Installed a fan inside Gotek to cool DSP

[Steve]

Just something I did yesterday. My Falcons DSP is overclocked to 50mhz. I had a heatsink on top, but fancied a little airflow. Not much room to fit a fan though since the floppy/Gotek housing is right on top of the DSP. So I cut a hole in the bottom of the Gotek and installed a fan inside the Gotek, works great :) (airflow is now directly above the DSP)

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[atari030]

Thats not a bad idea, my CT2b is about as stable as the Government so I might do that. Does it make a difference on your Falc?

[Steve]

Not sure really, just wanted to keep it cooler 8-)

[rubber_jonnie]

Not a bad use of the spare space :)

My only bit of advice would be to make sure you cut the hole out, or file it, so it's round and make sure all the edges of the hole are rounded with no burrs.

With uneven holes and rough edges you could cause turbulence/backflows that could hinder cooling rather than help it.

Up to you, but nice out of the box thinking.

[Steve]

Yeah good idea, I'll clean it up a bit more :)

[tzok]

Let the ruler, pencil, and file become your friends ;)

[marbosar77]

Hello to everyone, I'm a newbie on this forum. Very recently I have acquired an Atari STE 4 mb, and in about a year (don't ask me why ;) ) I will be a possessor of a Falcon as well.
I am going to use this last one as a controller to produce music, and for that reason I'm very interested about the DSP overclocking. I have a few question.

1) Which kind of mod did you perform to reach 50 mhz? Maybe this one https://atari.joska.no/dsp/main.html ?
2) Is it stable enough to be used with music software like Cubase, Pro24, Notator ecc.?
3) Does the overclock bring true advantage over the stock 32 mhz?
4) Could this overclock worsen the audio output/input whilst music software or audio encoding/decoding are running?

Many thanks in advance for your answer, and apologies if my English sounds a bit strange.

Btw, I live in Turin (Italy), and I work here as a Math&Science teacher.

Just something I did yesterday. My Falcons DSP is overclocked to 50mhz. I had a heatsink on top, but fancied a little airflow. Not much room to fit a fan though since the floppy/Gotek housing is right on top of the DSP. So I cut a hole in the bottom of the Gotek and installed a fan inside the Gotek, works great :) (airflow is now directly above the DSP)


PXL_20230513_185411263.jpg
PXL_20230513_185406406.jpg
PXL_20230513_173046167.jpg

[Steve]

@marbosar77

Yes I have performed that mod, it's extremely easy to do and I highly recommend it. The DSP can easily run at 50mhz without any issue. It makes a massive difference to all DSP related tasks. For instance, in Ace tracker you can only run the audio output at 30/32khz? normally, if you set it to 48khz or 50khz the song will stop playing due to DSP timeout. With the 50mhz overclock you can run at 48khz/50khz easily all day long.

Answer to all your questions: all positives, no negatives.

So yeah, especially for music related usage, I highly recommend the mod! Especially since it's so cheap and easy to perform, and it is fully reversible.

Of course though, I recommend put a heatsink on the DSP and the SRAM chips along-side it. They get very hot! This is also why I fitted the fan in the Gotek.

[marbosar77]

@Steve Thanks a lot, you've been very helpful.
I have only one doubt left. On the Retro Lemon store there is a DSP switch (https://retrolemon.co.uk/atari-st-ste-f ... witch.html) that seems to alter the DSP clock speed. On another forum (https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=35457) it is explained that its main purpose is to achive CD/DAT compatible clocking and also to eliminate problems with audio streaming and/or resampling.
I have zero know-how about such technical things, but I would like to know if this external DSP clock could have a negative impact on internal DSP overclock, and if the overclock alone can do the same job as the above switch.
Thanks again, this forum is a gem for all "atarians" ;)

[Steve]

@marbosar77 I can see why it can be confusing!

As a musician, you want BOTH.

* ---- They are two completely different things --- *

The external clock switch gives the Falcon the ability to output 44.1Khz CD frequency and 48Khz DAT frequency. By default the Falcon can only output something like 30Khz/50Khz. It has nothing to do with the DSP's clock speed.