Crude Overclocking proof of concept

[VkCommodore]

Hi Everyone

Use at your own risk!!
Been reading this repo for a couple of weeks, a minor contribution if no one is already playing with this!
A very crude example using one of your scripts overwriting the mame emulator for overclocking.

(After quite a bit of digging) Found an old overclocking tool for the Miyoo Mini separate from retroarch.

• implement an "on the fly overclock feature" OnionUI/Onion#768
• https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rra4k2e7g10acsrwnlsqc/AMci9vnJJVFrm_qDJSIMZWs?e=1&preview=overclock_test.zip&rlkey=yocvvlx4o4yx9ciz8gff364ot

Example of possible overclock speeds (I have no idea what the retro arcade runs at default)
https://www.reddit.com/r/MiyooMini/comments/1aqr104/ultimate_overclock_guide/

• 1600 is the highest stable value for miyoo mini
• 1800 is the highest stable value for miyoo mini plus

This is difficult to test/confirm without command line access to confirm clock rates, but I'm confident this proof of concept is working.
(MK1 went from laggy and horrible to butter smooth)

Overwrite mame emulator /emus/mame/fbneo (Based on examples from this get repo)
fbneo.zip

Add the overclock command line tool as a downloaded (mame) rom (you want /commandline_tool/cpuclock)
overclock_test.zip

I've set the clock to 1600mhz in this example, a quick 5 min game session worked fine in a coolish room.
I would guess there is room in a box as big as ours for a heat sink if worst comes to worst (unlike the Miyoo).

Have fun ;)

[VkCommodore]

I should probably also mention you need to "run" the "cpuclock" rom in the console menu for this to work.
Screen is go momentarily black, and drop you back to the menu again.

You are now ready to play games!

[nk64]

Welcome VkCommodore, and thanks for the POC.
I have managed to repeat your success with Mortal Kombat at 1600. Very nice.
I have taken the liberty of packaging up your work and adding to the User Scripts.

If you haven't already, please take a look at setting up the Runtime Script Framework with discussion here

[nk64]

required binaries here: https://github.com/nk64/GT4286/tree/main/sdcard_tweaks/_gt4286util/bin (cpuclock + contents of fb-test-app)
user script here: https://github.com/nk64/GT4286/tree/main/sdcard_tweaks/roms/MAME (overclock-*.sh)

[nk64]

Captured output of the cpuclock command as I tested some values.

default:

cpuclock=1005326304 (lpf=3604679, post_div=2)

1000

cpuclock=1000000176 (lpf=3623878, post_div=2)

1600

cpuclock=1600000112 (lpf=2264924, post_div=2)

[horsiezoo]

Cool find, I stuck a raspberry pi heatsink I had lying around on the processor a few weeks ago to see if performance increases due to delay in thermal throttling (assuming this chip does that)
Shame this likely won’t work:
You can see the CPU temperature with:
cat /sys/devices/virtual/mstar/msys/TEMP_R

Edit : you can get to ./msys but can’t seem to type caps without freezing the osd

[nk64]

You can see the CPU temperature with:
cat /sys/devices/virtual/mstar/msys/TEMP_R

You had me excited there but unfortunately our GT4286 doesn't seem to have that file (or feature enabled).

[horsiezoo]

Heh sorry for getting our hopes up there, was quoting that reddit? thread while away from console.

[Hello-dot-Jpg]

This is awesome great work VkCommodore .
You could probably add it to run.sh in the root of the sdcard so that it's overclocked on each start up without needing to use the menu to run it

I'd say 1800 should work fine with a small heatsink both the mini and the mini plus use the same SOC.
tweak the core voltage and we might even hit 2 😈

[nk64]

[Hello-dot-Jpg]

Hi NK64, so after reading more documentation on the FlyThings SDK my understanding is that it works in the following way when used as a display terminal
No SD
Boot-> Unpack -> Run from flash
SD
Boot-> Unpack -> SD Detected with menu data -> Run from SD

https://developer.flythings.cn/en/start_from_sdcard.html

The idea being that you can have the menu data or whatever you like on an sd card to use for testing purposes before you build a disk image to flash its actually one of the build export options in the sdk.

