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7. Atari Video Computer System (1977) Atari Video Computer System (1977)Later known as the Atari 2600, the VCS brought video games out of the arcade and into America's living rooms. It was a snap to set up: Just plug the clunky-looking box into your TV set and grab the joystick. The Atari 2600 was the first successful console to use game cartridges, which allowed consumers to play multiple games on the same system and created a huge market for crude-looking but addictive titles such as Space Invaders and Pac Man. The Atari's games may not have looked much like Grand Theft Auto, but its influence can be felt in today's Xboxes, PlayStations, and GameCubes. AtariAge has more details. Pong, anyone? PCW photo by Rick Rizner; Atari VCS courtesy of Mike Mika Just in case nobody has seen this. http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20051224/tc_pcworld/123950

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. This release was done mainly for folks that don't have the ability to play the betas that are out there (no alpine/flash), but wanted to try out this game since it has received so much "attention" over the years. I wouldn't worry too much about the "waste" as far as PCB's, chips, board, etc...goes, there's plenty available... I wonder how many folks would buy that Tiny Toons Alpha? Definitely not something I would ever release.... However, I know when I first started collecting the Jag, before I had it, I would sure have liked the opportunity to pick it up.... One last thing, production costs were $39.20 per cartridge on this release. That's excluding the discounts given to JSII members of $5.00 off each cart, the freebies that were given away, shipping costs and the bad EEproms that I ended up with. I literally fronted a lot of money and still am no where near breakeven on this thing and never will be I suspect. It was done simply for the community and for folks that had asked for it. I can't think of too many folks that are willing to do something like that/ So why the criticism and how are you "offended" by this? I guess that sums up the Jaguar community in a nutshell. No matter what someone does for it there's always someone that has to try to bring them down. I'm just surprised it was you Linko... 984330[/snapback] Hey! I'm a JS II member. I didn't see the link for $5.00 off! I'm cool with it, besides what's $5.00 today anyway? Plus shipping is already included at your price. Thanks again.

Yes it was called AtariSoft. Atari was still Atari inc and they only had the rights at the time and rather than have other companies buy the license from Atari they released the games through AtariSoft. This was before Genesis and NES and the XL computers. So before 83 if I recall. There were SEGA games that made it to Atari computers for the 8-bit and ST but never under the agreement from the Sega settlement for the Jaguar.

It may have something to do with the three burning crosses on the other label, why they aren't selling as well, some Christians(there are more of us than you may know who are Atari/Jag fans) may be taking offense at that, I know I found it offensive. To bad too, as it's good artwork otherwise. I was checking out your site, deciding if I wanted to get the FFL beta, and I found K3V's label to be boring and bland, and I really like the artwork on the other label, but was offended by the burning crosses on it, and three as well, which is a tragic number to use that only makes it worse. In the end, I decided not to buy the beta at all, but that's becuase I have it on rom and can load it onto my flashrom anytime to play, so I finally decided that it wasn't worth $50+ to me just to have it on a real cartridge, nothing to do with the labels. 981030[/snapback] I was raised Catholic because as children we have no choice regarding religious beliefs but as an adult we have our own decisions now. I personally preferred the K3V label because it looks better and more like an official Atari product not because of some crosses burning or religion. Plus the fact that it's the same game I don't need two labels for the same game. No offense to anybody. Thanks

Other than the labels there is no difference between your beta and the other guy's beta right? Thanks

For a while I thought you were no longer selling products. It was just your web site what was relocated. I had the old address on my bookmark. Good to see you are still hanging in there.

Hopefully the gameplay will not suffer. Brutal Sports Football and NBA JAM TE are the only other games that look decent and play well. Sensible International Soccer is fun to play but lacks the graphics. All the other sports game just plain suck. In my opinion. Do you plan to release this at all? What ever became of Gorf? Thanks

The fact that it was made by Atari although by then it was under the third ownership of the Tramiels after Bushnell and Warner Communications, was the reason I got it. I've had my Jaguar since the limited release of NY and SF back in Dec 93. My local Atari dealer in L.A. got a few for us here. However, they ended up being defective when Doom would not function properly and I'm not talking about the networking. Atari knew of this problem and they sent me a new one in February of 94 direct from the company. 2005 seems to be the less usage I ever had on it. I used to use it for karaoke parties quite a bit but that has waned. I will probably use it when Erieville gets published. My stuff is literally gathering dust but then again so is all my other Atari products with the exception of this [/img] Please excuse the messy room.

