Jaguar vs. CD32?

[Gunstar]

To USA players who own a PAL CD32 (being one myself), what method do you use to play your CD32?. I bought one of those multisystem tvs, that work for PAL and NTSC, but aparently they are only compatible with latin american PAL signals, and i get a black and white image. So i bought one of those converters they sell on EBay, but the video quality was so bad, that i prefer to play it on B/W.

I know you can force the system to ntsc setting with the amiga mouse, but that only works for ntsc compatible games.

Any recomendations?

 

Yes, build or buy and RGB cable to hook it up to EITHER a Commodore or Atari RGB monitor like the 1084 or the SC1435. you'll get perfect color of RGB quality and both ot those monitors can also handle the 50/60Hz games, including the european ones. I know becuase I use my Mega STE with an Atari RGB monitor and ALL the european PAL games work perfectly fine on it, I'm sure the CD32 will too, since internally, the SC1435 and 1084 are identical. Of course you have to settle for a 14" screen, but it IS RGB (as good or slightly better than component video quality). I am assiming that the CD32 is capable of RGB output like an Amiga of course...

Edited July 23, 2007 by Gunstar

[Feralstorm]

The CD-32 doesn't have an RGB out port, only composite, RF, and S-video. The SX-1/SX-32 expansions add an RGB port, so it's probably possible to rig up an RGB port from the expansion slot if one knows what they are doing.

 

FWIW, most Commodore 1084 monitors can handle PAL signals from a CD-32 through composite video, probably S-video too if you have a adapter to turn the S-video cable to seperate luma-chroma RCA cables for the monitor's sake.

[walter_J64bit]

Did he say the C3PO system?

[sd32]

I guess ill have to buy one of those Commodore 1084 monitors, what worries me is the shipping, because of the cost and the monitors safety. Oh well, my Amstrad GX4000 should arrive any time soon, so they will be 2 systems that i need a PAL monitor for, it doesnt matter if most people think those 2 consoles suck, haha.

[Gunstar]

I guess ill have to buy one of those Commodore 1084 monitors, what worries me is the shipping, because of the cost and the monitors safety. Oh well, my Amstrad GX4000 should arrive any time soon, so they will be 2 systems that i need a PAL monitor for, it doesnt matter if most people think those 2 consoles suck, haha.

 

It doesn't have to be a PAL 1080, the NTSC 1080 can handle the 50hz too, that's what I have...it says 50/60hz right on the back, and like I said, I've played PAL games on both Atari and Commodore NTSC RGB monitors. They were sort of region-free monitors except for the power supply.

[kevincal]

I'd have to say the CD32 is more comparable to the Sega CD/32X than the Jag, the Jag being slightly above them.

[jesusc]

I'm no Jaguar fanboy by any means, but even I would have to argue that hardware wise the Jaguar is more than "slightly" above the Sega CD and CD32.

[kevincal]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

[EmOneGarand]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

[kevincal]

Ya, but to the human eye, it's not really a huge difference. I think the numbers are something like 16.8 million colors for the Jag and 32,000? something for the 32X...32,000 colors is still a lot, lol. What I'm trying to say is the 2d and 3d capabilities of the Jag and 32X aren't too much different, the Jag being above it, but really not by a significant amount.

[Gorf]

Ya, but to the human eye, it's not really a huge difference. I think the numbers are something like 16.8 million colors for the Jag and 32,000? something for the 32X...32,000 colors is still a lot, lol. What I'm trying to say is the 2d and 3d capabilities of the Jag and 32X aren't too much different, the Jag being above it, but really not by a significant amount.

 

 

You would DEFINITELY notice that kind of color diference unless you where blind. The 3D abilities between

the two are very different. The Jaguar spec for spec is better and not just by a little but twice in most cases.

 

I wish I could find a megs a second bus rating somewhere...my guess is it is not very high.

[sd32]

Colorwise i doubt the CD32 and 32X can do the scene under Kevincal sig . And just playing the games makes it obvious (and i am not a tech guy), the Jaguar has a clear advantage in colors. I mean, few 32x games if any, cross the 256 barrier, same thing with CD32. In 3d, both the JAG and 32X put the CD32 to shame, from the games i have seen. The 3 console are cool anyway, i like them all.

