Stone

Ah, ok. Had me worried there Stone

Since When????? The ones we used for BS development had them. I know because I had to change them to the higher capacity ones for our use. Hmm, ok, my bad. I just assumed they didn't since PZ is unable to save. Incomplete game code then Stone

To be perfectly honest it never looked to me as if the graphics had even the slightest connection to what was playing. Maybe I just listen to the wrong music Remind me to try it out again some time. Stone

Very nice work! I won't be buying one as I have no use for it (no friends nearby with Jaguars, only two myself and I already own a JagLink) but I'll look forward to seeing some in action at JF:UK - would be great to see if we could break the BS networking record, especially without needing Catboxes everywhere Stone

I own a JagLink -> serial port converter...does this mean I'm infringing something? Maybe you should explain what exactly you mean when you say JUGS - I'm not using your software on either side of the connection and I have no clue if my adaptor is compatible with yours (and frankly, I couldn't care less, it works perfectly well for my uses) but I'm not going to be a happy bunny if you try and claim I can't hack up my own stuff. Stone

Then again, you could always do piracy in style with your flashcart It is actually far more convenient to get your dumps off the net than to dump them yourself - while it may be quite fast for EPROM based games if you have a suitable burner, dumping a flashcart or a game you don't want to ruin the label of takes up to 20 minutes, and techie types aren't known for their patience One advantage of emulation is the try-before-you-buy aspect: while I do have most of the available ROMs, I only plan to use them to see which games to buy - for a start, flashcarts have no EEPROM... Then again, I'm lazy, so I'll probably wait for one of the emulators to run everything Stone

Zoop support now, apparently http://potato.emu-france.com/sys/index.php?op=edito Stone

OK, last revision. All others have been removed from their respective posts, so this is it for now I'll post the layered .psp file on the group when I get around to it, I would have added it here but it's not an allowed format, so mail me if you can't wait. Enjoy! Stone

Absolutely true, good spot. Actually, I spent so long on the S that I forgot How did you *think* I was doing it? Actually I already scanned a Jag bumper sticker and resized it to fit, so it's a 20-second job. OK, maybe 10 minutes (that's where the eyes came from, btw) Thanks If someone wants to get T-shirts made of it, feel free; consider it public-domain as of now. You might want to wait until I fix the K though I think I'd better stay out of this one...I live in, well how can I say it: a backwater Stone

To be perfectly honest, I can't tell the difference (as verified by a class experiment I did 5 years ago, in which about 10% of the class could). Jolt, on the other hand... Stone

Zool 2 was big on Chupa Chups on all other platforms, though I don't own it for the Jag. Slam Racers has Jag adverts trackside and BS has a coke can floating around in space... Good question - there must be others Stone

Cool, I didn't know that. Thanks! Stone

OK, how's this? I tried to incorporate as many suggestions as was feasible. I've got a copy as a layered PSP image, so I can make whatever changes still remain...maybe I went too far towards the 'ripped and torn' look, and the 'S' is still slightly suspect, imo. Still, more perspectives are good. Anyway, on to the piccies! Stone [pic removed, see page 5 for final version]

Except the 2MB carts OK, accepted. In other words, it's configurable as x8 or x16 configurations. Interesting. Is that set up at manufacture or is it the end-user's choice? Stone

Well, you could link the unlock code to the serial number of their primary hard disk... Stone

The 2-chip carts with 40-pin chips are 16-bit, one meg chips, making a 2MB, 32-bit cart. The 2-chip carts using 42-pin chips use 27C160s, which are, according to the electronics catalogue I have nearest to hand, '2M x 8 - 16384kB'. Last I checked, 2x8=16... When I said a 4-chip solution, I meant producing your own boards for an 8-bit, 1MB EPROM - I'm aware that the only Atari-produced 4-chip boards are the 27C4000D ones used in early 2MB carts. I just assumed you'd realise I knew BS was a 4MB cart... Stone