My guess is they leveraged this feature to have a useless "No SD Card" menu on the flash with an SD inserted detection that triggers loading when an SD card is detected

Once loaded the Damon on the SD card checks to see if the mount is present and if it's not it would restart the Dameon and menu from flash

There is also some sort of encryption on the device that uses the serial number, but it seems these ones all have 00000000 as the serial number which should hopefully make things easier, I am having trouble finding exactly where in the documentation I saw it, it might have been in sigmastars documents

I am not sure if this would be helpful, but I can give you the example SD card listener code they use:

#include "os/MountMonitor.h"

class MyMountListener : public MountMonitor::IMountListener {
public:
    virtual void notify(int what, int status, const char *msg) {
        switch (status) {
        case MountMonitor::E_MOUNT_STATUS_MOUNTED:    // Insert
            // msg is the mount path
            LOGD("mount path: %s\n", msg);
            mMountTextviewPtr->setText("TF card has been inserted");
            break;

        case MountMonitor::E_MOUNT_STATUS_REMOVE:     // Remove
            // msg is the uninstall path
            LOGD("remove path: %s\n", msg);
            mMountTextviewPtr->setText("TF card has been removed");
            break;
        }
    }
}; 

Define the listening object:

static MyMountListener sMyMountListener;

Register to listen:
MOUNTMONITOR->addMountListener(&sMyMountListener);

When we no longer need to monitor, we need to remove the monitor:

MOUNTMONITOR->removeMountListener(&sMyMountListener);

MountMonitor.h

#ifndef _OS_MOUNT_MONITOR_H
#define _OS_MOUNT_MONITOR_H

#include <vector>
#include "system/Thread.h"

/**
 * @brief 挂载监听
 */
class MountMonitor : Thread {
public:
	/**
	 * @brief 挂载监听接口
	 */
	class IMountListener {
	public:
		virtual ~IMountListener() { };
		virtual void notify(int what, int status, const char *msg) = 0;
	};

	/**
	 * @brief 挂载状态
	 */
	typedef enum {
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_NO_MEDIA = 0,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_IDLE,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_PENDING,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_CHECKING,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_MOUNTED,		/**< 已挂载上 */
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_UNMOUNTING,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_FORMATTING,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_SHARED,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_SHAREDMNT,
		E_MOUNT_STATUS_REMOVE		/**< 移除挂载 */
	} EMountStatus;

public:
	virtual ~MountMonitor();

	/**
	 * @brief 添加挂载监听
	 */
	void addMountListener(IMountListener *pListener);

	/**
	 * @brief 移除挂载监听
	 */
	void removeMountListener(IMountListener *pListener);

	int mountToPC();
	int unmountFromPC();
	int formatSDcard();
	bool isInsert();

	/**
	 * @brief SD卡是否已挂载
	 */
	bool isMount();

	bool isShare();
	bool isFormated();

	bool isMounted(const char *checkPath);
	const char* getSDcardPath() const;

	static MountMonitor* getInstance();

protected:
	virtual bool threadLoop();

private:
	MountMonitor();

	int init();
	int exit();

	void notifyListeners(int what, int status, const char *msg);

	void processStr(char *src);

private:
	bool mShared;
	bool mSharing;
	bool mInserted;
	bool mMounted;
	bool mFormated;
	bool mFormating;

	int mStatus;
	int mConnectFD;
	char mPath[125];

	std::vector<IMountListener *> mListeners;

	static Mutex sLock;
};

#define MOUNTMONITOR		MountMonitor::getInstance()

#endif 

[nk64]

I spent an evening getting nowhere with the Flythings IDE a while ago. The latest version of the IDE wanted to download the SSD sdk for me but I said "no internet access for you", With the older version of the IDE and a separately downloaded SSD sdk zip (or 7z) file I was able to compile a hello world app with one button, but only to a shared library file and not to a stand alone binary so I was never able to run it on my GT4286.

PS. SD:/bin/daemon is not used at all by our GT4286. I deleted it ages ago for random science and have been playing without it ever since.

[nk64]

For what it's worth, the unused SD:/bin/daemon has some hints of the encryption and serial number checking you mentioned

[horsiezoo]

Hi sorry to chime in here, just had a thought, did Flythings output a .so file? If yes if you put that in /.retroarch/cores and modify an existing.info file to match wonder if that would run through there?

[ot644]

This is awesome. Looking forward to testing. Next step will be to default to 1600 at boot.