[Gorf]

Colorwise i doubt the CD32 and 32X can do the scene under Kevincal sig . And just playing the games makes it obvious (and i am not a tech guy), the Jaguar has a clear advantage in colors. I mean, few 32x games if any, cross the 256 barrier, same thing with CD32. In 3d, both the JAG and 32X put the CD32 to shame, from the games i have seen. The 3 console are cool anyway, i like them all.

 

 

 

The jag is a much more capable system but the 32x is interestingly powerful for an add on

to a 16 bit system. It's still not up to balls with the Jaguar.

[A Sprite]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

 

Kolabri looks the part, but it's due to the artist, not the technology.

 

 

Blow the graphics up a little, and it's still using Genesis coloring tricks.

[Gorf]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

 

Kolabri looks the part, but it's due to the artist, not the technology.

 

 

Blow the graphics up a little, and it's still using Genesis coloring tricks.

 

Hence the drawback of mixing the two generations. You are only as good as your slowest part.

You'll get a definite increase but it could have been better. Much better.

 

They should have just released the Neptune with a little redesign and then they

could have been able to get the throughput of the Jaguar. The bus is permanently

clogged by the must use 16 bit 68k bus. The 68k can be completely disabled in the

Jaguar. Not the case with the 32x as that is still the central processing unit . Im

pretty sure that is the case in this design. I could be wrong here but its not likely.

I'll have to look at the signals on the Sega cart port. I'll report shortly.

 

The 2 sh2's are being used as software base renderers. These ARE the same monsters

in the Saturn. You can see the difference even with the Saturns bottlenecks that the sh-2's

were wasted on the 32x. The Tom and Jerry was wasted on the Jaguar design because

of its 68k. Although it is saved by the fact that any one of the 3 general purpose processors

can take over the system, so you can completely blow off the 68k which alone greatly

increases sysetm perfomance. The trouble once again is with using the 68k Jag might as

well be a 32x and less in a lot of cases...hence the lousy titles.

Edited July 30, 2007 by Gorf

[Ze_ro]

The CD-32 doesn't have an RGB out port, only composite, RF, and S-video. The SX-1/SX-32 expansions add an RGB port, so it's probably possible to rig up an RGB port from the expansion slot if one knows what they are doing.

You can find the CD32 expansion port pinout over here. It looks like all the video signals are present, so rigging up an RGB port should be straight forward as long as you know a bit about electronics.

 

All of the CD32 expansion modules are bloody expensive, so if all you want is an RGB port, they're not really a good idea.

 

FWIW, most Commodore 1084 monitors can handle PAL signals from a CD-32 through composite video, probably S-video too if you have a adapter to turn the S-video cable to seperate luma-chroma RCA cables for the monitor's sake.

Well, I found out the hard way that my 1084S certainly does NOT handle a PAL signal through composite or S-Video! The picture is stable, but only in black and white. I tried one of the cheap NTSC/PAL converters that show up on eBay, but the picture quality was absolutely terrible (honestly, it's better in black and white than in the horribly smeary, blurry mess that the converter puts out). In the end, I went out and bought an NTSC system from China... works much better.

 

As far as I know, all 1084S's will handle a 50Hz signal, but I don't think any of the NTSC ones will handle a PAL color signal, which is really the deal-breaker here. If someone can prove me wrong, I'd love to see it.

 

Of course, hooking up via RGB solves all the problems, since the system no longer has to encode the color signal at all.

 

I know you can force the system to ntsc setting with the amiga mouse, but that only works for ntsc compatible games.

One problem here is that you can't really change between PAL and NTSC the way everyone seems to think you can. When you use the boot menu to "NTSC", all it does is set things for 60Hz output, but leaves the color signal in PAL format. Unfortunately, this means that unless your display can handle a PAL color signal, you're basically screwed. On the plus side, if you have an NTSC system and you force it into PAL mode, you get 50Hz with NTSC color format, which works nicely for us North Americans.

