Stone

I'd suspect most of them didn't pass the smoke test, so I'd stay away unless you want a (mostly) intact new Jagshell, or something off the mainboard. @tiw: I'd hardly say you need pro equipment to get stuff off a PCB and have it still work, just a modicum of talent I'd be curious only if I got one that was either easily-fixable (the power input socket had come off the board or something) or had an ADC in to save me the effort of looking up the part number if I ever got interested in it. Otherwise you could just use them for experimentation...maybe spray it white and set up a dentist's surgery? Stone

I just got Radiant Silvergun Stone

Frankly, the beginning of Highlander sucks. You get dumped into the game with no clue how the controls work, then expected to take down a whole army of nasty people with no weaponry. Not fun. Once you realise you can leave some of the nasty people for later it gets easier...(hint: go out the camp the back way) and getting to your sword (on top of the hill) is a priority. Once you have the sword you're laughing I love Highlander, it's a very nice game. You do need a Memory Track though. Perservere and you'll come to like it a lot more...trust me on this Stone

Hi I'll avoid using quotes to save my poor fingers...let me know if this deeply offends anyone >Why did the jaguar fail, I know some of the reasons but I would like to hear other people prospective? Lack of advertising support, IMO. While the American market got some advertising, the budgets were too low to get any decent primetime coverage, and outside the USA I never saw a single advert, despite being the target market at release Only reason I knew about it at the time was from a 3-min slot on a TV gaming show in the 'news' section, and then I heard no more of it until the first release of Project Tempest got me intrigued again. >How come it received little third party support? Because it was hard to code for? Compared to some of the other systems out there, the Jag is hardly optimised for accessibility...John M's approach seemed to be to lay as much of the raw power bare as possible, with the corresponding disadvantage that the coders had to do all of the legwork themselves. Had Atari spent a lot of effort on including code structures and engine demos with the devkits (both for inspiration and to prevent the coders constantly reinventing the wheel) things might have been different - maybe with a release the size of, say, the PSX, this 'back-to-basics' approach could have worked, but for potential Jag coders it seemed easier to take the path-of-least-resistance to another console. >How does the jaguar compar to other systems of the time both technical and sales wise(saturen,playstation,3do)? I'd say more powerful than the 3DO and less than the PSX, being about on a par with the Saturn...while the Jag whips the Saturn at 2D, the Saturn was really designed to do 3D, and do it well. The Jag was at a bit of a transition period where 3D looked like the next big thing, but may not have been, and sacrificed some power in attempting to cater adequately for both sides, IMO. >How was the jaguars fair on other continents? Poor. I never saw one for sale myself (I'm in the UK), though they were available...nowhere near as large an installed base as in the USA though. >Was the jaguar well known by the general public, did if have a large advertiment campaign. Nope. See above, really...the attitude appeared to be that quality would sell itself. It didn't >How come the Jaguar II was never released? They ran out of money, and time. It wasn't finished, for a start (there's no known beta silicon of Jerry 2, for example) and Atari closed its doors before the development could be farmed out or quietly junked. Ultimately the Jag's demise was ridiculously complicated and we'll probably never now exactly why things panned outthe way they did, but there were certainly a lot of lessons to be learned along the way Stone

I like both, but then they're not really trying to be the same kind of game. To me Doom plays more like a 'suspense-em-up' whereas Wolf allows the player to go in with all guns blazing a bit more...not that this is in any way discouraged in Doom For me though the PC version of Doom will always be better purely because I learned to play it on a keyboard (the Jagpad feels wrong, somehow) and I really loved the music - its removal was a very sore point with me and I think it took a lot away from the game dynamics that it was disabled in the Jag version. Sure, it looks nicer on the Jag, but to me the PC one is more fun to play. Doom is one the only game that's been on my laptop since I got it and will never leave Stone

