24 replies to this topic

[mancity]

Hi guys,

Has there ever been a custom or homemade CD add-on made for the Jaguar?

The reason I ask is the official ones are all un-reliable from what iv'e read everywhere plus they are VERY expensive.

I doubt there has, but you never know

[Felyx]

I am not specialist in electronic but 2 things:

First the Jag CD is not a standard CD player: it has a specific PCB on it. Because of that I think you can't just link any CD player to your Jag and expect it will work.

Second point: The bad reliability of the Jag CD is often due to the Philips laser transport: this part can easily be replaced and is very cheap (about $20 including shipping fees from China). I did it on mine and now it works perfectly.

This is not because the Video Game Neird bought 2 broken Jag CD that they are all out of order and you may find Jag Cd which work fine.

They are expensive because quite rare: it seems that there were only 20000 or 25000 ever produced vs at least 150 000 Jag systems.

I doubt someone will manage to plug a standard CD player to the Jag but we never know.

Thanks to Jiffi from Reboot, it is now easy to burn a lot of homebrews on CD-R but not all of them: a very cool improvement for the Jag CD would be to allow it to read CD-RW.

Edited by Felyx, Tue Apr 3, 2012 2:35 AM.

[mancity]

Cheers for the info mate.

I wasn't expecting to be able to just plug a Sony walkman in and play Jag games though lol.

I just thought that as the Jag CD- add-ons were very un-reliable (I heard this from alot of places), that maybe some custom one's might have been made.

However, if it is an easy fix as you say, then I can see there would be no need for a different CD add-on as the broken ones could be fixed.

Only problem now is that the cheapest one I can find is £250!

Oh well, might have to stick with my carts.

[twoquickcapri]

There is nothing un-reliable about the Jag-CD that I have owned for 15 years

[TheGameCollector]

L250 is about $500 in the USA. I've been trying to sell my boxed one for that price for a while but no bites. No fair because one sold for that price on ebay via best offer just a couple months ago. I think the market/demand for the add-on is low.

[mancity]

$500 for a CD- add-on!

I wont ever be getting one for that price lol.

[TheGameCollector]

mancity, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 6:24 AM, said:

$500 for a CD- add-on!

I wont ever be getting one for that price lol.

Yeah it's not really worth getting for that price with the small library of games available, but collectors who must have all Atari Jaguar items still pay as much for it. That's all the unit is really good for. Hardcore collectors. It's not much different from people who must have Stadium Events for NES. Just much cheaper than that. Or maybe more like collecting Neo Geo AES games instead of MVS.

Edited by TheGameCollector, Tue Apr 3, 2012 6:41 AM.

[Felyx]

For $600 I remembered having see on the Bay a rare Jag CD NIB.

On european eBay sites  the usual price is fluctuing about €200-250 so roughly $300-350: it is exepensive but not crazy and far from $500.

After a quick look there is no Jag CD for sale at the moment on eBay but easy come easy go.

You can access most of the homebrews with a BJL wire or Skunk card but I think nothing is today as simple as burning them on CD-R and anyway nothing allow you to play the commercial Jaguar games on CD with amongst them Iron Soldier, Battlemorph, Primal Rage, World Tour Racing, Myst, Robinson Requiem...

[sh3-rg]

£250 = $400US = €300 today

[Felyx]

The Jag CD has very bad reputation and not only because of a poor reliability.

The Jag is tricky to code and the Jag CD is just adding even more difficulty because of the audio format it uses or for the "ass paining" encryption process and probably for some coding specific traps as well.

Last but not least, the Jag CD is inheriting the bad reputation of the Jaguar itself.

For all those reasons it is not very surprising to read almost everywhere that the Jag CD is piece of shit as its "toilet seat" look is suggesting.

Now, if it still not easy to developp games on Jag CD at least, since last year with Reboot utilities softs ULS and or Jiffi it is now childish easy to burn most of the homebrews on CD-R and because of that the number of existing games on CD has been multiplied by 3.

Regarding the reliability, the laser transport failure is well known and even if that doesn't mean it is the only one, that's as far as I know the main one. As already said, it is cheap and easy to fix and there are several tutorials on the net. Again I know that because i fixed mine that way.

About its price and rarity: as already said just wait for one at reasonable price as all things come to those who wait

Personnally I am fully satisfied to have it: it works well and it has widen my Jag games library with tons of good stuff between commercial games and homebrews. If I had stay to the comments on the Jag CD I would not have bought it and I will just miss all that.

Last thing: really don't click on donotclickthis in the Sh3rg signature: Do not play with that

Edited by Felyx, Tue Apr 3, 2012 8:53 AM.

[mancity]

Cheers for the info guys.