 

Oh, and there are a LOT of games that don't work right unless you're set to 50Hz. And it's not always a matter of the game just not booting... a lot of them will happily display their title screen, and then crash when you go to start a game! I've also found at least one game (F17 Challenge) that will ONLY work on a PAL system in 50Hz mode (Seriously, I tried everything, and nothing else worked for me! The icing on the cake is that the game actually provides a built-in option for PAL or NTSC video modes, but it doesn't seem to help at all!). I love the CD32, but the PAL/NTSC issues are downright nasty.

 

--Zero

[Gorf]

--Zero

 

 

The real questions....

 

Do you like the system?

Do you like the games?

 

How much do you think one would have to invest starting

from scratch to make it worth while collecting for it?

 

Also,I dont remember if this was answered already but

can you use it as an Amiga computer system at all?

 

That would be cool if you could. Nothing like using the actual console to dev on.

(Cross compilers can really be a pain in the beealls.)

[EmOneGarand]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

 

Kolabri looks the part, but it's due to the artist, not the technology.

 

 

Blow the graphics up a little, and it's still using Genesis coloring tricks.

Regardless of the dithering, it uses more colors then most of the 32X games out there...

 

and if I'm not mistaken the Genesis did do alot of the graphics work in 32X games with a color assist from the 32X. All the Backgrounds from Knuckles Chaotix were done by the genesis for example.

Edited July 31, 2007 by EmOneGarand

[Gorf]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

 

Kolabri looks the part, but it's due to the artist, not the technology.

 

 

Blow the graphics up a little, and it's still using Genesis coloring tricks.

Regardless of the dithering, it uses more colors then most of the 32X games out there...

 

 

Yes but you wont see that on the jag unless it's on purpose(dont ask me why that would be though. )

[EmOneGarand]

Well, the Jag sure wasn't leaps and bounds ahead of the 32X or CD32... Thus why I said slightly. Maybe I should have said "the Jag is "comfortably" ahead of the 32X and CD32." But honestly, I've had a Jag and 32X for a long time and ya, the 32X's sound is kinda hurtin' compared to the Jag, but the graphics really aren't much different between the two, the Jag having the edge of course. But, they are definitely comparable.

Dude, color wise the 32X has nothing on the Jag lol . I think the closest to the full color the Jag could do the 32X got was with Kolabri (which is a beautiful looking game.. unfortunately it didn't play as well )

 

Kolabri looks the part, but it's due to the artist, not the technology.

 

 

Blow the graphics up a little, and it's still using Genesis coloring tricks.

Regardless of the dithering, it uses more colors then most of the 32X games out there...

 

 

Yes but you wont see that on the jag unless it's on purpose(dont ask me why that would be though. )

You'd have to be a fool to wanna use 256 colors with 24-bit at your disposal so Jag wins

[Gorf]

You'd have to be a fool to wanna use 256 colors with 24-bit at your disposal so Jag wins

 

Then ther are a few fools out there. Those 16 bit port titles hardly met the challenge if you get my drift.

Jaguar's 16 bit CRY mode is all you need though. 24 bits will choke any of the 3 systems. Yeah they

can display stills fine in 24 bits but try to keep any decent frame rate on any system without serious

chug at 24 bit RGB.....ain't happenin'. You'll have a nice fast slide show at best. Besides, you can see a

clear difference between wolf on the PC (256) and Wolf 3D on Jag/3D0 (16 bit color).

Edited July 31, 2007 by Gorf

[Ze_ro]

Do you like the system?

I'm not really sure what this entails... It looks nice enough, it works well enough, and the controller is comfortable. Beyond that, I'm not sure what's to like or dislike about any console really. It's what the developers do with it that really makes or breaks it.

 

Do you like the games?

Definitely. The CD32 has a lot of ports of Amiga games that never made it to other consoles for whatever reason. Games like Alien Breed, Superfrog, Gunship 2000, Darkseed and others.... it manages to sort of bridge the gap between computers and consoles with its software lineup. I dare say that out of all the consoles out there, the CD32 might have the best line-up of point 'n' click adventures... I still don't understand why we didn't see more console ports of games like Simon the Sorceror and Beneath a Steel Sky. The CD32's game library also does a good job of covering most of the genres out there (which is something the Jaguar had a lot of trouble with). There's only a handful of RPG's for the CD32 (and with no Japanese developers, most of them are more action-adventure), and the sports games are mostly limited to soccer, but other than that, pretty much every genre is represented.