Nothing surprises me any more when it comes to EPROM pricing Any recommendations for a burner ~£40 (pref. RS)? Looks like I may be needing to replace some ROMsets in a bit, and I'd rather not ask people to burn 16 new ROMs for me at once Stone

Much worse than that, sadly; more like £80-100 at today's prices on the 27C160. Bit like hen's teeth, they are One of the big issues Scatologic made was them having large stock of/investment in PCBs which you could only use the 27C160 in. Fair enough really; they couldn't know production was going to stop, and for what they produced the price ($74.95? don't recall) really was good. I think the objection is in the aftermarket sales, where you could get a copy at $75, then instantly turn around and sell it at $300, where all of the extra is profit directlt to the seller. Irritating, yes, but then that's the price we pay for having free markets Stone

Yep, I use an XRGB-2 Plus upscan convertor (from www.play-asia.com) to use my Jag on a standard VGA monitor. Be warned, this is as expensive as all hell and will look like crap if you use a composite cable. You really, really want to be using RGB SCART or at the very least S-video to input to the box - once you've knackered the image quality by using a shoddy video standard you can't make it look good again The main reason I bought it was for the RGB input - you'll have to rewire this to use a SCART cable as it's the Japanese version (same connector, different pinout...go figure ) but it looks awesome with my arcade boards, and that's all that really matters Redant, among others, make a variety of VGA boxes that only support composite/S-video inputs, and they'e a LOT cheaper; just bear in mind that the image quality won't be great when you use them, as the higher overall standards involved in VGA monitors will show up any flaws in the transmission mechanism you use to get the pictures to them. Good luck Stone

The ROM is already floating around out there. I've seen it. I own BSG but I don't think that an available ROM will affect the value of the game to collectors. Look at the Neo Geo... And a LOT of NeoGeo games hit BSG-style prices almost as standard Stone [who just dropped $135 on Radiant Silvergun and is very very happy ]

Or! We could just let people track them down seperately and offer to buy the prizes directly...worked for me In all seriousness though, I think the location was fine...getting to the NEC for Jagfest Micro was really not that simple for Tyrant and me and it's a right pain if you don't have a car The tournaments were IMO the only real other problem; they were indeed slightly (!) chaotic, but did in the end seem to work OK, so I think they should be alright... I think quite a lot of the problems were caused in part by lack of space, so hopefully it'll work better this time...also I'm aiming to stay overnight this time so it'll definitely be better from my point of view Should be good... Stone

Good man I quite like CF actually...not a patch on WTR but still fun. Chucking quite a few polys around too Stone

Actually, that's not such a bad idea. Assuming the serial protocol on the Jaguar side is fairly standard, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement... But first things first (cough CD cough)! You can make the Jag output RS232 with nothing more than a Jaglink (voltage level-shifter), an appropriately-constructed cable and some cunning programming (as evidenced by JUGS and a couple of UGD demos) but I don't know whether you could mangle the PC hardware into producing a signal the Jag would be happy with in the same way you can make the Jag output to a PC. Nice idea for the future Stone

Errrmmm yes...uhhhh...whoops Stone

It must be like leveling up in an RPG.. you do something enough and you can use the more exotic items, and basic items become more readily availible and easier to find. Just that your level is a hell of a lot higher than most peoples! *raises hand* I just levelled up Stone

That's exactly what I mean! The Genesis 2 power supply has the opposite polarity to the Genesis1 supply, and will kill Jags. Not at the wrong polarity. If you're lucky you'll get a pop and a puff of black smoke, if not you'll just get nothing. Ever again. So we do agree Sorry to go off on you like that, I just don't like stockpiling dead Jags from people who try every PSU they own on them and then look surprised when they don't work (step up, thund3r ) Stone

Let's just say I've been very lucky with regards the prices. However, it's not all about the hoarding; one of them only arrived today, and it's going straight back out at less than the original price I paid, to a most deserving cause indeed The other two are staying mine for the moment, purely for convenience's sake...then again, collar me at a JagFest and you'll find me most reasonable with regards borrowing one to test stuff It does seem sad to me that so much dev hardware never makes it into the hands of people who'll use it, so by snapping up all these awesome deals when they arise it's nice to be able to gradually get them out to those who'll make good use of them Stone

