Zerosquare

Yes, if you can, get the SCART cable. It's RGB, so you'll start with the best quality you can get. It can be a bit expensive, but if you could afford a HDTV, it shouldn't be much of a problem But it ultimately depends on the specific TV model you have. The way they display analog sources (even good quality ones like RGB) ranges from 'excellent' to 'lousy'. And more expensive models are not necessarily better at it.

Although they have the same RCA plugs, cables for composite and RF are different. "Composite" cables are rated for a bandwidth of a few megahertz, RF cables are rated for a bandwidth of a few hundred megahertz. I wouldn't bother, anyways, as RF output on the Jaguar is mediocre. Get the RGB cable if your TV has a SCART socket, or the S-video cable otherwise. The picture will be much, much better.

Congratulations and welcome among the Jaguar programming community

There is no priority list, so no need to rush to reserve anything We'll take preorders later, and depending on this, we'll have as many cards manufactured as necessary (and maybe a bit more). And I don't think you can get CF card for free, but low-capacity ones are quite cheap ; if you don't want to buy one new, it's not too difficult to get used ones, either.

I wouldn't call them "dirt cheap", unless you've got diamond dust where you're living Anyways, Best Electronics is well known for its huge Atari stock, yeah.

GREAT thanks Curt ! We're currently trying to reverse-engineer Rygar's Atari Lynx-to-TV adapter, to duplicate it using modern technologies, i.e. a FPGA instead of tons of discrete logic. (http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=139066 http://www.yaronet.com/posts.php?s=118999) Having the schematics will be very useful !

There is a compatibility list on Virtual Jaguar's home page. I don't know any equivalent for Project Tempest. Anyways, as it's been said before, a lot of games work badly, or not at all, on either one.

In the Jaguar SDK, there is an audio engine that supports FM synthesis in software (and IIRC, it also supports wavetable synthesis). I think that's what was used for the "FM-sounding" games.

Great post, kskunk. I completely agree (but was too lazy to describe it in such details )

No. A software-based 3D renderer can't seriously compete with dedicated hardware, unless you have tons of processing power available to compensate. While a hardware-based solution puts a limit on what you can do (e.g., no texture filtering on the Playstation), it offers a polygon drawing speed much higher than a pure software-based one. Even the Jaguar's blitter, while powerful, is no match for a chip that can draw a textured and lighted triangle by itself with a single command. It is an addressing space issue. The Jaguar has a 24-bit address bus (16 MB space). The lower 8 MB are reserved for RAM. The "missing" upper 2 MB in the ROM space are reserved for the boot ROM and I/O registers.

The words "read the button edges" (instead of something like "detect the button edges") made me think you thought there was a hardware register for that. Anyways, we agree.

Nope, the hardware only gives you the current state. If you want to detect transitions, you have to code an edge detector yourself.

That would be cheating

...wow Everyone has different tastes, but I'm really surprised to see someone prefer a game with bad frame rate, terrible controls and boring graphics to another one that's smooth, responsive and with great graphics, even if it's an unfinished demo.

A VGA male-to-female extension cable usually works, but some of them don't because they don't connect all pins (both VGA cards and Jaguar controllers use fewer than 15 wires ; unfortunately, the unused ones are not the same for both). Additionally, sometimes the plugs may not fit well.

Thanks ! The project started several years ago, and at the time SD cards were slower than Compact Flash cards (it is less of a concern nowadays). As we intend to do things like audio and video streaming, speed is important. Another reason is that the specifications for Compact Flash cards are available for free. SD technical specs are only partially free -- if you want to know how to use the higher data transfer rates, you need to pay a large sum of money, sign a NDA, etc. There are also no free specs for the next revision of the standard (SDXC cards), and backwards compatibility is not required, so future cards may not be compatible. As kskunk said, it is used to select the RF channel. It is present on US models only. Don't bother about it, RF output is crap anyways

Awesome collection ! You must be Jaysmith's worst nightmare BTW : please store the Jaguar 2 chips in special antistatic (pink) styrofoam, or in an antistatic bag ! Regular styrofoam generates static electricity that can fry them. They're much too valuable to end up that way

Great work !

Not surprising since it wasn't originally developed by Atari

Tom-Lynx : if you don't want your address to be known, you should obscure the barcodes on the package, too.

Additionally, "made in <country X>" sometimes mean "assembled in <country X> from parts manufactured <somewhere_else>"

Anyways, even if there were a virus inside, would you miss the opportunity of trying the first Jaguar virus ever ? (j/k )

Didn't look at the recent topics, did you ? http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=140889

I thought it was a custom enclosure ?

If we have working prototypes then, we'll probably lend one to the RGC team for them to demo it at JagFest UK