MY TAKE ON THIS

Man, it was since February 13, 2013 when I got my copy of Starfox 2 and got curious to know if it was possible to make the game run faster. I learned a lot through out the weeks, mainly stuff about Oscillators/crystals, VCC, GND, pin-outs and other things I can't remember at the moment. The mods and testings would have been done MUCH sooner if I wasn't waiting almost 2 weeks every time I bought a different oscillator that carried a different speed signal on eBay, from Hong Kong because I had oscillators that underclocked the game, ones that didn't make the game work at all, ones that started fine at first but started corrupting after a couple of seconds into the game and ones that made little to no difference in speed while playing.

Using the proper Clock Speed:
I can safely say now that your best ones for speed increase (that I know at the moment) are a 26mhz 2-pin crystal or a 27mhz 4-pin crystal oscillators. I tried a 30mhz 4-pin crystal oscillator and while the intro on Starfox 2 ran fine, when I got to actual game play. Everything just glitched the fuck out to where it wasn't playable. A 28MHz well also run fine at first but well freeze around some point in the middle for games like Starfox 2 or Doom.

Here's what I got from Starfox 2 and Stunt Race FX when I used a 30mhz 4-pin crystal oscillator on them.


When I reset-ed both of them, they just wouldn't work, well Starfox 2 only had the music playing but the screen was still black.

SUPER FX CHIP OVERCLOCK USING A 4-PIN CRYSTAL OSCILLATOR & A STUNT RACE FX PCB
Now this mod is pretty straight forward, both really are actually, but the 4-pin oscillator gives you a MUCH greater improvement than using a 2-pin crystal. Also keep in mind, I'm using a Stunt Race FX pcb to overclock both Stunt Race and Starfox 2. Games like Doom or Vortex have different pcbs because a lot of what's in the boards was moved around differently for each game but you're still doing the same type of mod on them.

An important thing to mention is that your 4 pin oscillator needs to be able to run on +5v otherwise you may need to build a voltage divider using some resistors.

Here's a diagram of what you'll be doing.


Here's a close up with steps in color.


Red- Remove this resistor
Black- Solder a wire here for GND
Blue- Cut this trace
Purple- Solder a wire here for Signal
Yellow- Solder a wire here for Vcc

The soldered wires should now be soldered from there other ends to the pins of your 4-pin oscillator that have GND, Vcc & your new Signal.

I actually did mind today and ran like a charm using a 27mhz 4-pin oscillator. I played both Stunt Race and Starfox 2 for over an hour and had no problems whatsoever.



[url]http://i.imgur.com/gspx7Ao.jpg...[/url]
[url]http://i.imgur.com/UktgER3.jpg...[/url]
[url]http://i.imgur.com/b2bK2Gn.jpg...[/url]
I like how it fits inside the cart perfectly.
[url]http://i.imgur.com/6jWUsyt.jpg...[/url]

SUPER FX CHIP OVERCLOCK USING A 2-PIN CRYSTAL OSCILLATOR & ANY SUPER FX PCB
Doing it with this method, you don't get as great results as you get you a 4-pin crystal but it still works.

Just remove the standard ceramic resonator, (should look like a little white or blue box), replace it with your new crystal and add 2x - 18pF capacitors on the back, make sure both legs are solder together in the middle as shown in the pictures below.




Keep in mind that both 24mhz & 26mhz 2-pin crystals well boost the games speed, the 32mhz 2-pin crystal well not make the game run at all and the 30mhz 2-pin crystal well end up under clocking the game instead.

If you have the tools and soldering skills to do this, I recommend it as it is a fun little project to try out.

Have fun!

EDIT for Overclocked DOOM: 01/02/2013
I finally got my hands on a Doom cart, a *mint* CIB Doom cart and went on making a guide on to how to overclock it's PCB since it's different looking than a Stunt Race PCB. Also want to state that this was my first time doing this on a GSU-2 game using a 27mhz 4-pin crystal oscillator and was a full success! I then tried using a 30mhz 4-pin crystal oscillator but just like the other Super FX games I used it on, it got really glitching when it was on actual gameplay.

Just follow the guide below and also notice that the chip where you get your Vcc and Ground is facing the [B][U]opposite direction[/U][/B] in this cart so beware of that.



Here's how it should look once finished.





EDIT for Overclocked Vortex: 05/13/2013

Here's the FINAL guide for overclocking your Super FX games, which is Vortex, I'll be using a 28mhz 4 pin oscillator. The other FX games suck ass like Dirt Trax and others don't really need it like Yoshi's Island and Winter Gold.



What it should look like at the end.



What amazed me about Vortex was that it was actually able to run at 30mhz but froze after 5mins, but the fact that it didn't glitch was what surprised me.

And so this ends my tells about overclocking your super fx games. It's been fun and now I hope the next person who gets interested in this project well find these guides and steps very useful.

EDIT for overclocked Starfox 1: 7/24/13

So you can actually overclock the blob version of Starfox 1 but internally the clock is halved so you're actually running at 22.5MHz but that's still an increase from the standard 21.4MHz speed!

Click the link a side here to view the diagram below more clear. ----> http://i.imgur.com/30RYTN7.jpg...

Now this is my kind of fun! Awesome work, thanks!

Here is a little more info on how to make it run even faster.
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopi...

Lol, that's above my knowledge of this for now. That and I don't own an eprom burner.

We all started somewhere, you will be at this point soon enough. 

Very interesting. I enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for sharing.

How about just overclocking Star Fox 1?

Because Mario Chip

bump for doom

Figure I'd bump this for Vortex which is the last Super FX game that was worth overclocking.

Bump for Starfox 1

I am curious as to how well this worked, specifically for Starfox 1. (What crystal did you use, how much of a performance increase did you notice, etc.)

Year and a half bump, I know, but this is one of the few threads that shows up on Google when searching "mario chip 1 overclock".
If anyone knows what to do here, I purchased a 30 MHz oscillator thinking I would end up with the typical epoxy board in a SFC cart of Starfox. What I ended up with is this:



Tried looking for info for this board type, but this thread is the only real info for Mario Chip 1 overclocking I have been able to find aside from a video using this same board type but offering no info on the actual overclocking method. Does anyone know of info for this type of Super FX/Mario Chip board?

Man I need to start using this place more often.

Twin post and a bump, but so far for the Starfox non-glop PCB, due to an earlier thread on Sega-16 I've worked out that pin 69 on the Mario Chip 1 leads to the resistor in the lower right. I assume the clock from the 30 MHz oscillator is fed into either pin 69 or its output pin on the other side of the chip. Grounding points are available nearby thanks to the exposed grounding pads. Now I have to work out where to get the 5V from on the board and the overclock can be tested.

Hello! New here and I'm sorry if this is a problem, but this is the only place I've seen this talked about at all!

I too was looking at SuperFX overclocking only to find that my good old StarFox is in fact the revised PCB shown above.

Has anyone had any luck working out how to connect a faster oscillator to the revised StarFox board? I see Enig worked out where to connect the signal and ground but not where to connect VCC to actually power the oscillator.

Did the Starfox overclock a few months ago on a 4-blob board and highly recommend it. Also pin 27 on the cart should be VCC, so you can test points for continuity from there.

Captured some overclocked gameplay:

What kind of SNES is that?

It just looks like a Mini with an power LED mod.

OK. I thought they usually put the LED inside the power switch to avoid cutting a hole.
 

You could probably add a heatsink and increase voltage slightly to get a higher overclock speed that doesn't lock-up.

Wow, I can really tell the difference!

Somehow, someday, I'm going to need to do this.