justclaws

Congratulations mate, I'd been waiting for news of this product launch! Well done to your wife, mainly, your part was really very simple really. Cheers, JustClaws!

Hello, Thanks Matthias for the useful diagnostics. I hadn't realised, but have now verified, that since the server was (apparently) migrated again to a new platform it no longer responds to ping or traceroute. The "usanethosting" hosting company apparently took over hosting. That's useful, and in fact if I was using just DNS, from my PC, I would not be able to contact the server either, today. I'm at the hosting site, usanethosting URL now, trying to raise a call. Try this URL instead, for AtariHQ. http://atarihq.usanethosting.com/ Try this URL for the JI-II (Jaguar Interactive II Forum) http://atarihq.usanethosting.com/interactive/ Try this URL for the CGF (Classic Gaming Forum) http://atarihq.usanethosting.com/wwwboard/ I'll refer them to this URL, last time the server was down following a server migration, where all the CGI scripts were modified (and I didn't get told) then they said there wasn't a problem, however. The problem *is* definitely DNS, it get different results myself. So please post your comments about the availability history here. Thanks, JustClaws.

Sorry, I thought I'd written full instructions previously, but it appears not. If you are running windows, run Notepad, and edit the file c:windowssystem32driversetchosts (adjust windows bit to your PC) and add this line: 38.113.1.16 www.atarihq.com atarihq.com and save the file. *** LINUX users should know already, but should "vi /etc/hosts". *** Macintosh users - I'm not sure right now, but I can check 8.5. Now if you type "ping atarihq.com" it should immediately respond (but ZoneAlarm may ask if ping should access the Internet - yes, it's a diagnostic tool for finding out if the/any remote server is available, ***although some systems may deliberately not respond***.) However, you should see at least see this response, with IP address. > ping atarihq.com <RETURN> "Pinging atarihq.com [38.113.1.161] with 32 bytes of data:" You can also run "nslookup" if you're using NT, Win2K/Win2K3, XP. That means "name service lookup" and you can type: > nslookup atarihq.com <RETURN> The response will show your ISP default name server, and then the IP address of the atarihq.com server. If the ping succeeds, but the nslookup fails, it means your ISP has no entry for atarihq, and so it definitely is a DNS error. The hosts file is a local look-up, and should mean the browser will find the entry regardless of DNS. I hope this helps, and is generally useful regardless of this issue. Other useful tools to run are "netstat -r", and "tracert" (traceroute) which indicates the path taken to a remote server, and hop times... All these system tools (copied from UNIX) need Internet access. :-) Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello! OK, sorry if I over-reacted before to your "fun" name calling, but I didn't realise it was in fun, having been flamed recently by some so-called hard-core Jaguar fans, by email lately. No, don't worry, JI2 uses pure HTTP communication, only port 80. I also use ZoneAlarm (Pro). It's a great product, and isn't an issue. I am certain the problem is DNS related, it seems that the hosting company AtariHQ use may have some recurring conflict in the DNS. http://www.usanethosting.com/ Would it be possible for you to try the advice I gave above about putting in a manual entry to your hosts file, as a one-off test, then if it works, we know it's DNS related, and I can complain to the hosting company (with AtariHQ's permission) that there's an issue. Clearly as I have nothing to do with the rest of the AtariHQ site, just the /interactive/ (oh, and /wwwboard/) then the fact that you cannot get to anything at AtariHQ definitely indicates that you're being connected to another system, not the real server. Why is an interesting issue, your own ISP may have a DNS fault, it may not be picking up updates, and using cached out-of-date entries. Cheers, Richard.

Hello, Indeed, as I said on JI2 a few days ago... So, if I don't get chance later, can I wish you all the best and hope that whatever your beliefs, you can enjoy the Christmas period in peace and health, and wish hope to those who do not have the opportunity. Early Best Wishes for a happy and peaceful 2004 too, a year when you'll certainly get to buy more Jaguar products, I'm sure, and be able to ponder our luck. JustClaws.

