Tyrant

Im mostly a Jaggy fan because Im a programmer, and I really like the Jaguar hardware. When creating things, I like to push the limits, if modifying a game engine or writing code on rather limited hardware, I love to push the limits of what is possible. The Jaguar, while a very powerful system for its time, it was never pushed all that hard, so there is a lot of room to (hopefully) impress a lot of people, and to really push peoples expectations of what a Jaguar is really capable of. Its not all about impressing people tho, I really do like the chalenge of Jaguar coding, and working out ways to do things with its rather odd collection of processors and abilities.

D'oh! *lights a candle for the safe return of the spirit of the edit button* That last sentance should be "...pulls most of the reviews, and a load of other threads too."

Thats probably just because a) your not used to it, and b) your lighting is also on a 60Hz AC supply if Im not remembering things badly. If Im not mistaken, the reason PAL and NTSC use 50 and 60Hz respectively is that the local electricity supply in the two regions is at 50 and 60Hz, and thus the minimal unconsious flicker from electric lights will be in sync with your TV. Of course I have no idea where I heard that, and it was a looong time ago, so it could be totally wrong, but Im sure I did hear it and not dream it, and it does make sense to me at least . Thanx Atari74user, I'll let others speak about my Rotaries, as I can hardly be expected to provide an objective opinion . You may want to do a search, back when I was selling them more regularly, there emerged something of a tradition of each new owner of one posting a little review. I'd suggest searching for "tyrant rotary", that seems to pull most of the reviews.

I've got one of them somewhere too, nicked it from the 6th form study room at a school I was working at. Also has a nice little article about the makers of populus if Im not mistaken.

Since this is rapidly turning into "Show me your Dreamcast collection" I may as well add one item from mine, then perhaps we can return to Jaguar (and family) collections? (not that the DC isnt a lovely machine, but its not as closely related as say the Nuon, or other Atari's).

Its called Radient Silvergun, and I do believe its widely held to be the best shooter ever, so yes, they did (Not a Saturn owner, Im sure it has lots of other good games)

Actually I got Stone to do it, while making my uber-jaguar-of-doom . Its got the region switch, with LED mod, a tripple way boot rom select, for the normal boot rom, the Atari green stub rom (developer rom) and BJL (hacker rom), a stop cable (to conenct it to an alpine dev kit), an internal resistor on the stop cable so I dont have to plug one in on the other end when not connecting it to an alpine, and the cartridge insert pins are soldered together, so I can use bjl without inserting a cartridge. Its a really minimal change in speed, you'll probably never notice it. On the ST interestingly the 50/60 Hz setting is software controlled, as some games and demo's have an option to change it.

Its swings and roundabouts, we get a bigger display area (at least on well programed games). Pal has more vertical lines than NTSC but has a 50Hz refresh rather than 60, its a minimal difference, and any well programed Jag game will skip one frame in 6 on an NTSC machine in order to keep the speed the same in both regions. Of course not all games do that, but the difference is minimal. If you really care, its easy enough to open up your Jaguar and carefully remove R140 (an smd resistor) from the underside of the board, thus turning your 50Hz Jag into a 60Hz one, even better, you can put some thin bits of wire onto it and route them round to put a switch on the outside. Use a DPDT switch and a replace the LED for a tri-colour one and you can have the Red LED when in 60Hz and the Green when in 50 (NTSC Jag's have a red power light, Pal ones have a green one).

I think it should be renamed to "Improving Clicks!"

I cant speak for anyone else, but I for one am bored of the perpetual "Best Game" threads. Im most interested in the Jaguar's hardware and programing future games, rather than endless lists of what everyone thinks are the best games already made. However, judging from the number of times the subject comes up its clear Im in the minority here and most people are more than happy to produce and read such lists.

I doubt highly that anyone would buy a Jaguar now unless you paid them. Yes we all love it, but face it, its not old enough or popular enough to be a classic system, and there's no way on earth it can compete with anything on the market today. Should the new Atari try to re-release the Jaguar it would show they have truely lost the plot, unless it was a very limeted thing just for us, the fans of the old system, which I highly doubt they'd do somehow. The Jag's commercial lifetime is long since past, its still a great machine, but its part of history, and its future is never likely to see anyone making a profit from it again.