 

The only real problem with the games the CD32 has is that 99% of them are simply ported from the Amiga computers. Some of them have improvements like CD audio music and FMV intros, but many of them have no improvements whatsoever... Seven Gates of Jambala for instance is essentially just the Amiga 500 game put on a CD (Note that the original fit quite easily on an 800k floppy disk). One thing I find very frustrating is that many of the platform games for the CD32 still use up on the D-pad to jump... this was required on the computers since you only had one button joysticks, but the CD32 controller has 7 buttons, and most developers seemed to ignore this capability.

 

How much do you think one would have to invest starting from scratch to make it worth while collecting for it?

The CD32 sits in a very unusual spot... most console folks just consider it an uninteresting failure, while most Amiga enthusiasts consider it a crippled Amiga 1200. Because of this, there aren't a lot of people in the market for CD32 stuff, so the game prices generally stay rather cheap. Most games go for less than $10, while some of the more popular/rare games can go for $25 or more. The other day I saw a copy of UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka X-COM) sell for $50 on eBay, but that's about the highest I've ever seen a CD32 game go for (For some reason there are a lot of Buy-it-Now items on eBay for ridiculous prices, but just ignore them). There's also not a whole lot of truly rare games for the system. They all show up on eBay once in a while, so if you know what you want, you'll probably find it within a month or so as long as you pay attention. There is certainly nothing in the CD32 library that comes even close to Battlesphere.

 

There is a certain matter of frustration involved in the CD32 if you live anywhere other than Europe. As already mentioned, the PAL/NTSC issues are a bit of a nightmare to sort out (though if you have the right monitor, everything's good). Finding anything locally is basically impossible, and anything you get off eBay will almost certainly have to be shipped over from Europe, which can lead to some hassles.

 

If you're a collector, it's also worth nothing that the packaging for CD32 games is not very standardized... some games were released in jewel cases with the standard "Amiga CD32" banner across the top, while some were released in cardboard cases similar to what Atari did with Jag CD games, while others were delivered "PC style" in a big box with the disc in a lame paper sleeve. This makes displaying games a little awkward (there are fan-made covers out there for the games that didn't come with them). Completists will have a lot of trouble trying to figure out what actually constitutes a "complete" game. I've been gradually putting together a list of how each game was packaged based on my own collection and what I've seen on eBay, but there's still a lot of stuff I don't know.

 

Also,I dont remember if this was answered already but can you use it as an Amiga computer system at all?

Yes and no.... You can hook a mouse and keyboard to it (standard PC keyboards and mice won't work), but the CD32 has no disk drive or hard drive controllers, which makes it basically impossible to use as a computer. However there are various expansion modules that were made for it which DO provide these features as well as serial, parallel and RGB ports. Problem is, all of these expansion modules are very hard to find and expensive. If you really want an Amiga computer, I would recommend you buy an ACTUAL Amiga computer rather than the CD32 (in fact, due to the ridiculous prices in the Amiga community, I'd recommend just using an Amiga emulator... but if you really want to go the hardware route, the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 3000 are wonderful machines).

 

--Zero

[Gorf]

I was actually just curious as to weather it canbe used as an Amiga but I see that

actually buying an Amiga may be cheaper as well as more practical.

[fishsandwich]

I've got a NTSC version and I've had the same problems with it (getting games to display properly). I've got at least 70 game for it (about half real games, the other half burned copies) and I'd say that only about half of them work... 40 at most.

 

My biggest disappointment has been the Amiga compilation CD's (lots of cool Amiga computer games packed onto various CD's). None of these work properly... I just get the rolling screen. Damned disappinting.

 

That being said, I've still got about 40 games that are perfectly playable on the NTSC unit and some of them are really good.

[Gorf]

So what your are saying is the games work but the screen rolls? OR the games just don't work at all?