OK, no hard feelings then, apology accepted, but I'd like real feedback! I guess it's a cultural thing, I'm English, and prefer a serious approach! Not that I don't like a joke, but we generally only "joke insult" mates. I don't know you enough to call you a "mate", UK slang for good friend. Cheers, JustClaws.

Is that the most intelligent & productive response you can give? If you don't like our efforts, can't you just say so, for discussion? Perhaps you're saying it's good? If so, please say so directly... Perhaps I'm supposed to take your comment as humour? If so, I don't find your response amusing, so why don't you just STFU? JustClaws.

Hello, Another thought... but I feel rude to talk about JI2 on another. Note the correct URL is: http://www.atarihq.com/interactive/ Incidentally, there is an archive. It's under-wraps for now, but once available will give per-thread and per-month availability of most posts (not most flame wars) for the last 14-15 months since I became the script developer for JI2. Every post you add is being logged, indexed, and stored in the archive right now, although the archive will be pruned and some threads removed where they are not actually about Jaguar - i.e. just flame wars. Key steps for this include the changes to posting messages I did earlier this week, displaying messages which I did last week, and a way of compacting the way messages are stored is in the works. I'm getting lots of criticism on the board, and several flames direct via email, for my efforts to help, but it's not my board, I'm just the script man, everything is agreed with Keita at AtariHQ, and for me, the thanks I get from long-time Jaguar fans whom I know and do respect far outweights the flak I get from newcomers, however. That's not to say all long-term Jag fans like the improvements, but most people realise JI2 could not continue. Not only did it break for technical reasons (both server and *mis*user created,) but for those who don't like it, well they're not forced to visit are they. It's easy to delete a bookmark, less so a habit though eh? So if JI2 gets 1 useful post a day, and not 10 useless ones, fine. One of the key factors with the archive is I don't want to dig up long-dead flame wars, or provide ammunition for new ones from the past. The useful information is what we wanted to archive... Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, Well I did see a DNS problem myself yesterday, but I saw that other people had been posting, but it's quiet anyway since the most recent flame war died. Sad, for ages, it had been quiet, but nice there, I'd rather see 1 post a day than 10 arguments! Regarding DNS entry - this is what I get, when I look it up. Name: www.atarihq.com Address: 38.113.1.161 Therefore, for me, it works, and other people are posting too, so it would appear to me that it's up. No scripts/data problems. After, or maybe even over Christmas, I'll be implementing two new things - user profiles, and a moderated version of the board with a subset of posts. You can then bookmark the "informally" moderated version, and have just Jaguar discussion. So if you want the "free speech and flames" version fine, but if you want to read just a rather nicer flame-free board, minus blocked folk, or posts, then you can have the nice clean "Jag-Talk" version. I hope that will satisfy both free-speech, and real Jaguar fans! Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, Hmmm... Well I don't know about the BJL and STUB boot ROMs, but with a normal Jaguar, it works just fine. It works on my K and M Jaguars and I never had a single problem with it. I think in the end stories about machines that it would not run on turned out to be related to faulty machines, I've not convinced it was related to the chipset. Of course Missile Command 3D still apparently does not run on some Jaguars, supposedly not on M's, or K's, I can't remember, but my early K with analog components on-board, my K without (bought in spring 1994) and my later M machine(s) run it great. Some programs do demand the Atari video initialisation though, and so can't you just test the normal boot-ROM on those Jags? Cheers, Richard.

