Gp32 Autopsy page

[Steve_L]

Found this while surfing the web.

very intresting if like me you don't have the bottle to open your GP32 up and have a look.

WPKenny’s GP32 Homepage

 

[Shrike]

O_O
scary

 

[slubman]

What's so scarrying opening a GP 32 ?????????????????????

 

[abbibi]

Did you guys notice?! He said there's room inside for a AAA battery. For an SMC, 3.3v + AAA1.5v = 4.8v!!! Probably enough to run a 5v SMC. have an on/off switch for the AAA battery, and a resistor on the power out from the SMC, and you can use 5v 256MB SMCs!!!! (Does my logic sound right?)

 

[seth]

just fried my brain :unsure:

 

[ChriX]

Did you guys notice?! He said there's room inside for a AAA battery. For an SMC, 3.3v + AAA1.5v = 4.8v!!! Probably enough to run a 5v SMC. have an on/off switch for the AAA battery, and a resistor on the power out from the SMC, and you can use 5v 256MB SMCs!!!! (Does my logic sound right?)

It sounds good, but is it really that simple?

 

[abbibi]

I have no idea. I'm going on vacation soon for the whole month of June, and I need my GP32 in perfect condition for my flights . If someone could check the possibility of this, I would be more than happy to tackle it when I get back.

 

[ZiUL]

As far I remember the 5v smc card is a little diff from the 3v... the cut corner is in the other side... so it will not fit in the soquet...

 

[Tobriand]

Actually, it will fit in the socket I suspect... I've ripped mine to pieces too a couple of times. What you might have problems with, though, would be if the extra voltage accidentally fried the LCD - after all, other threads have suggested that sticking a resistor between the LCD and the chip might let us OC it beyond the recognised safety limit of 132MHz; which reduces resistance, which means a 4.8v unit is going to fry very fast, since that's somewhat more extra voltage than simply going 30MHz over the limit's going to provide.

Or am I thinking of current? I never was amazing at physics... V=IR; R rises slightly at higher clockspeeds from temp, methinks, but what happens to the other two - 2.6/3 Volts as per normal (depending if using rechargeables or normal bats)? In which case curent is our enemy so we might be OK... except even if V rises and its current that's the problem, I also rises as a result (unless we increase R too).

Sorry about spouting yr 7 gibberish; as I said, I was never very good with physics...

 

[jlebrech]

A resistor should do it, but expect the screen to be really dark when running at normal speeds unless you have a variable resistor, which could be dangerous if you forget tune it every time.

One thing you could do is have some sort of transistor which could be wired to a pin on the ext port which could be first activated by a overclocked game before turning the mhz up

 

[abbibi]

What I meant was increasing the voltage to 5v just for the card, and then decreasing it back to 3v. It would increase the drain on the batteries, but we'd get to use those 256mb cards... I don't know, I'm still on vacation...

 

[abbibi]

What I meant was increasing the voltage to 5v just for the card, and then decreasing it back to 3v. It would increase the drain on the batteries, but we'd get to use those 256mb cards... I don't know, I'm still on vacation...

 

[rcx21000]

A resistor should do it, but expect the screen to be really dark when running at normal speeds unless you have a variable resistor, which could be dangerous if you forget tune it every time.

One thing you could do is have some sort of transistor which could be wired to a pin on the ext port which could be first activated by a overclocked game before turning the mhz up

Isn't there such thing as a voltage detector? Just stick it to a CPU->LCD conncetor and then stick the 'readout cable' to electrical variable resistors (such thing?) so when the voltage gets higher, more currnent flows into the var transistors and more current gets blocked (or whatever resistors do to it) and it automaticially adjusts!! (Is this possible?) :unsure:

 

[Shrike]

try it

 

[dad]

sad news people. Think hard, if the SMC uses 5v then it puts out 5v logic, this may damage the GP32. there are 3v to 5v converter chip which would be better than another battery.

 

[bruce leeroy]

If you're going to add a BOOST CONVERTER (steps up voltage) and a LOGIC LEVEL CONVERTER (converts data & address signals to the proper voltage) why not just convert the WHOLE THING to support COMPACT FLASH cards which offer up to 3 GBytes of data?

 

[Dozer]

Good point, duno if the interface is the similar for smc docks and compact flash

 

[Chip]

SMC is a serial interface, CF is parallel. You'd need a UART to go from one to the other.

I've often wondered why the GP32 didn't use CF instead of SMC (apearantly there's a prototype that does). Someone posted elsewhere on this board that CF had a slower transfer speed. I never bothered to verify this, but is seems like it should be the other way around.

 

[kraahl]

The ARM natively supports the SMC, I remember reading that somewhere.