Overclocking the Acorn A7000+

If you happen to have one of these neat little machines, then you might just be interested in this guide I've written. Carrying out this overclock is not particularly difficult, but it does require reasonably good skills with a soldering iron, and also a willingness to dismantle said machine right down to its main PCB.

So, if you can answer "yes" to both of those items, then be prepared for some fairly nifty speed increases, notably in playing back MP3s, and probably other areas (MP3s over 96kbits/sec being the most strenuous thing I've thrown at my A7000+ so far) too. It also won't cost you an arm and a leg - maybe a few leg hairs, but probably not a lot more than that. Let's get on with the show now, shall we? =P

News

11/05/2007: First update of the year, and sadly, it's bad news all round: not long after the previous update, I attempted to solder in a socket where the RAM oscillator is, but in my impatience to get the oscillator out (me and the soldering iron obviously weren't working well that day), I broke the Acorn altogether. Arrgh.

So, not only did I not manage to overclock the RAM speed, I also destroyed the one unique & interesting machine in my oversized collection of PCs - unless you count my Mac Performa 6400 - personally, in the uniqueness stakes, it can't touch an Acorn of any brand (:P). This basically also means there'll probably be no more updates to this page, save for fixing spelling errors and suchlike...

... speaking of which, the overclocking guide has received some long-deserved touching up, mostly just some grammatical changes but also with the info about overclocking the RAM as well.

Old news can be read here.

Site Sections

The Guide On How To Do It - details the exact procedure for overclocking the Acorn A7000+, the equipment you'll need, and other things besides.

Photos Of The Mod Itself - self-explanatory. Refer to frequently when reading the guide, else you might just end up removing the wrong oscillator! Now also includes some photos of the insides of my A7000+.

Various Results Files - includes benchmark reports from RISCOSmark and !SICK, plus MP3 playback comparisons.

Contacting Me

Any questions, comments or corrections you'd like to point out to me? Drop me a line at the following e-mail address:

thedaytoday[AT]gmail[DOT]com

Boring Copyright Stuff

Unless otherwise stated, all of this information was written by Rob Watts (aka RobbyW / STC-Fan / zedeckseightyone) ©2004-2008, or adapted from sources who have helpfully contributed information to this document. You may NOT use any information from this document unless you ask nicely beforehand, or something like that.