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Radius Rocket Guide/Troubleshooting Thread
Posted by: Unknown_K on 2021-02-10 08:46:26
Has anybody considered or attempted to overclock a Rocket Booster? I have a 25Mhz Rocket Booster here and both 33Mhz and 40Mhz 68040 processors in my possession, and there's a nice big clock crystal can sitting right there on the card that looks ripe for swapping out with a socket or variable clock to play with.
Well I assume they designed the board for the highest rated chip they planned on using and just used a different chip and oscillator. Your options were 25i, 25, and 33 for the original rocket and only 40 for stage two.

As far as overclocking a 33 I would worry about power draw and any components that would not run correctly above 33mhz. Also if you have one of the add-on modules they might act goofy or not at all.

Not sure I would bother even if I could find a 40mhz 68040.

Posted by: Nathan_A on 2021-02-10 13:19:05
I kind of assume the same thing about board design, and figure that at a minimum trying to go from 25 to 33 could be an interesting experiment.

Posted by: Phipli on 2022-08-17 08:11:10
Has anybody considered or attempted to overclock a Rocket Booster? I have a 25Mhz Rocket Booster here and both 33Mhz and 40Mhz 68040 processors in my possession, and there's a nice big clock crystal can sitting right there on the card that looks ripe for swapping out with a socket or variable clock to play with.
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2022-08-17 16:59:26
Great writeup! Most folks will claim the Quadras were faster, but not the case as you found in benchmarking. Don't recall for sure, but I think the Rocket used interleaved memory? When did Quadras finally start doing that? Glad to hear I don't need to get around to trying the CPU from the FUBAR 840AV board out on the Rockets. Thanks!

Got my Rocket 33 pre-Quadra and it ran straight up thru that era until I had switch to the 2300c as my graphics workstation in the shop for a while. Got the used IIx Launch Pad while I saved up for the newly announced Rocket. Used the 2300c for running PPC code until I got the refurb 6360 and hacked in a full length 1600x1200 Radius PCI card. Then I saved up for the Crescendo G3/L2.

CPUs were pretty far down the list of priorities. The boom truck for sign hanging was my biggest toy ever! 😀
Posted by: Trash80toHP_Mini on 2022-08-17 18:04:50
Glad to see this ten year old thread come back to life, just checked, all but a couple of the links on p.1 are dead, gotta take a look at fixing that up.
Posted by: Phipli on 2022-08-18 00:54:28
Don't recall for sure, but I think the Rocket used interleaved memory? When did Quadras finally start doing that?
The rocket does interleaved memory yes, but I actually think I was only using one bank there, so it might be just that it is fast RAM.

I think the Wombat introduced interleaved memory, so 650/800.
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