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So true, and if you ask you'll get admonished by both the people who know the potential but refuse to explain, and the people who believe in mythical untapped Jaguar potential. But due to Moore's Law, you can make a reasonable guess of what it's capable of for a system of that timeframe and price.

You're entitled to your opinion. I would suggest trying a few more games and consider that the bits mean little to nothing. Try playing Tempest 2k, NBA Jam and other games. I personally really love Defender 2K but I also know that is not everyone's cup of tea. The Jaguar was positioned strangely in the market, not by design but by the unknown but inevitable direction of gaming. They were trying to out do the SNES and MD and did so quite well. They threw in very fast (For the time) 3D and they really did have some good ideas that could have been executed better. You look at the interviews by members of the Atari team from the time and tell me that those people weren't passionate and trying their hardest make the best with what they had. Some games suffered at the hands of inexperience, budgets or bad tools. The Jag is a 2D powerhouse and if you look at something like Skyhammer you can see just how much they were able to pull out of the system in terms of 3D. I'd bet that someone today could optimize that game to run better but only because we know more now than was known then. Could it out perform the PSX in 3D? Should it be able to? Hardware was increasing in power quite fast in those days and the PSX is how much newer than the Jag? Nothing I said here should be taken negatively btw. Hang out, enjoy the forums.

Yeah, that is true. We might never know why they were using small caps from their early days of making mining industrial electronics machines. There is a whole Wikipedia page about the history of small caps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_caps As for the video processing stacking the tms9918 a bit easier as the overlay circuit is inside the silicon but all versions can handle it, even the later improved models of v9938 had that option. On the ti99 when using the 9918 the extvdp is infact sent to pin 5 of the monitor part, but as @Tursi points out the SYNC line is fixed to the reset control stuff the missing pull to 9v circuit is not there, plus it has to be timed right as if you pull it for too long the vram stops being refreshed as well, causing data loss. I need to find the original ti datasheet that shows how it all works they made what was called a "application note" describing it in detail with the special 9v sync circuit detailed out.

You will usually only get a long IRG at the start of file (leader tone) when using CIO. When you write a record, the SIO output at the end should be logic 1 which is the same as the tone for IRG. You should be able to get a longer IRG by just having a delay between SIOV calls, and there should be no disruption in the leader tone. But don't use long IRG mode since it stops the cassette motor at the end of each write. Also since you're using SIOV you have the flexibility in that you can write out practically any record size that you want (I'm guessing you're probably already planning to do that) I used it in the day before I had a 1050 to create a fast loading AsmEd image - it had a loader that was a few blocks long then the entire 8K cart image was written as a single block. Also I used a VBI when writing it to increase the baud rate.

I guess the same reason why when you need a winter coat in February all you can find is a few on clearance but plenty of swimsuits.. retail stocks months ahead of demand. Plus in those days you had all those printed Christmas catalogs which I'm sure take a while to put together and you want your game to be included.

The cpu is a Rockchip RK3032. It's a dual core ARM chip running at 1 ghz. The GPU is Mali but I can't find anything on how fast it runs. The upgraded RK3036 has a Mali running at 400mhz so I'd assume less than that.

I decided to put some time into Resident Evil 4 - Wii Edition, and have probably played about 4-5 hours so far. Coming into this, the only RE game I've ever played was back in the late 90s when I rented the original for a weekend to play on PS1. I remember not caring much for it because I found all the weird fixed camera angles confusing and the controls were horrible. I can see RE4 is highly regarded game in general, and I've had a pretty fun time with it so far. The controls are leaps-and-bounds better than what I remember on PS1, but still a bit goofy with the Wii implementation. I really like the idea of using the pointer functionality to aim your shots with the analog stick on the nunchuk for movement, but it really bugs me how you can't move your view around by dragging the cursor to the sides of the screen, as is done in some of the other games I've played. Also, I feel like with these types of games, you kind of get a good feel for the breadth of the game's experience very quickly then it's just rinse/repeat for several hours while a flimsy "story" attempts to bolt on some context for why you're walking around collecting items and shooting things. So, while it was OK fun, I'm probably done with it.

Replacement 8bitdo Retro dongle on the way, hopefully this sorts it.

Aren't we due for Xbox Vista? Instead we get "Wii U Wii U Wii U" like an ambulance. Or a Huey Lewis song "Do you believe in love? Wii U Oh-Oh Wii U"

Well I wrote it wrong, it was an earlier post on this very thread that you had been reading! Also I've been a member here since 2015, though I browse quite a bit I just rarely post.

Too much of a hassle to order from that nut job. Plus, his power supplies are more expensive and that isn't even including his shipping cost.