Hello, Yes, I've got all the FAQs on the site, some of them I even wrote. :-) I'm sorry, I didn't realise they were 404. I'll fix them in the next few minutes. The simplest way would have been if you'd emailed me directly with the link problems, and I've have resolved them. I missed this post. The site will get fixed at some point when I've got time, I hate it broken! Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, OK, a couple more program extensions related to the Jaguar, I've delved through the development manual, and just really realised what a mess Atari got themselves into with filenames! Jaguar related programs NOT Jaguar programs! .EXE - A DOS development tool usually shipped by Atari/3rd-party! .TTP - TOS program, similar to .PRG, never seen yet on Jaguar, (except that Atari shipped TOS JAG development tools too.) .TOS - TOS program, similar to .PRG, never seen yet on Jaguar. Jaguar related data files, in addition to those already mentioned. These will never be executables, I hope, but may be Jag related. For non-programmers, this may sound confusing, but... it can be! .CNF - A file created by the Jaguar music tools, for MIDI channels. .IFF - A sound file which Atari development tools can convert. .AVR - A sound file which Atari development tools can convert. .TGA - A Targa format image, Atari shipped a TGA2JAG converter. .RGB - A 16-bit RGB format image, suitable for use on Jaguar. .CRY - A CRY image, as source, for use on Jag, from TGA2CRY. .J3D - An Atari 3D model data file, created by 3DS2JAG etc.. .JAG (2) - An Atari 3D model data file, created by 3DS2JAG etc.. (*** A later version renamed this format to J3D as a bugfix.) .JAG (3) - Part of an Atari JAGPEG file, similar to Atari's BPEG. .DAT(1) - the second part of a JAGPEG file, compression tables. .BPG - A BPEG format image, similar to JAGPEG. .LNK - An Atari linker definition file, used as input to ALN linker. .ALN - An Atari linker definition file, used as input to ALN linker. .68K - A piece of M68K code intended to be INCBIN'd into source. .GPU - A piece of GPU code intended to be INCBIN'd into source. .DSP - A piece of DSP code intended to be INCBIN'd into source. .DMP - A dump of memory, in ascii format, for debugging often. .DB - A script for the WDB or RDBJAG debugger tools. .RC - Run Commands - default options for some Atari tools. .INI - Initialisation file - default options for some Atari tools. .TXT (1) - A plain text file, just as on any other system, like DOS. .TXT (2) - The text (code) segment of a Jaguar program from Filefix. (*** A later version of filefix output .TX files, as a bugfix.) .DTA - The text (code) segment of a Jaguar program from Filefix. .BSS - A debug dump of the BSS (dynamic data) of Jag program. .SYM - The symbol table from a Jaguar program from Filefix. .INC - Madmac/GASM include file, contains equates and macros etc.. .C - 'C' source code, suitable for GCC. .H - 'C' include file, suitable for GCC. .L - An assembler or compiler output listing. .LST - An assembler or compiler output listing. .ERR - An assembler or compiler output listing. .OT - GPU (TOM) object code, from MadMac. (Non standard format.) .OG - Alternative (old) naming for GPU object code, from MadMac. .OJ - DSP (JERRY) object code, from MadMac. (Non standard format.) .OD - Alternative (old) naming for DSP object code, from MadMac. .O - 68000/mixed object code, from MadMac. .LTX - GASM assembler output file. .OUT - Parsed MIDI file, output by PARSE and MERGE Atari utilities. .SCR - Compiled MIDI score file. This is an object file like .O really. .PTC - Jaguar Sound Tool Patch file. .CMP - Compressed sound sample, created from .WAV by SNDCMP. .ASC - ASCII version of Jaguar Synth sound patch, MadMac source. .ENV - Envelope definition file, used by the Jag synth and music code. .MOD - A music wav sequence file, format originated on CBM Amiga. .CRG - Chunky format 16-bit RGB cinepak film. .CCR - Chunky format 16-bit CRY cinepak film. .AVI - A Microsoft Windows "Video for Windows" format file. .LZJ - A LZSS compressed data file, from LZJAG, for DELZJAG code. .ARC - An archive file created by AR68, a collection of .o modules. To clarify from the Atari development manual, earlier extensions... .COF - Common Object Format absolute location executable .ABS - DRI/Alcyon format absolute location executable .ROM - Alpine Board/ROM Image file, load to $802000. (No header!) (*** This would fit nicely with the suggestion for J64 as ROM dumps!) Goodness, that took ages... mostly extracted from the manuals! Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello Shamus, Absolutely, it's a BINary file, and that's all we can say about it. The .JAG format, or the more complicated .COF/.ABS are nice... With pleasure, I'll dig out the rest of the file extensions, and post a follow-up, I can't recall all the extensions that apply to Atari's Jaguar files now. If as an emulator author you have ANY special persuasive position over the Good-Jag maintainers, please try to persuade them to change .JAG to either .ROM or .AJR (Atari Jaguar ROM) or J64 (Jaguar 64) even maybe. The files they list as ROMs (like Matthias' demos, Bastian's demos, the BadCoder demos etc..) which are actually for BJL, should be named to conform to this, and of course the distribution should credit the authors, and they're not PD, I don't think, they're generally copyright but free. Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, Does your Jaguar run normal games OK? If so, it's just fine! When you say "converted it" what did you convert from/to? Did you download the CES demo from my pages, or get it elsewhere? How are you running them? On an Alpine, or a Flash ROM? Again, when you say "converted it" what did you convert from/to? Cheers, JustClaws.

