atarifan49

Hey Lamont, is that $50.00 on the JVM? I gotta agree with T-bird on this one, not enough games to put these into production. I believe B&C has a bunch of these that just need a little "fixin" and they'll be ready to sell.... Which I'm still trying to figure out how to fix... Damn little buggers are not easy to figure out with a schematic. Glenn Dave Roth had the schematics for the JVM's, he told me he was going to post 'em, but haven't heard anything. I have another lead on these Glenn, I'll make sure you get a copy of 'em. Jason Jason, that would be awesome. Any help would be great. I wish I could also find the test software that Atari had. I have Atari's test procedure that they used for basic modem testing, just don't have the software. I did try sending an email to the guys who did Ultra Vortek to see if they had the test code. But they never replied. Glenn

I always thought Doom was one of the best games that Atari could've used for supporting the JVM. The ability to play deathmatch and taunt your opponent by voice was a great idea. Too bad it wasn't supported. Glenn

Does he still have the engine? Would be cool if he would like to release the source. Secondly is he still interested in programming a game for the Jaguar seems to be a person the Jag community would need. He is a very good game programmer. FROGGER for the Jaguar would really rule! TXG/MNX I would imagine he still has the code. He seemed a little interested in doing some work on the Jaguar again when I was talking with him on Friday night at the Alumni dinner. But he's really into doing work on the cell phone based games right now. He's been working with some advance processors on them that sounded pretty fascinating. I agree Frogger would've been cool. But for him at the time he just wasn't interested in doing Frogger as his first game after being away from game development for such a long time. I managed to convince him to come over from Dan Kramer's Atari booth to get in the picture. He was a little hesitant at first. Glenn

Hey Lamont, is that $50.00 on the JVM? I gotta agree with T-bird on this one, not enough games to put these into production. I believe B&C has a bunch of these that just need a little "fixin" and they'll be ready to sell.... Which I'm still trying to figure out how to fix... Damn little buggers are not easy to figure out with a schematic. Glenn

Does he have any relation to Eric Smith (one of the developers at Atari who worked on Club Drive)? Glenn

Are we going to see some old school Atari 8-bit portovers from you? Hmm maybe I will do that. I am not an advanced 68K coder but I am interested in the Jag programming. I have some ideas to. The most important thing for a game is that it must be fun, addictive and good game-play. TXG/MNX Ps. Would be cool to port an 6502 emulation engine, would make porting 8-bit games much easier There's already something pretty much done in the Atari HQ CD-ROM, as in the source for the 2600 Emulator. As T-Bird kindly pointed out, early working copy of source code for Dave Staugas's 2600 emulator for the Jaguar is on the Atari HQ CD. In the code he has GPU code written to interpret each 6502 instruction. Some of it may be salvagable or at least help generate some ideas. There is some Alpine code that can be loaded and run. It brings up a few different 2600 games. Runs extremely slow. Too bad the Virtual VCS developers had dropped their work when they got wind of Dave Staugas was working on a 2600 emulator. Dave commented to me in 1998 at World of Atari that he had taken a wrong direction in the emulation and would've restarted coding on his emulation if things at Atari had continued. And by the way, congrats on getting an Alpine! I think you will truly enjoy using it. Glenn

I didn't notice that when I first clicked on the link. What in the hell is that dude wearing tights for- and it says he wore them during developement, too. Andrew indicated they're for working the late hours in a bitterly cold office. It was advice he gotten from a veteran programmer many years ago and has stuck with since. And they've helped him many of times working long, long hours on projects. Does seem strange. But I used to have my computer room in a basement in a house I lived in in Colorado. Used to get so damn cold that I can understand the reason for them. I also asked him about what happen with the Lynx motion tracker. Here is what he had to say: In case some of you don't know, Atari was thinking of having the ability to connect your Lynx to a Jaguar to support the idea of using the Lynx as a motion tracker like in the Alien movies. That would've been so cool to have! Glenn

Below is a re-post from comp.sys.atari.announce. Glenn

Several things to check: 1. Make sure you're using a full parallel port cable. One that has all 25 pins connected in the cable. 2. Check to make sure that your parallel port is set to address $378 and EPP. I don't recall the IRQ setting (maybe 5 or 7). Needs to support true 8bit bidirectional communication. 3. Jaguar side make sure you're not trying to use on the 31 Oct 1993 developer stub ROM. Must have the 2 Nov 94 green screen. If you're running on a normal production Jaguar you should be alright. Don't run under BJL. 4. Make sure you have to most recent version of the flash software. I think it's dated sometime around May or June 1995. I would need to check on the version I have to be sure. When you run the software make sure the Jaguar is turned on and you have the controller ready with the 3 button held down. Start the software and press the appropriate key to continue. The software should toggle one of the control signals to bring the Jaguar out of reset. If everything works right, the Jaguar will come up and display "erasing" message, flash software should recognize this and wait, then transfer will commence one cart is erased. Good luck. Glenn

