Large Jaguar collection sale

[Stone]

Hi all,

 

I already posted this in the marketplace so if I've overstepped the mark I'm sure a mod will thump me in due course

 

As some of you know already from JagFest, for various I've decided to sell the vast majority of my Jaguar stuff. You may like to have a look!

 

Items link: eBay Seller: stonejag

 

Some of the highlights are:

Original flash cart (eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488032576)

Prototype 2MB Alpine board (eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488058170).

Jaguar Extremist Packs 1, 2 and 3: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488009818 (I also have a second auction for just pack 1 as I have a double)

Primal Rage for JagCD: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487955870

Zero 5: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487962509

Protector SE: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487969146

Boxed Procontroller: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487990098

CGE 5th Anniversary JagCD: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487991783

 

Many of my auctions start at £0.99 with no reserve, and I ship internationally. If you want references obviously check my eBay feedback or ask Tyrant or Jay Smith. Following several questions I will combine shipping - ask at auction end and we can come up with something fair.

 

Happy bidding!

 

Stone

[ovalbugmann]

Hi!, Jaguar Veteran Stone ,

 

Hey I saw a picture of two CD Dev units that were at JagFest X, it was said that Jeff Minter used those two to dev the VLM.

 

http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=12489

 

Are those yours?, are you going to be selling 'em? That would be great to have just one of those!

[Tyrant]

I wish I had the money to buy some of that lot.

 

Good luck, I hope you get what its worth.

[neo_rg]

I have a 2mb Alpine exactly like the one you are selling,

will be very interesting to see what it goes for.

[Nick Harlow]

Hi all,

 

I already posted this in the marketplace so if I've overstepped the mark I'm sure a mod will thump me in due course

 

As some of you know already from JagFest, for various I've decided to sell the vast majority of my Jaguar stuff. You may like to have a look!

 

Items link: eBay Seller: stonejag

 

Some of the highlights are:

Original flash cart (eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488032576)

Prototype 2MB Alpine board (eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488058170).

Jaguar Extremist Packs 1, 2 and 3: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160488009818 (I also have a second auction for just pack 1 as I have a double)

Primal Rage for JagCD: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487955870

Zero 5: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487962509

Protector SE: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487969146

Boxed Procontroller: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487990098

CGE 5th Anniversary JagCD: eBay Auction -- Item Number: 160487991783

 

Many of my auctions start at £0.99 with no reserve, and I ship internationally. If you want references obviously check my eBay feedback or ask Tyrant or Jay Smith. Following several questions I will combine shipping - ask at auction end and we can come up with something fair.

 

Happy bidding!

 

Stone

 

Good luck with the auctions.. those Alpine boards have a very interesting and authenticated history.. defin collectors pieces

 

 

Nick

[sh3-rg]

 

Good luck with the auctions.. those Alpine boards have a very interesting and authenticated history.. defin collectors pieces

 

 

Nick

 

Oh, there's a story attached? Is it one worth telling? Would it affect the prices? If so, best to speak up now & get the best bids possible on them

[Tyrant]

 

Good luck with the auctions.. those Alpine boards have a very interesting and authenticated history.. defin collectors pieces

 

 

Nick

 

Oh, there's a story attached? Is it one worth telling? Would it affect the prices? If so, best to speak up now & get the best bids possible on them

The 4Mb one (which I didn't see listed, so maybe he's going to keep it?) if I'm not mistaken, was once owned by James "Purple" Hampton, producer of AvP.

 

The other one (the 2Mb prototype) I think was acquired from Nick H at one of the JagFests, attached to one of the JagCD protos, but I can't comment much further on its history.

[Stone]

Hello everyone!

Hi!, Jaguar Veteran Stone ,

 

Hey I saw a picture of two CD Dev units that were at JagFest X, it was said that Jeff Minter used those two to dev the VLM.

 

http://www.jaguarsector.com/index.php?act=attach&type=post&id=12489

 

Are those yours?, are you going to be selling 'em? That would be great to have just one of those!

They are both my units, yes. I will be selling them in future but I'd like to do a little more testing first to get both as them as fully working as possible. As a little background:

 

The hardware is final (full production PCBs, but with version numbers inked onto the underside - this space is blank on retails). Neither JagCD has a BIOS ROM fitted - you are correct that Jeff used them to dev the VLM, but they were also used when finalising the CD access routines which ended up in the retail BIOS; that were done by the technical bods inside Atari, not by Jeff. The CD mech has a magnetic sensor which prevents operation if the circuit isn't complete - this is one of the two ways the retail knows if the lid is shut or not (there's also a switch engaged by a small pin on the underside of the lid). Again according to Jeff, they were supplied with a little metal object which held the CD down in use - on retails this is normally done by the rotating disc snapped into the lid. These have both been lost to time so I've been using a rubber grommet of the right size with a steel washer glued to it - this both clamps the CD to the spindle and lets the mech know the disc is locked in place, otherwise it won't let the motor spin. When I received them they had both suffered from long unsympathetic storage - one of them had a severely bent lower cart slot as the other had been stored on top of it and the pins had 'crept' through the solder, so I spent multiple hours desoldering the cart slot and replacing it so it was straight and the extension board could plug into the Jag. Both base Jags are green Stubulators, but with a ROM dated 4th May 1994 instead of the more commonly known 'final' 2 Nov 1994 version. At least one of them is modified by shorting the 'cart present' lines together so it can turn on without a cart in - no idea why this was done! (I suspect there may have been a plan to have the JagCD only show up as a connected cart once it had finished booting but this was then abandoned)

