atarifan49

A capacitor basicly serves the function of blocking DC voltages and allow AC voltages to pass through (filtering) or used as a means of storing electrical energy. The capacitors used for the cartridges are called bypass capacitors. They're typically of the value of .01 or .1 uf (microfarads). They're used to filter out any remaining fluctuations, or ripple, from the DC supply voltages. It is recommended in circuit design to have one of these capacitors fore each logic chip on a board. The capacitors are placed as close as possible to the component they are filtering the DC voltage for. Here's a web page that can go into more detail: http://www.seattlerobotics.org/encoder/jun...n97/basics.html Glenn

I wish Nolan Bushnell could've had the opportunity to get the company back. At least he had the vision. I don't think the Tramiels ever truly had their hearts into it. If they did, they would've cared more about the company's reputation. Hasbro sure got a "garage sale" deal for the Atari name! $5 million dollars. What did Infrogrames end up paying? $350 million for the name plus Hasbro Interactive? Glenn

It's mainly due to RAM limitations and CPU speed power. Let me try and give some background as to why I think this. Battlesphere is a good example of the proper blending of Gourand shading and some texture mapping (logos on side of ships). Fight For Life shows the struggle with heavier texture mapping. Haven't been able to look at the source for it yet, so I'm not sure how much they relied on the 68000, compared to using GPU/DSP. Battlesphere is also an example of what Atari had envisioned Jaguar programmers to one day progress to, writing games that completely rely on the GPU/DSP processors for all operations. Now Atari Games did show in Area 51 and Maximum Force the improvement you could get with the Jaguar chipset by beefing the system up with a better processor and some more RAM. The Jaguar is only using a 68000 processor, which internally can do 32bit, but externally communicates at 16bit. Atari Games used a 68020 initially and a R3000? RISC processor for later Co-Jag systems. 68020 is a better processor than the 68000. But it was costs that drove the decision to use the 68000. Also, you're trying to compare game systems from different stages of technology advancements. Jaguar chipsets were desgined and worked on in the very early '90s. Around that time, Gourand shading was one of the features being utilized by games at that time. By the time the Jaguar was on the market, things were advancing to texture mapping. Jaguar's design focus wasn't texture mapping. How long has the GBA advance been around? GBA has the luxary of years of evolution of technology behind it. Plus, I would imagine it's R&D budget is a hell of a lot bigger than Jaguar ever got. You just can't compare apple's and oranges like this. You have to look at the persepective of the time the system was designed and marketed. The systems to properly compare with of that time is SNES, Sega Genesis, Turbo Graphics, and 3DO. And if you compare it against the PSX (which came out in 1995), remember, Sony invested around $500 million dollars in the R&D of that system. Sorry for the bouncing around on the answers. But your questions don't necessarily have simple answers. Glenn

Sam has been part of the Board of Directors with Conxion (http://www.conxion.com/about/board.asp#Sam%20Tramiel). He currently works with Tramiel Captial, Inc (I wonder how much of that captial is the squandered remains of Atari?). Here's the text from their web site: Glenn

Mine was Cybermorph, followed by AvP, then Tempest 2000. Glenn

Brad, What did you use to secure the 9pin connector to the controller housing? Is that a rivet of some sort? Glenn

I recommend grabbing one when you can. Very good controller. They're not easy to come by. I ended up paying around $40 to get one. I bought mine from Telegames at the last Classic Gaming Expo. Anything beyond that is getting too much. Glenn

Well, if someone can get through to the Brainstorm guys and confirm if they still have the source code or not, that would be great. And then convince them to provide it would be even greater. I've tried several times in emailing them about the GCC libraries. Got no replys. Glenn

No Battlesphere source code on the CD. But the Hoverstrike and AVP source code is correct. It's not final versions but more of work in progress type of stuff. Code was found on Syquest and/or floppy disks. The encryption stuff is from early 1995. Again, not final stuff. But it is commented and is better than no source code. There is even work in progress on the Atari version of the 2600 emulator that Dave Staugas abandoned when he realized he took a wrong direction with it. The CD is collection of files pulled from HD's, CD's, Syquests and floppies. Hope that clarifies some potential questions. Glenn

