Today I turn 25, and I've been feeling nostalgic lately so I decided to play my old Gameboy Color. I have fond memories playing the old pokemon games, but they can be a bit long and tedious at times. I decided to speed things up by increasing the clock speed of my original console.
The original gameboy color has a 8.338MHz crystal oscillator. I wanted to be able to switch between the normal clock speed and an "overclock" setting while the device is operating. To achieve this I used a precision variable oscillator to dial in a higher clock speed that would still permit normal operation of the game (I found clock speeds above 16MHz caused the system to freeze or crash).
I was limited by the amount of space inside the console, and wanted to achieve the clock speed mod with minimal destruction to the original casing or circuit. For the final product I had to file a small hole in the top of the console for a toggle switch, and solder a few wires onto the circuit board. This mod can easily be removed, however the case would need repair.
 |
| The switch is visible on the top right hand corner of the console, and is the only modification which can not be easily removed. |
The circuit was designed in Altium Designer based on the application notes in the LTC1799 datasheet. SMT devices were selected to make the circuit as small as possible, while still allowing for the PCB to be hand-soldered. R1 is a 3.3K resistor wired in series to ensure Rset is never below 3K ohm.
 |
| Schematic taken from LTC1799 Datasheet |
 |
| Circuit Board Layout |
 |
| Circuit board with dimensions (unpopulated board on right) |
No comments:
Post a Comment