 

By plugging an Alpine into the cart slot, the retail CD BIOS can be dumped into RAM and then executed from $4000 - this brings up the VLM loading screen, and spins the disc up, but then they give the ?disc? error. That was as far as I tested before replacing both mechs with NOS ones - I haven't had a chance to test them since then as I've moved house 4 times and it's a pain getting Jag, CD, Alpine, PSUs and a Win98 PC in the same place at once! A lot of stuff has happened in my life since I first got them so it's been hard to find time to do anything much with the Jag stuff, which is one of my reasons for selling it: I really don't use it enough to justify so I'd rather someone else had the enjoyment from it

 

I have a 2mb Alpine exactly like the one you are selling,

will be very interesting to see what it goes for.

Your one of these JagCD units plus Alpine is the only other one I know to exist. Ironically I had never seen another soldermasked Alpine until the day after I listed that one as 'you'll never see another'

 

Good luck with the auctions.. those Alpine boards have a very interesting and authenticated history.. defin collectors pieces

 

Nick

 

Oh, there's a story attached? Is it one worth telling? Would it affect the prices? If so, best to speak up now & get the best bids possible on them

The 4Mb one (which I didn't see listed, so maybe he's going to keep it?) if I'm not mistaken, was once owned by James "Purple" Hampton, producer of AvP.

 

The other one (the 2Mb prototype) I think was acquired from Nick H at one of the JagFests, attached to one of the JagCD protos, but I can't comment much further on its history.

I should have Tyrant on commission, you're almost as good at selling this stuff as I am

 

The history of the 2MB one is as stated on the auction, and yes, I did get it from Nick (at Jagfest 2004, if I recall). I don't know anything else about it.

 

My 4MB one is, as stated, previously owned (and signed) by Purple - so it was definitely used during the development of AvP. I got it from Jeff Minter - he only had a 2MB Alpine when developing Tempest 2000, so it wasn't done on my board. However Defender 2k is a 4MB cart, and he only ever had one 4MB Alpine, so... Jeff said that the pressure on 4MB Alpines was very heavy at the time as they were so stupidly expensive to build, so Atari were very stingy about loaning them out to developers. He didn't get one until he could show that D2K wasn't going to fit into a 2MB cart, at which point he got the one I now own.

 

I'm hanging onto this one for the moment so I can continue testing the JagCDs, when I get my desk fully set up (I last moved house in April and I'm still living in chaos!). I could be convinced to sell it for the right money but it would have to be a very substantial offer.

 

If anyone has any more questions, ask away!

 

Stone

Edited October 2, 2010 by Stone

[LinkoVitch]

Didn't you win one of the 2MB ones at JFUK 2003? (which I found a video for early tonight infact).. and discovered it rattled?

[ovalbugmann]

Thank You for the interesting details on your Alpines and CD Dev Units, Stone. Some nice info was said by Tyrant about them here as well. I am following this thread and your one for sales at JS2 also.

 

I saw the Youtube videos of Jagfest X, with your two Alpines on the table and the other Jag items your currently selling on ebay.

 

Concerning the Alpine with solder mask on ebay, it says:

 

This cart has 16Mb of SRAM

 

As you guys have been talking about here the 16Mb, with the small "b" means bits, not bytes so the solder mask Alpine is a 2MB unit correct?

 

 

(Sorry Just checking, of course it wouldn't make sense for the unit to be a full 16MB!)

[Stone]

Didn't you win one of the 2MB ones at JFUK 2003? (which I found a video for early tonight infact).. and discovered it rattled?

Possibly, I've owned 6 or 7 Alpines so I don't remember! I never won the raffle prize one, but I bought it off the winner - in the end I sold that one to Symmetry of TNG.

 

As you guys have been talking about here the 16Mb, with the small "b" means bits, not bytes so the solder mask Alpine is a 2MB unit correct?

 

(Sorry Just checking, of course it wouldn't make sense for the unit to be a full 16MB!)

Yep, it's 16 megabits, which is 2 megabytes. It makes more sense to quote it like that as SRAM is sold in megabits, eg a 1M x 16 SRAM (1,048,576 words with a 16 bit databus) is a 16 megabit, 2 megabyte device. They do it this way so it's instantly obvious how wide each data word is, as you can buy some funny configurations like 18-bit words (two bytes each with a parity bit).

