ahh the classic Osc. where would life and blue tooth be without it today.

indeed, An Oscilator takes a charge from capactors or discrete source and then releases that charge as a pulse.. this pulse is essentialy a master CLOCK tic.

Not all CPU's will use this clock directly. for instance, the 040 would use this TIC and on every secondth would shunt data about.

Imagin it this way, every TIC(pulse), of a 50mhz crystal (thats one pulse every 50 thousandth of a second) would be a direct 1 to 1 translation for an 060, but on an 040 its is devided (this is internally for its fetching or registers and functions etc) by 2 thus only on every other TIC (a TOC we could say) would it receive input or send output.

infact Most CPU's today use an external clock only to govern access times to other chips / controlers like memory / buss boards etc. In the Amiga hardware its a little simpler, but essentially the same thing.

by not having a Oscilator connected it wont damage your components, infact its most likely it just plain wont work without it. as it receives no timing pulse to do any work LOL

as mentioned before Amiga Kit have a good range of Oscilators and havae a great service! I would recomend them... if they dont haver the Osc. you need gimmie a shout... i have a fair few