$450 is a lot of money. Even at current exhange rates. In fact you could get 3 Alpines for that, one of them 4MB Stone

STOP! There's two (original) types of Genesis, with two kinds of power supplies that match them. One will work on a Jag, one will destroy it. Just buy an original, plenty of places sell them. It's not worth the risk imho. Stone

I do, but they're on my mainbox. I do have it back now, which is great, except it's being a stubborn bastard and I can't connect it to the Net If I get it to work anytime soon I'll pass them over. And maybe we should stop hijacking the thread? Stone

Precisely. 10p per game is fine, though I might have to drop all my boards out of Freeplay Actually I made my own. The largest project box Maplin sells makes quite a good compact controller base (about 9"x4.5"x4"), then I added Happ Competition sticks (far superior to the Super or Ultimate, which are in all honesty neither super nor ultimate ) at $9 each and horizontal-microswitch arcade pushbuttons (about $1.50 each), with the standard 1up/2up white buttons at $4 the pair [all prices approximate]. All of that lot came from Bob Roberts who was extremely helpful. Each controller has 6 firebuttons and a start button in addition to the joystick, making them probably £15 each...but then they'll last forever, and using original arcade parts feels great The rest of the Supergun was made from a standard JAMMA edge connector, a PC-AT power supply, some buttons attached to a small project box and a gutted SCART one-plug-to-two-sockets box, which allows me to use a standard RGB SCART cable to connect it to a TV. The rest of it's composed almost entirely of stray bits of wire and duck tape About £50 in parts overall; you can probably do much better by using salvaged parts and/or not insisting on proper arcade parts for the controllers (I've seen MegaDrive pads used, they'd work fine with a small decoder board). So not a huge problem Stone

Didn't I hear something at JFmicro about us getting the third room this year? (through the door behind where MNX were sitting there's apparently another room as big as the one with the network in last time...) If we had enough space for a Jag kiosk with no Jag or controller arms I'm sure we could get a JAMMA cab in somewhere... My current working board list: MK Hyper NeoGeo (with 4 carts) ST-V (with Winter Heat, Decathlete, Die Hard Arcade and Radiant Silvergun ) And I should have The Punisher fixed by then too, if I pull my finger out a bit, with Surf Planet a possible (not sure if its death is permanent or not). So we could certainly arrange a little arcade corner, if nobody objects Stone

I agree with Gunstar; it does make me wonder if the version that's been released is the same as mine or not. Would be interesting to see if a binary comparison brings out any differences...then again I can live with my curiosity if it's gonna cost me $50 to find out Stone

Tetrisphere is excellently done: hit back at Ninty and play it on an emulator Not at all hard to figure out how to play though; it has a training mode. Use it. I've heard a couple of people mention rumours of others having Phear, but nothing solid. I got the impression the coders kept copies of the last binary and the source got lost, but I could be way out. Stone

That flea-market guy's trying to get one over on you. Take the Rayman, ignore the rest. ($16 is damn good for Rayman, the rest is poor, excepting WTR which is marginal. Get it if you like racing games.) With regards what you bought already: JagCD: excellent price. Battlemorph- $9.99 BrainDead 13- $9.99 Fight For Life-$4.99 NBA Jam T.E.- $1.99 (cart only) Ultra Vortek-$4.99 are all very good deals. Fight For Life is your killer find; normally that goes for quite a bit on eBay. BD13 is hard to find, in my experience. Ultra Vortek is medium-rare (not like the steak ) and pretty damn enjoyable imho. Nice work! Stone

Oi Link, you mean Tyrant, not me. No dragging me into your collection-lust [but he thinks you're joking...you're in with a chance now ] Cheers for that EPROM btw. Stone