I'm there!!!! JagFest-CGE!!! Yeah baby!!! Glenn

MAME plays Area 51, Maximum Force, and Vicious Circle just perfect. Haven't heard from anyone with a PC light gun to confirm how well that feature works (there is a USB PC lightgun that is MAME compatiable) with Area 51 and Maximum Force. I use the mouse for the cursor control. Aaron Giles did a great job on the MAME engine for the Co-Jag. The source code for MAME's Co-Jag has been out for at least several months. Don't know if any of the Jaguar Emu writers have looked at it for any inspiration. Glenn

Too bad that isn't supported by MAME yet. MAME guys said they're leaving that one out due to it being licensed by Midway to some company. The Vicious Circle prototype is interesting to play also. Got a chance to play through the whole game. Interesting game but nothing technologically new. Just another Mortal Kombat type of game. Had enough of those. I'm really looking forward to seeing Area 51 Site R on MAME also. Don't know when that will be. Glenn

Just want to make sure that people understand that this is a demo, not a complete game. I forgot to mention that. I has more story and a little more play than Caves of Fear. No scoring system. You play Jack (played by Timothy Bottoms) and you're asked to go on a mission to stop a madman who got his hands on a bio-chem weapon formula and to rescue a girl named Laura who Jack cares about. The game starts right out in a strip club. Has the actions displayed with text at the bottom of the screen with Jack's voice voicing the actions. Play is simply controlled by the 'B' button. Some paths will end with a To Be Continued then to a black screen. You press the 'A' button and you will get a selection to restart the game. I have found one path where the game links to a missing movie track (probably due to a bad build of the movie control logic). For those interested, TXG/MNX found this link: http://murl.microsoft.com/LectureDetails.asp?590 It is a presentation conducted 3 years ago by David Schwartz and Len Kain of ImaginOn about their Internet TV product. Len is the first speaker and David takes over about 20 minutes later. At the 55 minute point David gets into the technical aspect of the product and how the interactive TV product is developed. This is how the Jaguar Gamefilm programs were made (Caves of Fear and American Hero). Its interesting in the fact that they use a electronic schematic capture tool (OrCad) to generate Netlist file that is used to generate the movie layout (e.g., branch points, loop backs, etc). The streaming video is about 70 minutes long and plays best on a DSL connection. The email address listed is not longer good for him. He doesn't work with Imaginon anymore or has anything left from his days at Atari. Just an example of another fine invention developed by a former Atari employee! Atari the company of great innovation (in it's days)! Glenn

That's the region that the Butch chip registers mapped to. I was at work when I typed that so I was just going from memory. Here is some breakout of some of the locations that I know about for the CD: ; Butch's hardware registers ; BUTCH equ $DFFF00 ;base of Butch=interrupt control register, R/W ; ; Offsets from BUTCH ; DSCNTRL equ 4 ; DSA control register, R/W DS_DATA equ $A ; DSA TX/RX data, R/W I2CNTRL equ $10 ; i2s bus control register, R/W SBCNTRL equ $14 ; CD subcode control register, R/W SUBDATA equ $18 ; Subcode data register A SUBDATB equ $1C ; Subcode data register B SB_TIME equ $20 ; Subcode time and compare enable (D24) FIFODAT equ $24 ; i2s FIFO data I2SDAT2 equ $28 ; i2s FIFO data (old) You won't find this documented in any released information from Atari. This is the kind of stuff they didn't want developers to know about. They wanted them to use the CDBIOS for all interaction with the CD and not access the hardware directly. Only creates problems should they ever had updated the BIOS for the Jag. Don't confuse the ROMHI register value with the /ROM1 memory control signal. Not the same thing. /ROM1 is a active low signal that is used to address or enable memory chips or other devices in that are mapped to the cartridge region of memory. As far as I know nothing exists. Atari only equipped the Jaguar with 2MB of RAM. Maybe they left this open for future Jaguar expansion when DRAM prices would be cheaper for the Jaguar 2. E00 000 is beginning location of the boot ROM (controlled by ROMHI bit value). DFF FFF is End of cartridge memory C00 000 (end of 4Mb cart space) 800 000 Start of cart space Correct. Not dedicated to anything. May mirror lower memory locations. Correct. Nothing. CD does use one of the GPIO signals (I think GPIO2 or 4). If ??marks here are free I se endless of possibilities to add internal ram to the jag... but perhapps I just confused =) (atleast 6Mb between $200 -> $800) and then 2Mb at $c00 -> $e00) atleast! !?? But what will that do for you? I thought the 2Mb unused cartspace was free.... I would realy like to get this sorted out... if u please =) Thanx! I think as long as you don't use the above mention Butch register locations. Whatever is designed, you would want to do as much compatiability testing with a CD unit installed. Clear things up some? Glenn