I accidentally replied to my own post instead of editing it - woops! JustClaws.

Hello, Yes, there was an established set of Jaguar dev rules long ago. Unfortunately various people made things rather confusing... .BIN - pure binary (load/run addresses to be advised) .JAG - binary with JAG header (standard defined by JAG Server) This provides load/run addresses, and makes life EASY ** Use my BIN2JAG to add the header ** Use my JAG2BIN to remove the header .JAG - Also Atari format for 3D models, for use with Atari library .BJL - Alias proposed by JustClaws, StarCat and BadCoder for future .JAG binaries to avoid confusion with ROM files. .PRG - Special Atari binary, contains header information. ** Supported by BJL uploader. .ROM - Jaguar ROM dump for $800000 ** To strip the header, and create a .BIN for $802000, run my STRIPROM .COF - Special Atari binary, contains header information which allows code/constant data/variables to be at different locations in RAM, it handles this process. ** Supported by BJL uploader or Alpine tools. .ABS - Special Atari binary, contains header information. .ZIP - Compressed archive! .MID - MIDI files suitable for Sinister Developments Music Player! .S files are Jaguar 68000 source code generally. .DAS - DSP source files .GAS - GPU source files .OBJ - object files, output from assembler, input to the linker .RAW - raw files, just like BIN, no headers, but not executables! (e.g. RAW graphics, uncompressed, or RAW audio, no headers. Could also be RAW data ready for burning to a CD as a track?) Lars and I also proposed .BJL as an alias for .JAG in the future, as only BJL and JAG-Server loaders understand the JAG header. I do not remember if JUGS understands how to upload .JAG files. Starcat, I, and others, would like to see these standards clear.... If you have a BIN file, you can add a special "wrapper" code to the BIN file, to put it on ROM. The code boots, and immediately copies the BIN file to the correct location (presuming it's RAM) and executes it there. This wrapper tool is from Matthias Domin. The confusion comes from these other uses: .JAG - ROM dumps in "Good-Jag" distribution. (Grrr...) .PRG - Some people call their .BIN files .PRG, but they're not. (.PRG files are generally created by assembler/linker tools on the Atari ST - .PRG files are TOS binaries. ) .ABS (1) - Some people call their .BIN files .ABS, they're no .ABS (2) - Some people have distributed .PRG files as .ABS. ** 4Play included a tool called "ABS2BIN" (or very similar) with their JUGS kit, but it doesn't work on all .ABS files... .ZIP - Used by OMCGames at one time for his .BIN files, because he could not get his web-server to serve .BIN files at all. The people who distribute the ROM dumps of Jaguar games and the home-brew files don't reply to any requests about the "Good- Jag" distribution or lists. I consider this to be very inconsiderate! ** They apparently also ignored requests to remove the "4Play Music Demo" from their distribution, and various non-PD binaries distributed as such, and without any request to the UGD authors. Perhaps the other Jaguar formats can be added here later on? I'll add the extensions for the Jaguar libraries if I remember! Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, I've told my wife if I die unexpectedly, I'd like to be buried rather than cremated, with grave goods, like the ancient Vikings and others were. A set of backup CDs with photos and source code, encased in a block of resin, a Jaguar with some long-lasting protective coating on the PCB, we discussed a Sun UNIX server, but decided against it, maybe a set of UNIX manuals, printed on some kind of plastic film, at worst a UNIX quick reference guide carved into hard wood. What fun. A set of silver coated multi-purpose computer screw-drivers, a light gun, and some joysticks. That should give an archaologist digging my remains up in 3000 years something to think about I hope. The Jaguar cartridge? Tempest 2000! Of course I'm not planning on dying any time soon, so I've got a while to find somewhere suitable, many years I hope. I figure if the Ancient Egyptians can teach us now about their culture, we can teach the people in the future about our past. Emulation ignores the touchy-feely aspect! What would you have buried with you, if you were joining such a cult? Cheers, JustClaws.

