Crystal oscilator...

[Tiago]

What is the Crystal oscilator? Is it in the RAM/CPU expansions?

[Buleste]

A Crystal oscilator regulates the speed of CPU's if you have a 50mhz 060 you can use a 50mhz cystal or overclock the chip with a higher crystal. I never understood completely but if you look on your A1200 motherboard, next to the ROM sockets is a Silver chip. Mine says it is running at 28.37516mhz. That is a crystal oscilator. For a more detailed description of a crystal oscillator goto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_oscillator. It doesn't explain the relevance of crystals with Amiga but essentially it regulates the speed of the CPU.

[Submeg]

It is what provides the clock cycle for the CPU. They look like this:

[Harrison]

They are also used to control the speed of the FPU on an accelerator card. As mentioned you can get a faster crystal to overclock them. But a word or warning, because overclocking an FPU can burn it out. Same with CPUs. It's a lottery as you won't know if you have a chip capable of being overclocked until you try.

[Khephren]

The crystal for my 030 FPU has fallen out, the CPU one is still there. Will this cause my FPU to stop working? It's on my old A1200, which has sat in a box for a few years...

[Buleste]

What accellerator board are you using? I think the blizzard has a single crystal for both but if it is a different type with seperate crystals then the either the FPU won't work or the board won't work.

[Harrison]

I wouldn't recommend trying to run it until you replace the crystal. It might be OK and just disable the FPU, but equally it could damage the accelerator trying to run it with it missing. You should be able to get a new crystal cheaply.