That's very good that you added the SC1224 monitor output connection. So this means anybody can use their monitors without having one of these right? [/img]

Also, for what you're getting I think it's a very fair price point. $30 for 3 CD's of beta games is more than reasonable IMHO. Now that I've made the rules for pack #1 I'd hate to break them. I don't think that would be fair for those that are paying or have already paid. I'm absolutely certain they will end up on e-bay at a premium. Although unforutnate, there's not much I can do about it especially with a BIWN Rev 18 going for $78.00 on there, give these a little time and there's no doubt they'll be up there. I have already received several orders of more than 1. Yeah, you're right, maybe it is a little more than a "hobby", infatuation comes to mind.... When you say that "several orders more than 1" you are not limiting one per person? I'm going to e-mail you an order for 1 copy only but what would prevent me from buying all your inventory so that nobody else can get a copy of the limited run? (Other than you not selling me any at all). Thanks

No, I much prefer that shirt design to the other one. The difference was that the silk screen done on the company shirt was not meant for multiple washings. Both the front and the back side of my company shirt peeled off after only about ten washes, and it looked like I had been wearing it for years after only two or three times wearing it. I've known some others to have the same problems with the shirts. It's just a cheaper we-don't-need-to-wear-these-more-than-once-or-twice production style. Interesting. I have had three shirts. A medium that my friend gave me that barely fit over 7 years ago an XL that the black has faded that I forgot I had and the large that I purchased over a year that fits almost the same as the XL still black. No problems at all. Perhaps you guys got the early ones that were defective or are using the wrong setting for washing? My shirts are all Haynes if that matters.

I bought The Agony and Ectasy on VHS three years ago. I bought the entire episodes on DVD once I looked on Howard's website. I have yet to find the easter egg.

I'm not sure why you would say the rarer shirt was poorly made. It's a quality shirt. Heavyweight cotton not the cheap thin type that will rip after a few washes. Unless you are talking about preference of taste on the front design? I had contacted Norscot to see if they had anything lying around but they said that the got rid of the stuff after Atari went under and the few dealers that were left bought some of the stuff as well. Later

The catbox sold for $69.95. I think I bought it direct from ICD if not from Toad Computers, then a few months later I bought the S-Video cable and the SC catbox monitor adapter direct from ICD, Tom even answered the phone. The SC monitor adapter are even more rare to come by, I was lucky to find a second on one e-bay and have not seen one since and that was 6 years ago. The second Catbox I bought from Telegames UK was about 6 years ago as well. I was surprised they even had any when I saw their advertisement. Air cars was listed at $69.95 as well but I never bought it from ICD. I got mine from 16/32 systems. If I recall Nick sold them to me for about $80.00 or $100.00 each about 4 years ago as well maybe longer. I thought for sure that Scatologic would make the monitor adapters for the Scatboxes. The adapters are really well made. Later

The Jaguar shirt that I have does not have the ugly looking Jaguar. It's all black with the Atari symbol and the word Atari in white right above the red Jaguar on the front left side chest area. The back is exactly the same. [/img]