Curt, Fantastic, as the guys already said, you're Mr. Atari in all but name. You folk in the USA have such huge houses! My study is a just a little room and my wife already complains about all the junk I have, and by English standards our house isn't small, so even if cash was free, I'm limited. You know I heard the other day that the UK is 4 times more crowded than Germany, and 8 times more crowded than France. I forget the figure for the USA, but in view of the massive land mass, it must have been significant... I'm over in Holland right now, I guess Holland is just as crowded as England though... but it has a really small population though. I like to have 2 of my most intellectually valuable stuff. Crazy I know. I then keep one in England, and one here in Holland. Software. Jaguars. Documents. Data. I back up to CD, and to ZIP disks, and put my most vital paper documents in a bank vault, and I've just started to photograph all my key documents and objects and put them on a secure Internet site, without web-access, as an archive... but you know now I realise I've got some email I really want access to, on a CD I can't read except from OS/2, using some specific software. So most email from <1995 is mislaid, along with some useful documents and source code I really want again. Huh! I don't even want to think about the integrity of my tape backups for all my Prestel email dating back to 1982. :-) Or my Spectrum source code for the commercial projects I had published! No, I'm joking. Mostly. :-) I'd be really anxious about the uniqueness of that stuff. I'm really glad that key lasted the course, floppies go bad so easily! There was a major public project in the UK in the 1980s, which wrote lots of information to optical disk, "for posterity", as a digital time capsule, to celebrate the Domesday Book of 1085. For years, it seemed the data was unreadable now, after just a few years... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2534391.stm Now if only we knew what happened to that "lost" Soul Star CD proto. Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean I won't lose all my data. Anybody else out there really worry about our digital archaeology? Cheers, JustClaws.

