replacing boarduino resonator question

[unsped]

i have a boarduino and have a problem using a max72xx that does not happen on my arduino NG and seems to be related to the serial input i have feeding the boarduino. im basically sending the arduino bytes that it uses to light up appropriate rows, leds, etc.. when i have the boarduino generated patterns itself its fine. but when i have it parse the serial data i end up with 'noise' on the display. like its occasionally missing or inserting extra commands into. this goes away when i swap it for an arduino NG.

i noticed it uses a resonator instead of a crystal and am wondering if i bought a 16mhz crystal if there was anything preventing me from swapping the resonator for it? is there a reason they are using resonators? it seems like crystals cost about the same.

[unsped]

i figure ill answer my own question as i know the answer now lol.

the reason they use a resonator is because it has load 2 capacitor's in the same package so it saves space.

to replace it, you need a 16.000mhz crystal, and 2 capacitors that match the load capacitance value of the crystal, in the general case (2) 20-22pf caps.

the crystal gets attached to the two pins on the arduino, and each of the pins gets connected to ground through the 20-22pf caps. the reason for the caps is to "start" the crystal and get it oscillating... without the caps it will start oscillating most of the time however they should be there.

in addition it would seem the arduino has a rough time with 115200 baud rate when it comes to error rate, a resonator vs. crystal is probably only exacerbating this. my assumption is that at a lower baudrate the problem would most likely become mute.