I think there's more than we know. Just recently "American Hero" has been found. It's similar to Caves of Fear but is X-rated.... Keep your eyes peeled for that one being available soon. Jason Hmm liked caves of fear already the video quality was good... hmm when I ever can movies to work on the JAG.... then I have some great ideas with it... Who is gonna release AMERICAN HERO? I've been selling copies of the American Hero to people. I've included it for people who I either repaired their Flash cart for them or provided them a new GAL chip for their Flash cart. It's about $10 + shipping for a CDR copy, jewel case and color printed jewel case inserts. But like Jay said, it's NC-17 rated game. So no minors! Glenn [email protected]

The Jaguar only supports types of RAM externally that don't require refresh signals from the Jaguar. RAM that falls in this category is Flash, Static, EEROM, and ROM (EPROM, PROM, etc). You don't make a call to external cartidge memory, you just access it. Access to the proper region of memory (which happens to be $800000 to $DFFFFF in memory) will place the address on the address bus and generate a logic low signal on the ROM1 signal line along with the appropriate level on the Read/Write signal. The ROM1 signal is the main singal that would trigger the memory being accessed. Read/Write will control which direction the transfer is going. All twenty-four address lines are available on the Jaguar cartridge connector along with 32-bit data bus. So far, I don't know of any device that interfaces directly another CPU to the internal Jaguar bus. The CD unit uses a chip called Butch to communicate with the CD (68000 and GPU or DSP do the control). MPEG cart uses just a MPEG decoder, not a CPU (MPEG decoder does support its own DRAM). Even though the VR headset contains some processors, they're running independent of the internal Jaguar bus. Also, the same goes for the Jaguar voice modem. It uses a microcontroller (8051 type) to communicate with the Jaguar through serial I/O. The Jaguar has a 6MB access window in memory available through the cartridge port. Only up to 4MB has been used for cartridges since there doesn't exist any 6MB size memory. The Jaguar CD Butch chip uses the $DFFxxx region of memory for its registers. That's a good example of the use of the upper 2MB of that 6MB's. There's no memory signals on any of the other ports on the Jaguar (joystick, DSP, or A/V). Only through the cartridge port. The Jaguar 2 does have a third port that has a limited amount of some address signals. But it's a mystery as to the true intent of that additional port. Hope I answered your questions. Glenn

There's no way to dump and reproduce one of these Test CD's. The test CD contains several precisely placed error inducing marks on the CD surface. Couple are the shape of a square each of a different size to simulate temporary data drops due to something on the surface of the CD. Another is a wedge shape object that causes increasing lengths of data drops as the CD rotates around to that position each time. Unless you happen to know someone who works for Philips who may still have the CD master, I don't see any way of reproducing such a thing. Glenn Hmm when you can dig and find me a name from some people at Philips who worked at it, I can try to contact them. I have worked temporary at Philips Display components and Semi-conductors... maybe I can use some old contacts there... That part of Philips doesn't seem to be around anymore. It was their Laser Magnetic Storage (LMS) division in Colorado Springs. It has been sold off to some other company as far as I could tell. I tried contacting the engineer who worked on the latch problem. They had to re-engineer the CD latch mechanism. Very interesting paper where the engineer uses some calculus and physics to describe the forces applied on the latch to open the CD cover and how to solve the problem they were having with it. I also have some papers on the testing they did with it where they were dropping a 1lb (or heavier) steel ball on a work surface at various points around a Jaguar with a CD unit. They were ensuring that the CD latch wasn't opening on its own. Philips put a lot of effort to make sure the CD unit was a quality made product. They also had various designs of internal packaging ideas for the CD unit. And I think SCI in Thailand was the company hired to do circuit board assembly the CD unit for Philips. Jaguar controllers were also made in Colorado Springs. The local electronic surplus store had bought some on a parts trade. I bought two recently when I was back there. One of the controllers had a defective pin (pin was too wide) and the other has a defective joypad. But at least I can use them for parts and experiments. Glenn