Carl, The fourth guy from the right (behind Gordon on the right) is a well known programmer from the 400/800 days for Sierra-Online - John Harris. I managed to get him to appear in the picture. He was a Jaguar developer for a while. Atari (Bill Rehbok) wanted him to do Frogger for the Jaguar since this was something that he was famous for developing on the 400/800 (plus Jawbreaker - a Pacman clone of the time). His time on the Jaguar was only development of a rendering engine. He had an idea at the time for a Pizza delivery driving game. What he was thinking of at the time was similar to what became Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. He only got as far as developing an a basic version of his rendering engine. Too bad the game never got started. I would've loved to seen such a game on the Jaguar! He a great person to meet and talk with. Over the years he's done cool projects: released a custom macro assembler for the 8bit, built marquee systems for airports using 800XL's, did Playstation & Gameboy development, now works on cell phone game development. Glenn

Gaztee, I think you're thinking of Mad Bodies. It was mentioned that it was going to be released on CD. But CD environment created some headaches that didn't meet the developers quality criteria. So they're planning on a cartridge release. Gorf Pluz was sitting in the prototypes case. Didn't get a chance to have JagMod display it for me. Too busy helping out at the show. Glenn

The one problem there is getting all the design files for the Oberon and Puck chips. Since Motorola has destroyed all that stuff the only hope would be if John Matheison still has the information. This is a more real possibility. I currently have a bare PCB for the JagDuo that I think would be cool to try and populate it with parts one day. But this would require a Jaguar sacrifice for a source of parts. Glenn

Jason, I only managed to copy the Cypress EPROM chips. There are 1 or 2 other chips in the VR that have code imbedded in them. I don't have the in-circuit programming tools and cables to extract their code. Did anyone ever managed to get the box of documentation from Virturality that had all their design notes? Glenn

That was probably because the game had a unreleased set of ROMs in it from the original game designer. He mentioned about the different ROM version in his keynote talk that he developed and never released. About phone lines and ATM's at CGE: Actually the Atari2600.com vendor also took credit cards. I helped wire up the phone connections to the booths this year. Only B&C, Intellivision, Telegames, Ubi Soft, and Atari2600.com had phone lines. And there was a phone line connected up at the DP booth for the webcam also. For ATM machines you need to leave the hotel and find a regular bank or something. Doing stuff on the strip is or in the casinos is not wise, unless you don't mind paying the charges for the convience. Glenn

No the shipping on them is now $10. The auction is starting at $2.99. And it is probably a hit or miss on whether you get one that is fixed by a simple part replacement to one that is totally fried. Glenn

B&C Computervisions also sells the cart (http://www.myatari.com). In addition there is the Jaguar System Test Board which I have details about on my website. Link should be in my profile with this posting. The Jaguar System Test Board does better testing of the system. But these boards have been pretty much grabbed up by collectors or other techies. So they may not easily be found. I'm pretty sure B&C is sold out of them. Also, B&C is now selling the LMS915 CD diagnostic cart and the test CD. One of my projects is to take the existing test procedures that Atari had written for use in their repair area and clean these up to make them more user friendly. I also want to incorporate the knowledge I have gained recently of repairing Jaguar CD units and document the DSA error codes that the LMS915 software reports. Regards, Glenn

An alpha of Tinytoons was just recently sent out. And I mean alpha. Neat to look at but lacks significant amount of gameplay. Requires a dev system (Alpine or Flash) to use. Fits on a 2Meg cart. But with what little it has, it doesn't justify the cost of wasting the chips on. Glenn

If I remember correctly there's issues with the game on a K series Jaguar (Toshiba made Tom and Jerry chipset). Works fine on the M series (which uses Motorola made Tpom and Jerry chipset). Glenn

It's all about communication. And when there's only one-way talking, then there should be no surprise if a wrong conclusion is made. It's good this is working out for everyone involved. Glenn

This is because the Jaguar Film format is based on Quicktime using Radius Cinepak compression. Atari paid a huge license fee to Supermac (around $80k for the first payment) to have the technology on the Jaguar. Because around the 1994 timeframe, Quicktime was only available on the Mac. Apple was just barely porting it to other platforms. All the professional tools were on the Mac (e.g. Debabilizer, Adobe Preimere). Mike Fulton wrote the tool. He never planned for making the tool on the PC, according to him. But it's funny that they ported the FILMINFO.EXE program. And someone in another message mentioned about the pixelization. I tried my best to keep that to a minimum. But I just don't have the same tools that Atari had. Some films convert just fine and others don't. I haven't been able yet to determine what makes the difference. The Cave informercial is like this mainly due to the amount of conversion it had to go through to get into Jaguar film format. It went from a 80meg MPEG1 to a 330meg Quicktime Cinepak. Glenn

Never seen the label myself. What's the reason for asking? Glenn

Don't worry, they don't have the same label as the original. Anyone who has even seen Aircars will know this is a second generation. So I would say that original Aircars will hold their value for collectors. These are just copies that are available because people have been bugging him for them. Also gives people who have multiple Jags and ability to network them to get another copy (without having to finance to get one). Glenn

I managed to get my website hosted again since my ISP doesn't give me enough webspace. Here is the URL: http://members.fortunecity.com/atarishowroom/ Contains a lot of techincal related stuff regarding the Jaguar. And those of you who are 8bit fans there's 1400XL and 1450XLD related stuff to. Regards, Glenn

I managed to get my website hosted again since my ISP doesn't give me enough webspace. Here is the URL: http://members.fortunecity.com/atarishowroom/ Contains a lot of techincal related stuff regarding the Jaguar. And those of you who are 8bit fans there's 1400XL and 1450XLD related stuff to. Regards, Glenn

As far as I know, playable. Glenn