Gordon, do you think you could include an embedded BJL loader as well this time round, just like Protector SE has? That way, people can still download homebrew demos and games and try them on their Jaguars even if they can't burn them to CD. For instance, there a good number of demos out there already which are not on CD, and burning them to CD isn't a simple task I think. For example I have a CD-writer but it's rather old, and won't write multi-session audio, so I'm still stuck until I can afford to buy a new writer. Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, Take a look here for the PSX (PS1) specifications. http://consoledatabase.retrofaction.com/co...onyplaystation/ Sega Saturn http://consoledatabase.retrofaction.com/co...nfo/segasaturn/ RAM: 16 Mbits (same as Jaguar, 16 Mbits is 2 MBytes) VRAM: 8 Mbits (Jaguar uses main memory due to flexible graphics) Operating System ROM: 4 Mbits (Jaguar has just a boot ROM, no O/S) CD-ROM: 256K CD-ROM buffer (Jaguar has no extra buffer, sadly) Sound: 4 Mbits Sound RAM (Jaguar has 8K RAM on the DSP) Memory Cards: 128 Kbyte flash-memory (same as Jag Memory Track) Of course you could also mention the cache on the GPU, but it does not really help with the issues we discussed, and is only 2K anyway. So the Jaguar has 2 megabytes of RAM. (I'm ignoring the 10K cache.) The PSX/PS1 has 2+1+.25+.5 = 3.75 megabytes of RAM total. If you add the ROM (because it's got primitive pre-defined routines in ROM to save the programmer some hassle) you add another .5... The Sega Saturn had even more RAM, which helped it lots too. This does not mean the PSX was better than the Jaguar, it was a later machine, and like the Sega Saturn they were able to pump up the resources because of the higher initial price as well, where the Jaguar was sold at a lower initial price with the CD as add-on. The biggest cost cutting blunder on the CD was not adding RAM. Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, With all these feelings of nostalgia for the Jaguar "mass market days", rushing back, (not that we haven't had good times since!), I thought it appropriate to mention I fixed the Jaguar Journal archive pages. Jaguar Journal was a very popular publication for the Jaguar at one time, and you can read all about those days in the official archives! As my site is generally hopelessly out-of-date and broken, here is the direct URL to save you all the bad links that you'll hit otherwise. http://justclaws.atari.org/jagsite/jjournal/ Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, In my opinion... and this is my opinion... It doesn't make writing games any easier, nor distributing games on ROM any cheaper, or easier, since the Universal header was found. The cost of the ROMs will be exactly the same. It does not make the process of writing new games, part-time, for hobby programmers, any easier. It makes sales of CD games more viable, market wise. If there are any CD games which are not the subject of legal hitches but were not commercially viable for the limited number of CD (validation) bypass owners, then of course now a wider release can be achieved. The Black Ice/White Noise prototype comes to mind, but it's no game. The American Hero prototype, but again, it's not really a game. The Soul Star prototype, but it's not really a game, and unlicensed. I think we can be assured of a rerelease of Painter for the wider audience, and the other homebrew projects are just as far forward as they were before, so those nearing completion will enjoy a wider audience, but it is important to realise this doesn't make creating the games any easier, or quicker, it just allows a wider distribution of any new games on CD. Once again, I'd add that it should be clearly understood that for most cartridge games, the cartridge is a device that is used during the game, as a memory resource, it's not like a CD which is used to load data into memory. The CD is a loading device, like a floppy or cassette in the past. A cartridge extends the Jaguar memory capacity by the size of the ROM. No existing released games could be made to work from CD, because they could load off CD, but where to? Cartridge games already use the internal RAM for program code and data, CD games must load entirely to RAM. If we had the source for them, perhaps they could be modified, not every game will use the ROM as memory, some will load from it in sections as a storage device, just like Sinigord says Slam Racer does. We have no source code though at the present. New games designed to run in RAM can be made to load from CD, (not run from it of course) and games which are primarily 3D polygon based (with little texture mapping) need less RAM, like Iron Soldier II. Most homebrew games are 2D sprite based though, so every bit of RAM is important. Also music could be streamed from CD, but a DSP sound routine which can mix CD music and sound effects does not exist yet, even Atari games like Blue Lightning apparently load chunks of audio into RAM and then play it. A good example of the problems created for a Jaguar CD game by the relative lack of memory is Primal Rage. The CD has a vast capacity to store graphics and animations, but to use these, they must be loaded into Jaguar RAM, along with the existing code. That is why the Jaguar Primal Rage has smaller creatures than other versions, and why the fatalities can only be executed (no pun intended) after they load painfully off the CD. This is another reason why Blue Lightning has poor graphics, and no animation on the enemy graphics, due to the lack of RAM memory for the sprite graphics needed during a level. Graphics had to be small to fit them all in the Jaguar's 2MB RAM, (less CD buffer space), and were scaled up giving the pixelated appearance we see, and their relative monotony. If the Jag-CD had been fitted with another 2MB of RAM (or even the initially rumoured 512K of buffer RAM) then this would have changed the situation entirely. Remember, to read data from CD you need a buffer. This might be 64K, or it might be 256K. Officially Atari said you had to read data from CD, extract it from the buffer, and copy it into place, so that *could* mean you need to allocate 512K RAM to load 256K of data. The PS1 had more accessable RAM, as did the Saturn, because they were designed as CD consoles. (The Saturn ended up with a confused architecture and segmented memory due to the change from cartridge to CD.) The N64 could also use it's cartridge like the Jaguar as memory, but had 4MB instead of the Jaguar's 2MB RAM, Nintendo argued against CD for the above reasons I stated. Games like Zelda with 256 Mb (32MB ROM) as opposed to the Jaguar max of 6MB ROM (and released games only went up to 4MB) demonstrate how much memory is needed! Note that the GameCube is said to suffer from having too little RAM now, only 24 MB, where the PS2 has 40MB, and Xbox has 64MB, they use RAM like carts, data is loaded into RAM and run from there. Only things like streaming video use the CD during the game wheree possible. Games like the second Gamecube StarWars game have to stream data from disc into the Gamecube RAM continuously, because it does not have enough RAM to load all the textures and data into RAM at the beginning of a level. Large PS2 racing games do the same. Full motion video should not be confused with game code, the concept is different. A program can load into Jaguar RAM, which then stream the data from CD which it decodes and displays as a video. Games cannot work like that though, animated characters could not load data from CD on the fly. See Primal Rage as the example. Read up on game design and engineering if you do not believe me, these are well known issues. Memory limitations also apply to ROM games though. Imagine how much more attractive DOOM would have been if the sprites could have been created in more detail, closer. The reason they're pixelated is because the game (on PC and Jaguar) had to work with a limited amount of RAM (no point in needing 32MB RAM on the PC when people only had 8MB) and 4Mb of cartridge and 2MB RAM on the Jaguar, giving 6MB on Jaguar. Defining something to be 1/3 closer, means a lot more RAM. Look, if something was 10x10 that's 100 bytes. Bring it closer, define it as 15x15, and suddenly you need 225 bytes. Also, define it in 16 bit colour instead of 8 bit colour, and you need 450 bytes. Now let's have 8 frames of animation instead of 4 frames, and you need 3600 bytes instead of 1800 bytes.... Sorry for the long reply. Cheers, JustClaws.