There's no way to dump and reproduce one of these Test CD's. The test CD contains several precisely placed error inducing marks on the CD surface. Couple are the shape of a square each of a different size to simulate temporary data drops due to something on the surface of the CD. Another is a wedge shape object that causes increasing lengths of data drops as the CD rotates around to that position each time. Unless you happen to know someone who works for Philips who may still have the CD master, I don't see any way of reproducing such a thing. Glenn

Sadly, the 2MB Alpines have so many SRAM chips on them that the battery (which is not rechargable) dies after saving the game for only about 2 years. The batteries might be good if the battery backup switches were turned off. But then no code would be retained. Even under less of a draw the batteries last about 7 years before they degrade and if these are real developer cards they probably have batteries on them that are 8 or 9 years old by now! Chances of there being any good code on them are slim. That's why when I got mine, I replaced the battery and installed a lithium battery holder from Radio Shack. That way I could easily replace the battery with a fresh one and use the cheaper CR2032 batteries. Had to use a clip of wire off of a resistor to help mount the battery holder to the board. The pin on the negative connection (I believe; its the one by itself) was too wide to fit in the hole on the board. Glenn

Best sells some individual pin sockets that allow you to have a part that is socketed but mounts very close to the circuit board. They are the same type of machined pin that is used in PGA style sockets. They can be a real pain to install but it's worth it for something that you need a socket on without having to cut holes in a cartridge casing. I've found once I get the solder removed, I use a dental tool to help open the hole up some more and use my soldering iron to help insert them into place. Sometimes I use a 74LS TTL chip that I'll bend up one of the pins on to help hold the pin while using a soldering iron to melt the solder and allow the pin to get into place on the board. Of course I use a chip that I plan on throwing away. I tried to see if I could find them on Best Electronic's web site, but wasn't having much luck finding them. They run about $15 per package. Don't remember the amount you get. Glenn

Did you add the DB25 cable out the side of that cart? All of My FlashROMS and all the ones that the rest of ScatoLOGIC and our testers own are all the ones with a DB25 connector positioned on the front of the cart. Did you remove the connector and solder the cable into the board directly? Or is this the proto of the flash carts? Maybe that's why the GAL security fuse wasn't enabled on it. Glenn

BJL is buit in to Protector SE. So all you need to do is get a BJL cable. Glenn

If you can't tell by now, I love the Jaguar! Digging into the technical aspects makes me feel like an archaeologist. I was like this on the 8bit Atari's until I got bit by the Jag! I may not be adept at writing games, but helping out on technical stuff is the niche I found that I can do. Thanks again for all the kind words. Just doing my part to keeping the old cat purring... Glenn

Fortunately, the PAL or GAL chips used on the Alpine are not protected. Also I found equation files for them on a Richard Miller Syquest file backup cart I own. So replacements for them can be easily done. I'll have to add them to my tech file web site. Man, so much to knowledge to share...where do I start? Glenn

All it took was one! Just got very lucky. Someone else I knew attempt to read his some time ago and ended up killing his flash cart. He's got it back working now. It was because of that most people were reluctant. I was told by the designer of the flash cart that he programmed the security fuse in the ones he did. I guess the one that was read was an early one. I'm just glad that the mystery of the Flash carts inner functions is no longer a mystery! I would love to be able to make some of these carts, but trying to procure parts for this cart is not easy for me. I don't even have the money necessary to buy a large volume of the necessary Flash ROM chips or get circuit cards made. Besides, someone else already has a super flash cart designed and that would impede on his design. I don't have any intentions of making these things. My intention here was to be able to repair what existing carts exist and help keep them alive. Glenn