Interesting. Thanks for the information. Yes, I kept the replacement PIA in the computer, and all is fine now 👍🏼 And the Sys-Check 2.2 is working great as extended RAM. I’ve been checking out quite a few newer demos and games that require extra RAM. It’s a good preview before I install U1MB 😁 What other extended RAM test do you recommend?

With the huge number of excellent PAL titles available, a "Toggle PAL(50Hz)/NTSC(60Hz)" function would be essential; without having to completely reset the machine every time ...

It's actually easier to mix graphics modes than it is to add a DLI to change colors, DLI requires extra code, while changing modes only requires altering bytes in the display list. Basically all the 8-bits of the era are very limited in resolution and color placement. RAM was expensive, the 6502 can only access 64K directly and graphics chips were not that good. A 160x200 mode that could put 16 colors anywhere on screen would require 16K RAM and 320x200 at 16 colors would need 32K ram. That's a big ask for such limited systems! Instead systems like the Apple II, Atari and C64 limited graphics memory to about 8-10K and used various tricks to boost on screen colors. The common Apple II high res mode was 280x192 with 6 colors. But it really was a 2 color mode and relied on artifacting to produce colors. That gives four effective colors, but they also used one bit of every graphics byte to swap between orange + blue and green + purple. This color bit use is why it's 280x192 and not 320x192 like Atari. Atari can get 4 colors with artifacting, but not the 6 that Apple could. But on Apple you can't put green and blue pixels next to each other in the same byte, or orange and purple. So you have to keep those limits in mind when designing graphics On C64 160x200 mode is 4 color and 320x200 mode is 2 color just like Atari, but C64 divides the screen into character-sized cells where you can change the colors of those cells (4x8 cells in 160x200 mode and 8x8 in 320x200 mode). 320x200 with 2 color cells is hard to work with, but if a game manages to pull it off, the C64 version will look better than Atari, because Atari's color use is more limited in high-res. Many C64 games run in 160x200. Instead of using color cells, Atari uses DLIs to define color regions That means colors can change line-by-line instead of cell by cell- each approach is good for kinds of games, and worse for others. I've noticed if a game was designed on Atari, it will look best on Atari, If designed for C64, it will look best on C64 and so on. Finally differences in ports could be due to technical limitations, but it could also be due to quick and dirty ports. I've never played Druid, but looking at the graphics, it looks like a better job could have been done on Atari, but it also appears to be tile-based, and the color-cell approach of C64 can better suit tile-based games than the Atari DLI approach.

That's part of the longer term plan, yes. ..Al

you need a crew of trained cart assembly chimpanzees.

Vacation? That man needs like a year off after all these games he's had to put together, pack and ship!

Here is another great source for a new Atari 7800 Power Supply ( and other parts ) ! I ordered one a while back and am having good luck . $21 + Shipping https://www.best-electronics-ca.com/New Best 7800 Power supply.htm

Wow and I thought my six was a lot! 30 or more in some lots! Holy Jumpin' Catfish that's a lot!

looks pliable, it's a possibility at least.

An explanation of what you could do: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/224020-games-with-more-than-16-colors/?do=findComment&comment=2965337

Paddle resolution is something that is being worked on. From what I've heard, the chip on the controllers board is update-able, so it's possible. No timetable on release for that though.

I thought there was at least one revision of the 1400XL motherboard that was designed for the combined Antic/GTIA chip (CGIA). I'm pretty sure that that design isn't the one people have, so it's very unlikely it would have been the released version. But if so, that would have broken VBXE, Sophia, and the like. While I can understand doing testing of the new chip on whatever the newest motherboard was at the time, a cost reduction like that would have made the most sense on the highest-volume system (i.e., the 800XL).

Hey, Handy DG, a few questions: 1. When you say that the original games.ini, when updated by AGSP Enhance, "doesn't work" when loaded up by the AGSP, what do you mean exactly? I assume the AGSP runs, loads, but with no new games. 2. After using the file contents copy "hack" extra step does that new games.ini work from that point on when adding new games, updating games via AGSP Enhance? (wondering if this is truly an original games.ini issue) Thanks, TJR

I´ve had this issue also a few times. Interestingly the "wrong" report of the extended memory size will only happen using XRAM 0.21. Maybe this is based on the fact that the software theoretically can detect 4 MB switched memory using Port-B, although I never seen or heard of such a solution in real. Background: Sys-Check doesn´t require a working PIA at least. As other external memory solutions it grabs the access to $D301 and latches the desired bank by itself. So it´s not dependend what the PIA itself is signalling at their port-B pins. I don´t know how the memory detection routine of XRAM is working, but it detects sometimes memory wrong. When you use other extended memory tests you will get a different result. Nevertheless it´s for sure that this PIA has a defect and exchanging it will cure the problem. But a wrong detection screen of XRAM can also be based on a simple software problem sometimes.