Im mainly a Saturn collector and that system gets a bad reputation too (well, not as bad anymore since the retro scene took off for it, but at the time it was out and 'current' anyway) for things like the graphics, the PAL games library, cant do transparancies etc etc.

Always better to come onto a forum and ask the people who actually know what they are talking about.

[save2600]

JagCD so eloquently sits atop the Jaguar - can't imagine some homebrew hack with wires, power supplies, ribbon cables and a naked generic beige or black PC drive sitting next to it.  

[Atari Smeghead]

Two things. One, I can also say that I've had my JagCD unit since the beginning (bought it new at... let's say it was Babbages) and <knock on wood> I haven't had any problems with it. I leave mine plugged in to the Jag unit, and it starts up fine every time.

Two, if you weren't aware, you can get a CD unit from B&C for as little as $175 US. http://myatari.com/atarijag.txt
and Best Electronics has reconditioned ones for $135 US without a power supply. http://best-electron...m#Jaguar System
Not sure if there are territorial issues with the CD players, though.

Cheers,
Smeg

[Zerosquare]

I don't know where you're getting those inflated prices from. You can get a second-hand tested and reconditioned JagCD from Best Electronics for $135, and it includes a 90-days warranty.

Edit : damn, Atari Smeghead was just a bit faster than me

Edited by Zerosquare, Tue Apr 3, 2012 10:15 AM.

[Zerosquare]

Atari Smeghead, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 10:06 AM, said:

Not sure if there are territorial issues with the CD players, though.

Nope, there's no regional lockout on the Jaguar, and there's only a single version of the JagCD that works on all consoles. That's at least something Atari did right

[mancity]

Thanks! Might eventually be able to get one then, although I know nothing of the Jag CD library of games though, so not sure if it's worth it for me.

[mancity]

Is there a full site for the myatari link? There aren't any contact details or anything?

[Atari Smeghead]

mancity, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 11:13 AM, said:

Is there a full site for the myatari link? There aren't any contact details or anything?

Oh sure, it's just myatari.com. Thought I'd save you a step, plus for some reason, I sometimes get an error message when I try to access a submenu off of their main website.

Cheers,
Smeg

[jaybird3rd]

save2600, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 9:35 AM, said:

JagCD so eloquently sits atop the Jaguar - can't imagine some homebrew hack with wires, power supplies, ribbon cables and a naked generic beige or black PC drive sitting next to it.  

Yeah, that would be pretty ugly, but it's also possible to do it right.  One idea I've mentioned in the past is a cartridge which combines the original Memory Track and a USB host controller: plug in an inexpensive USB CD/DVD drive, and the cartridge handles all the I/O, making the drive appear to the Jaguar as an original JagCD.  I still think that a cartridge like this would pay for itself with two or three homebrew Jaguar games on CD, since CD distribution is so much cheaper than cartridges.

[madman]

As mentioned, the Jag CD isn't just a regular CD player that you can hook up to the Jaguar somehow. In addition to the off the shelf transport, you would need the BIOS (which you could obtain from the net) and there is probably a custom I/O chip on there to interface with the Jaguar. There's no point in attempting such a time consuming project when one can be purchased relatively easily. And even then, there aren't really enough games to justify owning one in the first place, let alone building one.

[Zerosquare]

jaybird3rd, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 3:18 PM, said:

I still think that a cartridge like this would pay for itself with two or three homebrew Jaguar games on CD, since CD distribution is so much cheaper than cartridges.

If you're only interested in free homebrew games, the Skunkboard is a better option, and it's cheaper.

[jaybird3rd]

Zerosquare, on Wed Apr 4, 2012 9:58 AM, said:

If you're only interested in free homebrew games, the Skunkboard is a better option, and it's cheaper.

The Skunkboard is a good alternative, true, but the CD still offers certain advantages (very low unit cost, higher capacity, Red Book audio, etc.)

Also, I'm not "only interested in free homebrew games", I'm interested in buying homebrew games at reasonable prices, and seeing the authors keep as much of it as possible.  If they can reach a majority of the Jaguar audience by distributing inexpensive CD discs instead of cartridges, it's more money in their pockets, but the supply of JagCD drives is presently too limited to allow that.

[Felyx]

That's cool to support homebrew coders efforts

[TheGameCollector]

Zerosquare, on Tue Apr 3, 2012 10:14 AM, said:

I don't know where you're getting those inflated prices from. You can get a second-hand tested and reconditioned JagCD from Best Electronics for $135, and it includes a 90-days warranty.

Edit : damn, Atari Smeghead was just a bit faster than me

I was talking about a complete in box Jaguar CD, not a loose one.

[Zerosquare]

Oh, OK. Well since the original post was talking about alternative solutions, I assumed they were compared against (possibly used) "bare" JagCDs, since there's no point in paying extra for cardboard and shrinkwrap if you're a player and not a collector.