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Stone

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Posts posted by Stone

  1. Posted

    How again is collecting Jaguar stuff like busses?

     

    Standard UK phrase, cos it happens here a lot.

     

    Fact is, if buses are supposed to arrive every 10 minutes, you always end up waiting for half an hour, at which point three identical (empty) buses turn up :D

     

    Always happens. Especially in London. Just so ya know :)

     

    Stone

  2. Posted

    However, I'll confess that I'd like to have a look inside.

    Hey, what about a couple of pictures? :D

     

    I managed to put it back together again in the end...like my JagCD I put it together wrong and the plastic assumed its old shape over time.

     

    There's no way I'm opening it again though :D

     

    Stone

  5. Posted

    Gunstar, I think you missed the point of the Tyrant Rotary...as it's not free-spinning, weighting the dial won't make any difference to the way it works (except it'll make the pad heavier ;)).

     

    I also wouldn't advise taking a Tyrant rotary apart if you ever plan on getting it back together again properly...voice of experience here :lol:

     

    Stone

  6. Posted

    I should probably point out here that Tyrant's ill at the moment so probably won't be commenting any time in the immediate future :)

     

    For myself I play much as Atari Smeghead said: supporting the pad with my right hand and using my thumb and first two fingers of the left hand to spin the knob with. I agree with you on the angle - I found the best way around this for me was actually to play standing up with my arms extended straight, so the controller's at about your waist level. This works with my room layout, anyway...maybe not for everyone :ponder: It is possible to get comfy with it though, and it definitely improved my scores, so I'm happy :)

     

    Stone

  7. Posted

    Actually its not the physical placement of the chips but more of the electronic connection and interfacing that I'm more interested in learning about.

    Yeah, I guessed ;) But it at least shows they went to some lengths in designing the new boards in that they weren't recognisably Jaguar-with-bits-added.

     

    Thanks for the link.  That guy has an incredible collection.  Wish he had more info to share.

    Collecting arcade games is one thing, but collecting proto arcade games...:o

     

    I'll keep my eyes open for an Area51 or Max Force boardset in my travels though; would be interesting to poke about if I ever find a cheap one :)

     

    Stone

  8. Posted

    I've always found my Jags stand up excellently, but then I don't abuse them quite as viciously as you lot seem to! :P

     

    IMO the JagCDs are more fragile purely because they have more moving parts - CD mechs aren't the most robust of things even at the best of times, and they're relatively easy to damage if you jolt them about. A good example here is the huge number of dead PSX consoles - they just don't seem to last at all. Seems to be inherent in the medium...by comparison I've never heard of anyone managing to kill an N64 (though I'm sure it's possible ;)).

     

    Just a thought :)

     

    Stone

  9. Posted

    Ahh!

     

    I think he means he's getting interference from the JagCD on his RF lead between the Jag and the TV.

     

    In which case: Yes, a SCART cable (or even a composite cable) will make your life better :)

     

    Stone

  10. Posted

    Is it an official cable? I've had issues with 'Jaguar SCART cables' which aren't the Atari-sold Peritel cables but cheaply-made unshielded ribbon-cable botch-jobs...if that's clear enough :D

     

    With official cables I've never had problems. Worth the extra couple of pennies, in my book.

     

    Stone

  12. Posted

    Hi,

     

    I have a cable to sell or trade - but it works only on Jags with green led (why?) - I've tested it with a red-led jag, it doesn't work...

     

    Mike

     

    Your TV doesn't support 60Hz?

     

    Weird, they should work for either region of Jag...mine all do.

     

    Stone

  13. Posted

    Do some of these carts utilize batteries in any shape or form?

    No.

     

    I have memory save problems with Pinball Fantasies. Its like a bad connection in there or something. It will work for a while, then erase everything and not work, and then work again. And then do it all over. :?

    This is actually possible, though you'd be unlucky to have it happen more than once. Basically, what happens when the EEPROM is used (if the devs followed the Atari spec, natch ;)) is that it checksums the data - if it matches the stored checksum then it assumes the EEPROM hasn't got corrupted, so all is well. If the two don't match then it assumes none of the EEPROM data is valid and initialises it back to its default values again - this makes sure it's always in a defined state. The problem is if the cart's not quite in right and has a dodgy connection to the EEPROM data pin - if the data comes through wrong then the checksum will work out different and the code will obligingly initialise it for you.

     

    So, just make sure you always have your carts fully inserted, basically...not much you can do other than that, sadly :(

     

    Stone

  14. Posted

    If the Jag power light doesn't come on then the JagCD isn't properly inserted into the Jag, end of story.

     

    This could be:

     

    1) Dirty contacts (on the Jag, or on the JagCD)

    2) you not pushing it in firmly enough

    3) the little 'extender-card' in the JagCD (at the back, on the bottom) having got a little bit too far pushed in.