Hello, I'm dreaming, I know I am. You're just TOO cool Curt! Any chance we'll ever hear the story of their discovery? When my pulse returns to normal, I'll really take this in! Cheers, Richard / JustClaws.

Aha... but your console is off-topic, this is a Jaguar forum. :-) I get a good GSM signal (not) off an Atari Jaguar 64 4MB Flash ROM. JustClaws.

There are no development tools for the Jaguar CD as such... There are just development tools, and you already have them, once you have a partly working game it is possible if you have planned your code to consider how to get data from CD, or to add-in things like playing movies. The core code is the first and most significant challenge in my opinion, not accessing the CD. The only other tools were tools to create a CD, or to connect a Jaguar/Alpine with an add-on to an Atari Falcon setup, that is all documented in the Atari develeopment manual (not very well) but we don't have the tools, or the boards. Basically, you write your game, and can load data from CD, but you already have (in the developer manual) the details of using the Jag-CD BIOS. I bought an old Apple Power-Mac to investigate creating these files, but to-date have not been able to get everything I need, together. StarCat is in the same situation. However, using these for me is a long way ahead. Glenn might be the best person to ask re: Jaguar-CDs and things. If your projects are already running on an Alpine or with a BJL in Jaguar RAM, then your project could be enhanced by playing movies, if that is the case, it's just a matter of plugging in the extra routines for playing movies and things like that, although the Atari code was so inefficient that it broadly takes-over the Jaguar while it's in use from what I understand. Games like Teque World Tour Racing totally rewrote the streaming video. Cheers, JustClaws.