 

The other clue is that Atari 4MB boards only have half the SRAM positions populated - home-upgraded ones can have any weird layout as Atari put a ton of jumpers on the board to configure the board for different types and sizes of SRAM. The Jag can only address 6MB of cartspace anyway, as you said

 

Stone

[Tyrant]

The other clue is that Atari 4MB boards only have half the SRAM positions populated - home-upgraded ones can have any weird layout as Atari put a ton of jumpers on the board to configure the board for different types and sizes of SRAM. The Jag can only address 6MB of cartspace anyway, as you said

I know you're not that active with the scene any more, but would it be possible for you to contribute some of your knowledge on alpines before you go? I'd love to know what some of those jumpers and unpopulated chips are meant to do. For example you say there are lots of possible sram configurations... does that mean it might be possible to get cheaper, commercially available sram chips? Part of the problem with upgrading alpines to 4MB has been that nobody can get hold of the chips any more for a reasonable price. Could different chips be used that are available?

[Stone]

Not 100% sure of the answer to that (it's been at least 7 years!) but IIRC there was a large document about Alpines that included details of how to do the remote-stop and remote-reset mods (these were applied 'in-the-field' by devs but some Alpines don't include them). If I were you I'd have a word with Glenn Bruner since I think the doc originated with him.

 

I have >2GB of Jaguar files on my old PC so I'll have a look in there. No promises!

 

ISTR the jumpers are mainly to allow different configurations of SRAM to be fitted. As you know your common-or-garden 2MB Alpine has 16 SRAMs on it, in two banks of 8. Without double-checking (can't be bothered ) I'd expect them to be 16-bit SRAMs (so two banks gives a 32-bit cart) storing a total of 1Mbit each (so it's a 512K x 16 SRAM). The 4MB Alpine has half as many SRAMs so I'd expect each to be a 4Mbit, 16-bit chip (so 2M x 16). Equally you could build a SRAM cart out of 8-bit chips, using 4 banks to give your 32-bit cart, or one massive 32-bit SRAM if you could find one. (or you could do it the Skunkbox way and use a single 16-bit chip, altering the cart header so the Jag expects a 16-bit cart, though it then takes two cycles to transfer each 32bit word instead of one). The jumpers allow you to select which address lines go where so you can cater for multiple chip types, though they're all pretty much equally hard to find cheap.

 

Mostly these types of SRAMs aren't really available any more as the electronics market's shifted. The neatest thing I've seen recently is something called 'serial Flash' - you talk to it with a two-wire serial bus so the physical chip can be a lot lot smaller as you don't need to put as many pins on it. You can get crazy sizes (eg 64MB in an 8-pin chip!) but they sadly don't work when you have older hardware like the Jag which expects parallel buses. They'd be great for having loads of storage attached to a microcontroller though.

 

Sorry, I got distracted. Did any of that answer the question?

 

Stone

[ggn]

I know this is going to be a long shot but here goes: Do you perchance have any info on Cross Products' Snasm2 dev board? I have one right here but for some reason it doesn't want to communicate with the PC (an old 486) and I dunno what it could be. (I suspect the cable, but any extra info from what I have here would be appreciated )

[Stone]

Sorry, no. I've always wanted one of those, lucky you! Any chance of some external/internal pics?

 

I believe their Sega and Nintendo ones used a custom card inside the PC, have you got that too? It may be a common connector but not used as you expect, IYSWIM. Try asking on assemblergames.com .

 

Stone

Edited October 3, 2010 by Stone

[ggn]

I made a post some time back, but the images are long gone. However, they were crappy cellphone ones, so I'll try to take some new ones for you tomorrow!

 

Also, thanks for the heads up, I will ask there

[Zerosquare]

I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but here are some documents by Glenn Bruner about upgrading Alpine Boards : http://www.jagware.org/jag_uploads/dev/alpine.zip.

[Stone]

I don't know if it's what you're looking for, but here are some documents by Glenn Bruner about upgrading Alpine Boards : http://www.jagware.org/jag_uploads/dev/alpine.zip.

That's the puppy. Good find! The jumper positions are on page 8 of alpine_upgrade.pdf.

 

Stone

[Tyrant]

Ok, so there is some flexibility when sourcing chips, but all the options are likely to be expensive

 

Thanks for the help though (and that doc).

[Stone]

Again, nobody really uses SRAM any more: mainly as it uses 6 transistors per bit instead of 1 like DRAM - much lower density so high cost, even with the downside of having to refresh DRAM. You can get something called PSRAM (pseudo-SRAM) which is DRAM internally but with all the refresh mechanisms done automagically on the inside and just an SRAM-style bus on the outside, with costs to match DRAM (about $4 per chip).

 

It's amazingly cool, but as it was developed for mobile phones it's all in FBGA packages or smaller - which are fine to solder with hot air reflow but pretty much impossible to design a PCB for in affordable technology (you're forced into a multilayer board, and often more than 4 layers). Even if you could make or buy a package adapter from FBGA to SSOP (basically, forget it) it mostly runs at 1.8V so you'd need a bus converter on the adaptor board too. And you'd need 8 adapters. Suddenly spending the cash on SRAM seems like a better idea

 

[edit: especially when these would be under £40 for a full set. If it was me I'd buy a set just in case they work, and reattach the old chips if they didn't. Having seen Tyrant's soldering skills I'm not 100% sure he's game for it ]

 

Stone

Edited October 4, 2010 by Stone

[ovalbugmann]

Received Extremist Pack #1 & left you A+ Feedback on ebay, Stone. Thanks for the good packing and fast shipping.