[horsiezoo]

This console should be fine with a 2amp 5v power supply right? It’s over voltage that causes damage it should only draw as much current as it needs. I’ll do some research before letting out the magic smoke (partly to power a small cpu fan)

[Hello-dot-Jpg]

Yes, it'll be fine the core runs at 3.3v anyway and there's a step down circuit with a reg.
You are correct a switch mode psu will provide only the current needed for the circuit, you'd be pretty surprised how little current draw most things use

something like this [(https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/196860076042?_skw=thermal+pad&itmmeta=01JHY9HCREZ3ND9MEM143RT08V&hash=item2dd5c6600a:g:yTIAAOSwxydnAdD9&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA8HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKlFI8DgAh4LmS5klmptXkFkBopPWJpSwQpUr4opSjJNSxD--CwLbKjgWYw2LR%2FCO1WQUl3lUzw%2FEdCLqiykl4Qitk00H%2BDFUOv2ihEICF5XGBWN3jIwEfKO9acg5QKeJ26D5qU7sLMPl1BBDP3cLkCrYdlI3oJuFJT02xUFr9lFiBWLspjO4xaA0KN9hcFItio4O1vNsoDBIzakbQIuuv3sSRGAH2KYPfeaamiU54w%2BOeoUEGn3i%2FIFmDqwrXfW6JMcVhZFsXLqHmrMx38CqJI95Cu4t%2B0IuUwT0xxY8qvoJg%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR87MxcmPZQ)]

and this would work

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/364710599227?_skw=heatsink+with+fan+5v&itmmeta=01JHY98BSWJK8Y7GQ8MV2P01ZC&hash=item54ea721a3b:g:zBgAAOSw2HNlu5mO&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA0HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKmrsgosLUa%2FWA3tKj5XtQ0IzFmJLs39LcW4h%2BRPRKDrcL8kML74W9QW75WVy4Xr%2BG8NDI5xLobew8yeeC8xb7Za0R%2BaYki3qqFqMOH20uGq084wKteBMRw33huwZlzDMUes%2BW8tR02UUa8O5KidockLyLwNv7RVNz%2FWKxwdB36a0%2FBVePIibltc7b%2ByJjAZg8kAza2ycXK8Fxk6ZGtOlhMAYyS1VzU8AHnW2Ytm7DJrBUBaiJXOps9GUX%2Fi0z4GRIY%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6C9ocmPZQ

[Hello-dot-Jpg]

Id say even something like this would work well

https://www.amazon.com.au/GeeekPi-Heatsinks-Raspberry-Conductive-Adhensive/dp/B0CJDF5PRD/ref=sr_1_25?crid=3FTRF94W82HS6&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.kt8u9X8udN1ivnvkeLEAJ8uX-YT8X_4SCgWx4TfBS_w7ncvZJfyxHcsncvHqGEbmZ_LJdaBd2V7ZHMWb0tDBZKtPax3A0QlgerxWByEGs2RfG6uVCIYx0375AsLHlkdRYdG0lZESRn4CQs822WBr6NH1U6y6uGesLHSfjJmEWGrXGCGnFAthf6vSLzzl5p1jCaqaQWkB6UJg1Ma9NT-M9N7kwRq40dub-XgM-w7uk0IdAPyy6Kugy8hvILJXsXqmVeOTFxrKkXLmM44m2Iy3tZfsJzIThrqkwqJVNDPUA-p2O4_efBert-C-9dLp4ViGxWwGBoYunQ0uWs-12vsrOud_TrLp79fZg5vh4zKD0BfMP-iNt-c5A6hgfY5Cyh2Tkje-U1slg2TQ38EGRrWyHIVOEyRZcUIR2mw6Aegb5lbVx1qDG_6NVmkA8jjsEzt7.x58Ji7QzuPC7RZTN7pQmvb1SRcIfIdRGWMLyw0GUY5M&dib_tag=se&keywords=small+heatsink&qid=1737257470&refinements=p_n_prime_domestic%3A6845356051&rnid=6963563051&sprefix=small+heatsink%2Caps%2C281&sr=8-25

the fan might be overkill

[horsiezoo]

Nice yes that’s exactly what I stuck on the SOC awhile ago

[VkCommodore]

Have fun and don't cook your machines!
The problem with overclocking more is never enough, you always need to pushing things that little bit further until something go's pop ;)

Thanks for all your hard work @nk64 setting this all up!

[ot644]

FYI, continuous street fighter challenge session running at 1600mz clockspeed for at least the last 2 hours. Running smoothly with no issues. No heatsync installed.