A really crazy idea

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

We all know how annoyingly slow the Actions chipsets are.

While taking my player apart to fix the radio, i noticed a 24MHz crystal on the main board, and another one operating at an unknown frequency (not noted) on the FM board.

Now this crazy idea came up in my head. What if we'd replace the 24MHz crystal, which is obviously regulating the clocks of the CPU, with a crystal running at a higher frequency, say, 27MHz?

I'm really curious of how the device would react. Would it run faster, but play music at a faster tempo rate as well, would it have problems powering up or flash corruption issues, or would we feel that all familiar smell along with a nice smoke show?

If you have a player that you no longer need, consider trying to change the CPU crystal. I might just try that on mine if i find a suitable crystal... :lol:

[lattesurf]

i reckon that the player would go all weird and do funny stuffs, not very likely that it would smoke.
Probably some or most of the functions could not work, as the timing would all be out.
Nice suggestion though, i might try it on my old clone..

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Well, i just tried it on mine. I took a 32.768MHz crystal from an old serial mouse, and the result was: It didn't work. The player just didn't do anything. Then i tried one from an old electronic watch, dunno what frequency it had, but surely lower than 24MHz. It didn't work with that either.

Strangely enough, the watch worked with the 24MHz crystal from the player, but i didn't really keep it running to see how much would the time be off.

So in the end i called it quits for now and installed the 24MHz crystal back into the player, running happily again. I think i need a crystal with a very close operating frequency to the original one, say, a 24.576MHz one from an old TV game or something. Now i know for sure that installing a crystal with a very different frequency won't harm the player, just that it won't turn on anymore till the original one is back in place.

I'll see what else i can dig up and report the results. :P

But feel free to try it yourself in the meantime.

[alex2pb]

Hehe this would be cool to try. But as far as I know, that crystal only makes the clock function normally. You can't overclock the CPU because the real oscillator is inside the chip itself. So even if it would work, it would just make the clock work faster .

[NOLA MPx Fan]

Your results confirm what I was thinking: you can change that one clock, but nothing will be in sync after that. You'd need to find a crystal that was divisible into all the components (CPU, memory, LCD, etc.), then find a way to set the multiplier on each component.

For the time investment, you could just get a rock chip player and be done with it ;-)

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Well, i still think that's the main clock regulation crystal though... Coz they're too cheap to have it built in the chip itself. :lol:

I'm still gonna try a very close one and see what happens... If only the clock will go crazy, then i'll believe you.

Anyway, thanks for the input, and maybe we could have some more people trying this?

[NOLA MPx Fan]

ummm....ok.

But the CPU and at least the memory have clocks. That's why you can't take a cheap bit of old 66MHz RAM and plug it into your new core 2Duo computer and expect it to work.

Even when overclocking a PC there are settings that work and settings that don't. The ones that are stable occur when the new speed is divisible into all the native component speeds. The ones that don't are a result of mismatches where one component is talking faster than the other.

Any CPU will have a speed at which it runs. Same with memory. It is far more likely that the crystal you are futzing with is the one that controls overall system speed. In that case, if you jack it up to 32.whatever, the other components are not able to recognize the signals.

You need to check the native speed of all the components to determine what speed the components can operate at, then find a common setting for them all. Just plugging in crystals pel-mel is as likely to damage the device as make it work at a higher clock speed.

And I can't see that a faster chip will do anything except distort playback. Remember the watch? didn't work so well after the transplant. By your own assumptions, these devices are "cheap" and you think it likely that the crystal you are replacing is "the main" clock. In that case, instead of getting 24 frames per second in a video, you would be getting 32.7.

It's not like a PC where it would then be able to theoretically do more in less time, it's a simple processor with one task. Speeding it up will likely just produce garbled or chipmunk like audio and if you get video it will look like those History Channel shots of WWI where everyone is moving quickly.

I wish you the best of luck on your experiments, but unfortunately, I can't see what the gain is from it. MAybe you should instead look at ways to increase the memory and have the chip buffer more so it feels less slow? That last part could at least theoretically be done by editing the firmware.

...oh, that is likely needed to do what you want as well. I would think the firmware might have some info what the chip should be looking for in the rest of the system. Like the BIOS settings on a PC motherboard...

[Th3_uN1Qu3]

Originally Posted by NOLA MPx Fan

It's not like a PC where it would then be able to theoretically do more in less time, it's a simple processor with one task. Speeding it up will likely just produce garbled or chipmunk like audio and if you get video it will look like those History Channel shots of WWI where everyone is moving quickly.

I don't expect any miraculous gains out of this like the gains you can get when overclocking a PC. It's just that i wondered what would happen if i changed that crystal with a higher frequency one.

Originally Posted by NOLA MPx Fan

I wish you the best of luck on your experiments, but unfortunately, I can't see what the gain is from it. MAybe you should instead look at ways to increase the memory and have the chip buffer more so it feels less slow? That last part could at least theoretically be done by editing the firmware.

Well... how exactly do i extract 9.1.50? :P

As much as hardware mods would go, the only thing i'll do besides trying a 24.576MHz crystal just for kicks is solder another 512MB chip i have from a dead MP3 player (thumbdrive thingy) to the empty slot on the board so i can get a 1.5GB MP4. And maybe change a few caps to add a little more bass to the sound, but that can't be done without a chip schematic, and i don't have one. :P

[alex2pb]

It seems that the cpu clock is software controlled. That is something between 23.9999 to ~60.

[lattesurf]

The Actions chipset requires the 24.576MHz crystal as it uses that frequency to generate 2 types of frequencies. 48MHz for computer/player communications, 22.5792MHz for audio sampling.

It's not as complex as typical microcontrollers where you can setup your own multiple clocks, which the Actions chipset is not able to do so.