An excelent read, many thanks for sharing.

No, I said I use Media Player Classic, not the classic Windows Media Player, there is a distinct difference However, after having trouble with a half downloaded copy of Blade Runner just now, I decided to try the DivX Player that the divx installer insisted on installing, and instantly regretted it as soon as it opened, what a hideous player, almost as bad as quicktime, but less responsive (thankfully I dont have to deal with quicktime any more since Media Player Classic has a plugin for quicktime files, and another for realplayer files ). Anyway, it did manage to play Blade Runner and the Dream System rips, so it looks like I'll have to upgrade media player classic, or else live with having to use the hideous divx player for the problem cases. Glad to have avoided causing you the headache of having to fix your way of ripping things.

now wtf didnt that work? *mouns the death of the edit button*

Hmm... so far I've only got the advert and vidgrid down, but both apear to have problems. I might need a newer divX codec, or it might be an encoding issue, but the sound slips (plays slower than the video) and on the advert there are places where the video freezes entirely for a while. Thats playing back on win2k via media player classic, 733mhz machine, should be good enough, plays other divx files with no problems at all.

As the t-shirt says, "Tempest 3000 is reason enough"

The Doom risc parts are in source already, so no need to disassemble them, but they're machine generated, so no comments and no labels, and there's rather more than a few chunks worth, and trying to work out what each section does, let alone how it does it, would take a while. Its doable of course, but it'd be a LOT easier with the original C source and its comments, variable names, etc.

I'm sure I've asked this before, but dont remember getting an authorative reply. Do any of us (Songbird?) have the C source for the risc parts? Yes the tool that converted them to asm is gone (is it really?), but is the original source gone too? It would be worth begging/bribing ID to look for it, as the comments would be so informative. As I remember it the only comments were in the parts of the code which had to be manually patched after the conversion (and that lovely one repeated endlessly about the dsp ). Somewhere the original risc C source has to exist, no?

I only own PF for the Jag, but I havnt given it all that much playtime, I guess I should do really. One pinball game I would truely recomend however is Starball(s) on the ST, its shareware and on an STFormat coverdisk somewhere, and is lovely. Off topic I know, but only a little.

Here's a pic of one of mine. If you search back through the forum here (search for "rotary controller") you'll find many reviews and descriptions of them (and comparisons I seem to remember with both 2600 controllers and JediJeff controllers). However as I just said, you cant buy any just yet as I dont have any. When I do, they sell for £50 + £5 for postage, and no, I dont take advance orders or waiting lists or anything like that as I believe them to be unfair. Keep your eyes peeled on the forum for an announcement, but dont expect one soon Im afraid.

I've been very busy getting ready to have huge renovations done to my house, so I apolagise for the lack of a reply earlier. As stated I do make and sell Rotary Controllers, however, I dont have any in stock at the moment and I wont be able to make any for a while, as I'm about to have huge renovations done to my house, and all my consoles, controllers, tools etc (even my table) are in a friends spare room. I will however try to make more as soon as I can, as I know there are quite a few people wanting them. However, when I do, I may not be able to make all that many, as Im running out of basic Jaguar controllers. Up until now I've only used new (or Atari reconditioned) ones, boxed and minty fresh, but it seems they're getting harder to find now days (at least in bulk). Should anyone know of anyone with some (new and boxed, and preferably cheap), do let me know.

Umm... sorry, what? link two whats together?

Its... umm... hmm... its got a very yellow box, really stands out well (and thus makes it easy to avoid).

Im entirely self taught, and without being too modest I think Im rather good, if a little lazy. Ok, a lot lazy. Agreed, and judging from the amount of time I spend posting relative to the amount of time I spend coding, perhaps they have the right idea?

I still think the best ebay auction I ever saw was very hard up a girl selling her imaginary friend into slavery to cover her bills. Was really sad and yet so cute a concept at the same time.