Does anyone have the funds/resources/facility to make new Jaguars...

[tsgthesportsgamer]

Not sure if anyone ran across this one yet, posted today...

 

eBay Auction -- Item Number: 110545446518

 

$6,000 big ones and you can have what you need to make your own Jaguar and Jaguar CD casing. I know it's wishful thinking - as one would need to be able to recreate the motherboard and all the circuitry. It would be pretty cool if someone starting pumping out new Jaguar CD units for an affordable price...

[tsgthesportsgamer]

And I definitely didn't know our beloved Jag became a Dental Imager...

 

http://www.insertcredit.com/news/022004/hotrod.jpg

[Albert]

This isn't the first time it's appeared on eBay and been discussed:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/topic/159292-hot-atari-jaguar-injection-mold-tooling-on-ebay-now-call-curt/

 

..Al

[NBC]

This isn't the first time it's appeared on eBay and been discussed:

 

http://www.atariage....-now-call-curt/

 

..Al

 

I love to buy them.

[BuddyBuddies]

Here is the problem: Even for $6k, you will then need to have them shipped, for those who don't know there are several skids that weight over 4 TONS!!!! So you are looking at around $3k+ just for shipping them let alone unloading them once they arrive,you will need a place to store them so add storage fees, then you will need an experienced Injection molding facility that is capable of handling the molds, the injection facility must have a $100,000+ 4 TON press just for the Jaguar base unit alone, it is a press the size of your average living room just to give you an example of its size. So that right there is $9k before you even start spending money for the start up fees which will cost you at least $1k+ or more for a small test run. So you have $10k+ invested already.

 

Now considering that the bottom plate of the Jaguar base unit was modified to fit the Hot Rod dental device, that is also an issue that needs to be fixed, so that will also cost a nice chunk of change, but i'm not sure just how much to be honest.

 

There are no controllers included in the auction, just molds for the Jag cartridge,Jag CD player and Jaguar console. There is probably not enough demand for remaking Jaguar consoles or the Jag CD players, so the only real logical reason to buy these would be to make different color shells for people to buy. The problem with that is that most people could just paint there existing consoles anyway, so there is no guarantee they would even sell if you made them for purchase.

 

After talking to the seller and the company "Stoesser" that originally did the molding for Jaguar consoles i found out that the molds may not even be able to do clear shells, so that was a big let down as well.

 

I'd love to have the molds even just for historical purposes and because i'm a Jag-whore, but in the end it's hard to justify spending well over $10k for an investment that doesn't guarantee getting your money back, neither does it really do anything for the community,its just a very risky investment. For $10k id rather see another run of Skunkboards.

 

 

"JAGUAR RULES!"

[Starcat]

I'd vote for skunkboards too

 

Even if somebody goes through all the trouble you mentioned, I doubt he would sell enough shells to cover the investment.

[carmel_andrews]

What about a jaguar with a skunkboard built in (freeing up the cart port)

[Starcat]

I guess, one could actually build a pass through cart similar to the Super Famicon import carts with skunk functionality and the skunkboard bios could be rewritten to run an inserted cart if a button is pressed on startup or something like that. It would require redesigning the skunkboard pcb to make it fit and all, but would probably be easier than rebuilding Jaguars.

Edited June 13, 2010 by Starcat

[carmel_andrews]

I forgot, And a patch to the built in skunk thingy to make it region free (so you can play UK/EU and US games without modding the jaguar)

[Atari_Owl]

I forgot, And a patch to the built in skunk thingy to make it region free (so you can play UK/EU and US games without modding the jaguar)

 

What on earth are you wittering on about now? The skunkboard IS region free - as are all jag games (relying on software to detcect the display method of the console - the only one that doesn't work is Dragons Lair which seems to have timing issues)

[Starcat]

It's up to each Jaguar game to handle "region codes", Atari's standard setup and publishing standard required all games to detect the region and set the video up accordingly. So unless we are talking about a bug or custom video code in a homebrew game which doesn't handle the detection, all games are region free.

Only exception as Atariowl stated is Dragon's Lair, which doesn't like PAL machines.

 

There is no regional lock in the hardware like on other consoles of the time.

Edited June 13, 2010 by Starcat

[Gorf]

This is just bad business all around....d

 

Buddies points out only some of the cost. Now you need to have someone make new PCB's and the chipsets to stuff them with.

Adding a skunk circuit will further increase the cost. So now you have spent $10k probably $12k to retool the case

back to a normal Jag case instead of a dental tool. So for $12k you have a living room or storage unit full of empty cases.