Who said you had to use the original supply if you were going to make a Y-cable? Just add another identical power connector to the end of a 2A, 9V supply and see what happens. Stone

Bad boy! You're thinking in 2D again... Doom has (from the top down) arbitrarily angled walls, but all walls must project upwards perpendicular to the floor. Makes sense really, since map design is really done in 2D with height-projection info added; you couldn't have walls that were not at 90º to the floor, because then you would require one part of the map to be above another, which can't happen because it's a 2D map I think the engine allowed you to 'start' a wall at a fixed height and make a 'fake-ceiling', but it wasn't used very much. There's a map called 'pyramid' which shows it off quite well if you want to look for it Anyhow, that's why Quake was so revolutionary, as its engine was truly 3D, and allowed rooms-above-rooms, for example. One thing that still amazes me is the rewrites of Doom being done...I've seen a Linux version completely backward-comaptible with the original WAD-files and so on, but with a true-3D engine that allows angled walls (not orthagonal to the floor), spiral staircases, rooms above rooms... Carmack said (on the slashdot article about the first copy of BS) that it was swapped in and out transparently in about 9 sections, and that he later thought of a better way to do it in 3...ah well An astonishingly clever man. Stone

You could have speeded up data throughput using a 4-chip solution too, since you could access 32 bits of the cart at once Not that the difference would likely be huge...I don't know how the Jag memory controller optimises for different width carts. Stone

Hi Matthias! No...I thought he'd stop working on BJL (ie what's out now was the final version). It was from 1997, after all I could do that, but the only cart I *really* don't care about is stopping dust from getting in the cart slot of my other Jag. OK. Ahhhh! Whenever I used loader without the '-n' I was trying to use it with the actual loader screen. That would be why it didn't work Thanks for that. Maybe I should add it to the BJL FAQ...seems there's no documentation for any of this stuff around Stone

Each is genuinely 2MB (16Mb). 2048Kb x 8, making it a 16-bit cart. Like Tbird said, they're almost certainly mask ROMs, hence the Atari part number. The EPROM version of this chip (pin-compatible) is the 27C160 used in BS and BSG; possibly the biggest 16-bit EPROM you're likely to find. And since they're out of production, the cheapest they get to is around $20-$25 - nasty Stick to 2MB carts, is the moral of this story Stone

Matthias: Of course it's not documented, it's a bug I think I did mention this a little while ago (while dicussing BJL cables), and it's certainly a problem I've experienced before. If you don't press 'A' (or 'C', though why you'd use 4bit upload I have no idea...) before starting the transfer, 'Dumping EEPROM' does indeed appear on the screen, at the same time that the contents of it are scrambled. Using the cart again afterwards runs the initialisation check on the EEPROM, which detects a checksum error and deletes all content. I lost a final race PDR save like this Best solution is to keep only the JagCD plugged in to the Jag, and remove carts from the pass-through connector once you're finished with them. A hassle, but worth it for the added bonus of not mangling your saves. I do wonder whether it would be much extra effort to check the Jag is ready to recieve data first of all - the connection is bidirectional, right? Is that what you meant by not using the '-n' command-line switch? If so, it's never worked for me...the program counter increments but the checksum is very slightly out between the Jag and PC, so it won't execute. Unless I should be uploading from the title screen when omitting '-n'... Stone

D'oh; just assumed he meant pre-rendered (which he did). Isn't raytracing what Doom does? Or is that raycasting? I always get confused Stone

Is Doom a 2MB or 4MB cart? Playing through the second episode on the PC a bit I did notice that some of the finer details were lost, even if the main layout remained the same. Looks like big chunks of scenery got cut out for memory considerations... Then again, if those parts of scenery only use pre-existing textures, they would pretty much be just lists of vertices, right? Why's it take up so much space? *confesses complete ignorance of BSP here* Cheers, Stone

You expect to be able to sleep while surrounded by all that Jaguar gaming goodness? I pity da foo' Stone