclocking B) This pencil trick is really good, my GP always crashed at anything above 150Mhz in the past.

The only problem is, i managed to pull the soldered wire off the connector to my front light switch yesterday :p guess ill try soldering it back later when ive finished fiddling around
 
The pencil trick may five yo good overclocking results, but it is definitely not very reliable, it may lead to very weird behaviour of the hardware, better do a professional voltagemod.
 
I was one of the first to try this. First time I tryed I got 180mhz stable. I havnt messed with it since and I have played for hours and hours... Im happy with that and I guess its pretty safe or it would have died by now... I think the morrell of the story is don't be too greedy of you will be taking pencil off and putting it back on forever!
 
220 mhz stable, 240 mhz usually

thats plenty fast enough for me, specially since im selling it when either
1) Xbox360 comes out
2) PSP gets some good emulators

~Octavious
 
Octavious posted on May 27 2005 at 02:29 PM said:
220 mhz stable, 240 mhz usually

thats plenty fast enough for me, specially since im selling it when either
1) Xbox360 comes out
2) PSP gets some good emulators

~Octavious

The GP32 is much more special than either of those machines. I can't believe you would sell your GP for that soulless junk.
 
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You can get SMC cards on price watch or EBay for $20.00 and excuse but EBay has real merchants!!! People who don't like EBay either are ignorant or got screwed over...

EDIT: Sorry I had a several windows open by mistake in regards to different posts and looks like this got posted here by mistake...

Here is the from where this post goes looks like I posted it here to by mistake:

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=19116
 
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Don`t be greedy when using the pencil trick, I was the first one to perform the "trick" after it was posted here and had some trouble getting it stable. I managed to get it to 224mhz but it would suffer from wobbly graphics and lines across the display every now a then.l I clean off all the graphite of and decided to try again, This time i can manage 204mhz indefinitely, but don`t go above 200mhz.

This was over a month ago and never had any problems.

Btw: My GP`s core voltage is 2.1 volts.

Trooper
 
tattooman posted on May 27 2005 at 09:19 PM said:
You can get SMC cards on price watch or EBay for $20.00 and excuse but EBay has real merchants!!! People who don't like EBay either are ignorant or got screwed over...
Who mentioned ebay or SMC cards?
 
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Octavious posted on May 27 2005 at 02:29 PM said:
220 mhz stable, 240 mhz usually

thats plenty fast enough for me, specially since im selling it when either
1) Xbox360 comes out
2) PSP gets some good emulators

~Octavious

The PSP aitn duin bad for the time its been out, already got Sega / gamegear emulator, NES emulator, GameBoy Emulator and a SNES emulator.



its just really anoying how hombrew only works on 1.0FW version psp's...

im really regreting duing the updates now :(
 
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Yep.. i got greedy, i had to reapply the damn graphite at least 4 times to be able to reach 220Mhz again, now i cant get 224 Stable... Im going to have to use a voltage meter, can anyone direct me on where to do it? :huh:

Wonder why the DRMD has 256Mhz max.. good if could get stable at that speed ;)

All we need now is a complete GBA emulator :p
 
Shadow of Chaos posted on May 27 2005 at 09:26 AM said:
I ran DR MD and loaded up SOR 3, i assume it doesnt matter which game you load up as they all will have just as much strain on the CPU as any other i guess.



BZZZZZ wrong! I experimented like crazy when I was messing with the pencil mod and I found that different games will DEFINATELY behave differently with this mod! For instance, at many stages of my trial and error-ing to get this mod working, I would test, say, Castlevania Bloodlines, and it would run seemingly indefinately w/o problems, but then w/o changing anything I'd load up Sonic 2 and within 3 mins it would lock up. I repeated this SEVERAL times.

I would suggest testing with Sonic 2 as it seems to be the game that, for me at least, was the 'true' test of the mod to see if it was remaining stable or not. But who knows there may be other games that are even harder on this mod I dunno.

And yeah, your results are very typical of this mod... it's VERY sensitive to even very small changes in the amount of graphite you apply... try to make only very small changes in the amount of graphite at any one time. It's a pain in the ass, trial and error, and unless you get lucky will probably take quite a bit of time to get just right :)

One suggestion, you may not want to have it where it will overclock 200+ Mhz, as this means your core voltage is probably exceeding the maximum recommended safe limit and may be causing excess wear on your CPU leading to an early failure. I aimed for a stable 180-190mhz but to where it still locked up at anything above 192, which I BELIEVE was a safe voltage but... who knows w/o testing with a voltmeter?
 
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mechanori posted on May 27 2005 at 08:07 PM said:
Octavious posted on May 27 2005 at 02:29 PM said:
220 mhz stable, 240 mhz usually

thats plenty fast enough for me, specially since im selling it when either
1) Xbox360 comes out
2) PSP gets some good emulators

~Octavious

The GP32 is much more special than either of those machines. I can't believe you would sell your GP for that soulless junk.

i agreee 100% with that....... GP rulEZ
 
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bast525 posted on May 28 2005 at 06:18 AM said:
One suggestion, you may not want to have it where it will overclock 200+ Mhz, as this means your core voltage is probably exceeding the maximum recommended safe limit and may be causing excess wear on your CPU leading to an early failure. I aimed for a stable 180-190mhz but to where it still locked up at anything above 192, which I BELIEVE was a safe voltage but... who knows w/o testing with a voltmeter?

bast525 posted on May 15 2005 at 04:45 AM said:
Please don't spread stories about OC'ing killing or even shortening the life of your GP unless you can prove it. It's stuff like this that keeps people from wanting to try new things.


hmmmm... hypocrisy writ large???
 
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