Now you need PCB's stuff with newly manufactured Jag chipsets and support componets(resistors, caps, logic and connectors.)

 

You now want to add a skunk? First of all that might not even be necessary. There is the possiblity of adding a communications

protocal into the boot ROM to use the DSP for high speed communication to a PC....of course since you need to make new Tom and Jerry's, you might as well fix the chipset. Fix the DSP bugs and the main ram execution bugs while you are at it. Downix, could

be of help here but I doubt he would do that for nothing, nor should he have to. He could 'simply' add a control bit in one of

the unused registers in Tom and in Jerry to switch from buggy Jaguar to fixed Jaguar..not really that simply I bet.

 

Since you are going to make new chips to make this useful you might as well add a command cache to the blitter, fixed the OPL

interrupts and one or two other things as well....of course today's VHDL and FPGA's could go a long way in making this a much

simpler task than Atari had back in the day. Lets say you will spend around $100k for all of this to start.

 

God only knows how much it will really cost. My guess is you will be spending at least $100 bucks per unit just to build them

and that is being conservative Im sure. So now to make this worth your while, you will need to sell the units at $200 bucks a piece which means 500 units to sell.....problem....to have this many units made at $100 a piece will probably be close to impossible. You are looking at a lot more than this and then you need to find a market for several thousands of newly made

albiet bug fixed) Jaguars. You MIGHT(unlikely) move that many eventually but you are talking years and years to get back your

initial investment only....no profit.

 

In todays economy and the forseeable future economy, it's just a bad investment all around. Now if you offered something like

software emulation using cart port adapters of all the Atari classic systems you might entice enough people. I would even add

in a good deal of other non Atari systems like NES, SNES, Colecovisio, INTV, SMS and Genny. Still, even if I were a rich man I

would not do it. You'd have to port a bunch of emulators over to the RISC's and the 68k and then find a way to add software

support in the future. I dont see it happening and is one of the big reasons I dont see Atari bothering with hardware anymore,

Bushnell or not.

[Zerosquare]

I think he wants a software equivalent of the 50/60 hertz switch.

 

Not possible on the Jaguar. But new homebrew games could be created with an option to use 60 Hz on a 50 Hz console (or 50 Hz on a 60 Hz console, but that's less useful). It's just a bit of code to add ; there's a cheat code in Super Burnout which does just that.

[Starcat]

I think he wants a software equivalent of the 50/60 hertz switch.

 

Not possible on the Jaguar. But new homebrew games could be created with an option to use 60 Hz on a 50 Hz console (or 50 Hz on a 60 Hz console, but that's less useful). It's just a bit of code to add ; there's a cheat code in Super Burnout which does just that.

 

How is that supposed to work? If you detect the region of your Jaguar, you could still allow the user to choose to ignore it and set display values for a different region, but wouldn't that mess up the display and timing of the game?

I guess the whole purpose would be to have the slight speed increase or slowing gameplay slightly down to make it easier?

Is it really possible to create the same functionality of a 50/60 Hz switch by software?

[Zerosquare]

The idea is to reprogram the video registers (not the "usual" ones, the timing-related ones that are marked "do not modify" in the documentation ) so that you get 60 Hz video on a 50 Hz console. That's how the real switch works too ; the pin that is switched does not affect the video directly, it juste toggles one bit in the JOYSTICK register, and is used by the boot ROM to know which values should be written into the video timing registers. That's why nothing happens (until you reset) when you toggle the switch while the console is turned on.

 

To be precise, the clock frequencies are slightly different between PAL and NTSC consoles, but in practice TV sets don't seem to have a problem with a 50 Hz machine switched to 60 Hz.

 

I can post the video setup code (disassembled from the boot ROM) if you wish.

Edited June 15, 2010 by Zerosquare

[Starcat]

@Zerosquare: So the switch toggles the bit that indicates a PAL or NTSC console?

I thought it also changed the clockspeed and timing. I know a jaguar program has to take care of the video settings, but I didn't know it had an influence on the clock speed. With other words, I thought just by software you wouldn't get the slight speed difference between 50/60 Hz, which probably is the reason to do a 50/60Hz mod as a gamer. To a developer of course it can be useful for testing, too.

[CrazyChris]

 

Now considering that the bottom plate of the Jaguar base unit was modified to fit the Hot Rod dental device, that is also an issue that needs to be fixed, so that will also cost a nice chunk of change, but i'm not sure just how much to be honest.

 

"JAGUAR RULES!"

 

I didn't realize the mold was modified. How disappointing!

 

Chris