     

    If you've cleaned the contacts on the Jag and the JagCD then you could try carefully taking the base of the JagCD off (use Linkovitch's guide, it tells you how not to break anything when you do this) and gently reseat the card so a tiny bit more of it sticks out of the bottom of the JagCD - it can happen that this gets pushed in, so it doesn't fully contact the Jag cart slot.

     

    Try it and see :)

     

    But if the light's not on, then the Jag doesn't think there's a cart in it, and that is definitely your problem. Plugging a JagCD in with no power to the JagCD will still let the Jag boot.

     

    Stone

  16. Posted

    Well, I'm happy to be wrong :) I forgot about Vicious Circle but didn't know about the other two protos, interesting.

     

    I think the drives can be backed up, as I've seen emulators for arcade games on similar hardware (Killer Instinct is an example) which run from a disk image - it would be ace if it was just a SCSI or IDE disk but I honestly don't know. I'm told many (most?) of the dead KI boards have dead drives, so finding a way to duplicate them would help resurrect some...tho someone may be working on this, I honestly have no idea.

     

    @Glenn: From what little I've seen of the CoJag motherboards it looked on cursory inspection to be a complete redesign rather than extras 'bolted-on' to a standard Jag, for example ISTR Tom and Jerry were in different positions relative to each other. Look through the pics here - this guy has Freeze (two different versions) and Viscious Circle...lucky guy!

     

    HTH :)

     

    Stone

  17. Posted

    There's actually 3 CoJag (short for 'coin-operated Jaguar'...original, huh? ;)) games - Area 51, Maximum Force and a proto called 'Freeze that Fish!' which was a quirky puzzle game. If you include the duo Area51/Max Force boardset (you can choose which game you play) then there's 4.

     

    There's pics up all over the 'Net - look up the modified proto Battlezone used as a US Army training simulator and you'll find Freeze, cos the same guy owns both machines.

     

    Been looking for a cheap one for a while, but they still command quite a high price...there's also no way I'd ship one from the States (instant hard-drive death would be pretty much guaranteed with the USPS) so I guess I'll have to wait :(

     

    Stone

  19. Posted

    Willard: If it's the one on a flash cart, then yes, it's normal. Flashcarts bypass the normal authentification process, which is why early Songbird releases (before the universal cart header was found) go straight into the game - the cart pretends to the Jag that it's a flash cart 8)

     

    Stone

  20. Posted

    How fast is the ROM?  Could I run static code from it?

     

    Atari recommended that nobody do this. If you insist on precise specifications as to how much slower it is, I could trawl through the dev manual for you, but I'd rather not ;)

     

    The basic idea was that you dump everything to a RAM buffer (which doesn't have to be very big) just before you use it, as RAM accesses are significantly faster than accesses from cartspace (for a start, you can do 64-bit accesses). Likewise, unnecessary access to external RAM should be minimised in GPU and DSP programs as accessing the internal cache is much faster, and doesn't tie up the bus.

     

    Like Matthias said, the cartbus is only 32-bit, which would make things pretty slow - the memory controller is supposed to organise cacheing and so on (the dev manual says the RAM can be pretty much any access width and the controller will deal with it, with a speed hit if it's not 64-bit) but I'd still rather not try.

     

    I'd be happy to be wrong though :)

     

    Stone

  21. Posted

    And lately my wife has been quick to point out that while its nice I'm not spending money on booze, gambling, and hookers I still must, at some point, slow down and give it a rest.

     

    Quote of the day! :D

     

    No worries Mendon, I know how hard it is to break an eBay habit. For myself I should really stop buying broken stuff which I never get around to fixing :lol:

     

    Stone

  23. Posted

    What the heck is with the ostrich?!

     

    ..Al

     

    These crazy Germans :lol:

     

    I strongly suspect Painter is the old BJL version which was distributed everywhere. If anyone's curious I suppose they could always buy it and then leave negative feedback in German :ponder:

     

    Stone

  24. Posted

    You have a Jag-based ST emu? :?

     

    Atari did indeed make a flash cart - it's kinda like a stripped-down Alpine in that you can make uploads to it from a PC, but then not access any of the debug features or change values in cartspace while the program's running (iirc you can only erase whole blocks of the cart at a time). Works great for testing cart binaries and not much else, that being one of the reasons it was made :)

     

    I'm still curious about this ST emu though, cos I've never heard of such a thing, and I suspect others would be interested also :)

     

    Stone

  25. Posted

    Something you probably don't realise is that not all demos can be encrypted. If we have the original source files then fine; if all we have is a CD that's been burned sometime in the past at Atari and then copied, it may not have been built with the requisite blank tracks etc which would allow it to be encrypted.

     

    If the people who originally burned the CD didn't leave space for the authentification tracks, then you can't make an encrypted CD of it. All the track numbers would be wrong and it'd confuse the game code.

     

    I suspect that all the CDs that can be encrypted eventually will be when people get around to it :)

     

    Stone

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