This is what my DartPro software says that I use for my Jaguar. What I create and play on the Jaguar also plays and looks exactly the same on a standard Karaoke players as well on PC Karaoke players. It all depends on how they are designed. I make mine simple and use an image for starting the songs then set a black background with white text and blue coloring for the reading of the lyrics. Then end it with the the image again. Nothing fancy but it works great!. The song lyrics may be preceded and succeeded by the images of your choice, displayed before the vocal part starts and after it ends, respectively. You may use for this purpose either an uncompressed bitmap (*.bmp) or a JPEG compressed file (*.jpg). To include the startup/ending images, check the corresponding boxes in the Bitmaps group, situated in the lower part of the Generate CD+G track dialog. Then, for every selected item, press the Settings button and choose the name of the image (use the Change button for this purpose). To comply with the very limited CD-ROM capacity of CD+G tracks, the selected images will be automatically converted to 16 colors (15+black), unless they are already available in this format. Use Dithering mode to select dithering method that provides the best conversion results. Dithering is a technique for simulating colors that are missing from the available palette. The missing colors are simulated by intermingling pixels of two or more palette colors. To check conversion results, press the Preview button. If the original image has high color resolution the results may be disappointing. To improve the final effect, you may try to reduce the color resolution by yourself. The Display mode selection box allows you to choose among four display options (Left to Right, Right to Left, Top to Bottom and Bottom to Top). Please note that when the vocal part starts right at the beginning of the song there may be not enough time to display the startup image without causing synchronization slips. In such a case, check the Insert silence box, placed at the bottom of the Generate CD+G track dialog. The Duration box, situated in the CD+G bitmap dialog, allows you to specify how long the image should be displayed before the playback starts and/or after it ends. Hopes this helps. As far as the CD+G + 4,etc, is supposed to apply as a variation of the VLM display not really used for the CD+G from I beleive what the instructions state. I have to look at that again. Later

A word of warning to those who are new in buyng the CD+G's. There are companies that now put encryption on the CD's that the Jaguar cannot read. One company is Sound Choice Spotlight series. I had purchased Headbangers Volume 8 and it wouldn't work. The company had an older version of the same CD and exchanged it for me and they explained that they had to put encryption to prevent unathourized duplication of the CD's. It was hurting the sales. This was about 4 years ago. Later

I have been using it for about six years and at our annual Christmas parties for the past four years with the ST monitor and have the Jag hooked up to the Catbox or Scatbox and run the audio through my Peavey PA system. I use DartPro CD+G to make my own Karaoke CD's as well since the CD+G's you buy at the music stores never have the good songs that I like to sing. The graphics that I add are just the scans of the album covers but it looks ok. I was still in my 20's when I started screwing around with it and now in the 30's. It's fun when you get a bunch of drunks "singing" away.

That's the monitor adapter that Walter is looking for over in this thread. Maybe you guys can work something out! BTW, it's not a homebrew adapter, ICD used to manufacture and sell them themselves. That is correct. It is the Atari RGB adapter for the Catbox from ICD. It works for all SC 1224 Atari Monitors. I have two of them. The only Monitor I did not test it on is the SC 1435. The adapter works with box Catboxes and Scatboxes.

It's on the website now. I don't think getting kicked off the board was the only reason to stop selling Jag products. I mean how much money can you throw away when most Jag fans are too cheap or can't really afford to buy newly released produtcs. I have all Scatologic's products and rarely use BS or BS Gold but I defintely enjoy using the Scatboxes over the Catboxes at this point. I know people would complain that their prices were too high but if you really want it just buy it. You will be happy that you did get it. As long as your happy with your purchases so be it. Who cares what anybody else thinks. I had asked T-bird once a long time ago on JI2 why he was representing Scato if he was always rude or had to get in the last word on every argument. His response was that Scott was worse than him as far as being sarcastic. Yet, Scott rarely stuck his head out of the turtle shell but I am sure he may still have read the posts and realized that ignoring the bashing that went on was the best thing to do. Now my question is will Curt or Jaysmith now have something new (ahem..code) to add to their collections or will that go with the ET cartridges in the desert as well? Either way I say good luck to Scatologic and thanks for your contribution. Now maybe some questions can be answered about the whole Hasbro releasing the Jag to public domain and how the developrs had a say in it. Thanks

