Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 11:59:09 -0800 From: John Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Overclocking, Frying Eggs, and Gaming on a 110CT
Hello Libretto Users... Have you ever considered over-clocking and put it off? I have for years... and now I wonder why. I just over-clocked my 100CT and 110CT to 266. Took less than 15 minutes each. I have opened Librettos many times for testing and just looking however, so experience was probably worth 15minutes each. I do have many hours of experience board soldering, but nothing this small. But it really wasn't difficult by any means. I have slight tremors and still managed to do it with good hand propping. If you can safely open your Libretto (100CT/110CT) and solder electronics, you can do this! : ) You might need a magnifying glass though. (I did) It is pretty small. One suggestion I didn't notice on the various sites about soldering on these tiny boards... make some sort of sheild from cardboard or plastic of just anything. So that if any solder happened to drip or spatter etc, it can't hurt the rest of the board. I just made about a 1.5cm diameter hole in a piece of thin dense cardboard (as I always do) to protect the other areas of the board from accidental spatter or any number of things waiting to happen. To determine the correct jumpers, I used the pictures from this page of XIN's site which is listed on the Adorable Libretto site. This worked for both of my computers. This is a great site for sure. : ) http://www.fixup.net/tips/ My Libretto 100CT and 110CT are running BIOS 7 and 8, 64Meg of ram, Win98SE. Two processor killing drains that I disable during gaming are Norton Anti-virus and BlackICE Firewall. So far I can't tell much difference on most programs, though I have not benchmarked them before or after. I notice the speed much more in DOS than in Windows. Duke Nukem, Shadow Warrior, Dark Forces, Witchaven, and Quake I (all DOS) are noticeably smoother. In Windows, I am using Quake II as the benchmark in you might say. Windows games that I can see a difference on immediately are Ultimate DooM for Win95 (was REALLY bad previously, but playable now), Ultimate PaintBrawl 2, Blood II, X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse, and Age of Empires II. Those are all I have tried so far. If you use your Libretto for heavy gaming, one thing I have noticed is lowering the sound quality in Windows based games (Quake II, Sin, and others that don't come to mind), significantly effects overall game-play. I do not know the reason for this efficiency issue, hardware/software related. Heat buildup: I don't know about this. Both of my Libretto's have always been like little ovens. I don't know if I would even notice more heat unless something starts to melt. One thing I notice is that the hard drive is scorching hot on Libretto's. If you take the covers off your Hard Drive Bay, you could pop that little drive out and cook on it, or iron your clothes with it. I am trying to get a machine shop make an aluminum Hard Drive Bay cover to see if I can't get some of that heat out of there that way. If they can make them reasonably inexpensive (doubt it) I will try to sell some. Just seems like a LOT of heat you could get out of these little computers to extend their lives. I think I am about 10 years late with this idea however. : ) Closing notes: I seriously doubt this procedure is worth it on a 110CT (233mhz) unless you are running unusually heavy software loads and want to squeeze every ounce out the hardware you can. That 33mhz just really isn't that much in the scope of things, especially if there is significant truth to all the horror stories of heat related issues. Processor speed isn't everything. If you have a 5400rpm drive, try going to a 7500rpm hard drive if you want to see serious overall performance increases in environments like Windows that use the hard drive constantly. On the 100CT (166mhz) the speed increase is noticeable and worth it to go to 233 or in this case 266 if you want to risk it. I could always see a difference between my 100CT and 110CT. Anyway, that is my experience with over-clocking so far. Just making the games better, not cooking breakfast with them. If either of them burn my eggs, smoke or have undesirable characteristics, I will let you know. John Martin
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