A 2Mb Alpine can be upgraded to 4Mb, but it requires extremely precise smd de/soldering skills and should not be even considered by anyone who isnt very confidant of their smd skills. Also the chips you need are fairly expensive and hard to find. Then again, if you've got the skills, or knows someone who has, its a very nice upgrade. My friend is an excellent technician so he can do the soldering for me. He's fixed many of my things before. Money is not really a problem either but my compulsiveness is. You know the old saying if somenbody really wants something they will get it but at that excellent price who would want to pass this up? Take care If money's not the issue, then perhaps you could just buy a 4MB Alpine? Yes I can buy a 4 MB Alpine. Money wasn't an issue when I bought BS and BS Gold plus the Scatbox regular and deluxe plus the first version of JUGS was it? However, why buy a 4 Meg Alpine for $500 plus WITHOUT all the goodies that Curt is offering at $300. I'd rather spend the extra money upgrading the memory at say $30.00 each for the 8 chips required to upgrade and it would still be cheaper than buying everything one by one. I'm compulsive but not stupid when spending my money unless you count on the Scatologic products. Now don't get your panties all in a bunch. I'm kidding about your products but you get my point, right? Later I think the risk of destroying a perfectly good 2MB Alpine Board to try and convert it to 4MB is not worth the money you may or may not save by buying a 4MB one already. You could always buy the 2MB version, use it to get familiar with the Alpine and decide if that is what you want to own, then sell it to someone else and buy the 4MB one. That is an excellent idea! However, how many 4MB Alpines are actually available and would they be available if I decide to sell the 2 MB Alpine in the future. I have never sold any Atari products that I have purchased dating back to the 70's. I don't think I would start now. Glenn's website shows how he upgraded his. Upgrading the 2 MB Alpine will be my way to go if there aren't any 4 MB Alpines available in the future. I Personally wouldn't be the one upgrading it anyway. My friend would and I bet he could meet Scatologic's high level of standards with his skills. He has done many amazing things. He never really moved beyond the 8 bit Atari computers though but has had a Jag for many years that he wants to donate to convert over to a developers Jag by replacing the bootrom. Thanks for the advice. I will definitely consider it.

A 2Mb Alpine can be upgraded to 4Mb, but it requires extremely precise smd de/soldering skills and should not be even considered by anyone who isnt very confidant of their smd skills. Also the chips you need are fairly expensive and hard to find. Then again, if you've got the skills, or knows someone who has, its a very nice upgrade. My friend is an excellent technician so he can do the soldering for me. He's fixed many of my things before. Money is not really a problem either but my compulsiveness is. You know the old saying if somenbody really wants something they will get it but at that excellent price who would want to pass this up? Take care If money's not the issue, then perhaps you could just buy a 4MB Alpine? Yes I can buy a 4 MB Alpine. Money wasn't an issue when I bought BS and BS Gold plus the Scatbox regular and deluxe plus the first version of JUGS was it? However, why buy a 4 Meg Alpine for $500 plus WITHOUT all the goodies that Curt is offering at $300. I'd rather spend the extra money upgrading the memory at say $30.00 each for the 8 chips required to upgrade and it would still be cheaper than buying everything one by one. I'm compulsive but not stupid when spending my money unless you count on the Scatologic products. Now don't get your panties all in a bunch. I'm kidding about your products but you get my point, right? Later

A 2Mb Alpine can be upgraded to 4Mb, but it requires extremely precise smd de/soldering skills and should not be even considered by anyone who isnt very confidant of their smd skills. Also the chips you need are fairly expensive and hard to find. Then again, if you've got the skills, or knows someone who has, its a very nice upgrade. My friend is an excellent technician so he can do the soldering for me. He's fixed many of my things before. Money is not really a problem either but my compulsiveness is. You know the old saying if somenbody really wants something they will get it but at that excellent price who would want to pass this up? Take care

Can any of those boards be upgraded to 4 MB? Thanks

All the products are sold "as is". They have items for sale but they don't test the products yet they have the equiptment to test? I see that they also have 5 1/4 floppy drives for the ST. I don't recall ST's using the 5 1/4. If it's for the Atari ABC PC models or the 8 bit then I could believe that. Still very good prices if they do work.