flash carts do they exist

[kane459]

hello just wondering if there was ever a flash cart released for the jagaur i know about the skunk board but im looking for a flash cart that can save games asfar as for the early 90's dev flash carts made officialy by atari im shit outta luck so any info would be nice also how hard would it be for me to make my own flash cart

[Gunstar]

Yes, there is an original Atari Flash cartridge that was used by developers and also used to send games to magazines for reviews. There were quite a few of them floating around about 10-15 years ago. I used to own one. They were 4MB, one image at a time and used a parallel cable between the Jaguar and PC. But developers mostly used Alpine development cards for cartridge games, which came in 2 and 4MB flavors, I don't know if 6MB ones ever existed. They can also be used like flash cartridges, though it's overkill and you probably need the right development software too.

Edited April 29, 2013 by Gunstar

[doctorclu]

Skunkboards will do most of what you want to do I'm happy to say. The only images that will not work with the Skunkboard were ones by agreement that the Skunkboard programmed not to work, and Raiden, which is just goofy in it's coding. Some say they have gotten Raiden to worked, but yet to see a hacked image.

[doctorclu]

As for the Flash Card, works with about all images, but a bear to with.

[sh3-rg]

Some say they have gotten Raiden to worked, but yet to see a hacked image.

 

Don't you have to just use the PAL ROM and you're good to go?

[Shamus]

Dunno if that's the case or not (PAL only ROMs?), but I do know that there are at least two Raiden images out there--one that requires the BIOS to run and one that does not.

 

The one with CRC $0509C85E requires the BIOS while the one with CRC $31812799 does not.

 

 

Also, to clarify, there are exactly two games that the Skunkboard rev 3 looks for to prevent running: Battlesphere and Battlesphere Gold. Anything else should work, but, like the promised 6MB cart functionality, it just might not. YMMV.

[sh3-rg]

By PAL version, I meant the release with the -E, dunno if that's why there are two versions or not, might have been putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with SOMETHING OTHER THAN FOUR!!1

[+rdemming]

Yes, of Raiden there are the J9005 and a later J9005E version. The 'E' version has extra scanlines on PAL while the non 'E' version has a big black border at the bottom on PAL.The 'E' version works on the Skunkboard while the non 'E' version does not work on the Skunk.

 

B.T.W. there are also 'E' and non 'E' versions of Crescent Galaxy and Evolution Dino Dudes. All these versions work on the Skunk. As with Raiden the non 'E' versions have black borders at the bottom on PAL. Also there are a few graphics differences to make better use of the extra scanlines AFAIR.

 

Robert

[kane459]

as far as i know the skunk board cant save your game saves

[Gunstar]

as far as i know the skunk board cant save your game saves

 

Not on old games, but new games could be programmed to have a save feature on the skunk, from what I understood. Did Atari's Flash cartridge have the ability to save? I don't recall.

[doctorclu]

Yes, of Raiden there are the J9005 and a later J9005E version. The 'E' version has extra scanlines on PAL while the non 'E' version has a big black border at the bottom on PAL.The 'E' version works on the Skunkboard while the non 'E' version does not work on the Skunk.

 

B.T.W. there are also 'E' and non 'E' versions of Crescent Galaxy and Evolution Dino Dudes. All these versions work on the Skunk. As with Raiden the non 'E' versions have black borders at the bottom on PAL. Also there are a few graphics differences to make better use of the extra scanlines AFAIR.

 

Robert

Really appreciate the information on this. If I had known this I would not have had to order ANOTHER copy of Raiden off Ebay to get my Raiden fix in while in Kuwait.

Of course the copy of Raiden I got was only like $15 plus shipping, and I think it got there in like two weeks, so wasn't too too bad.

[BuddyBuddies]

Yes, flash cards could save the game on the cartridge until you erased the cartridge.

[+Gemintronic]

"Exist" and can be purchased reasonably are, of course, two different things.

 

Tursi offered to inspect a ToToTek Sega Genesis flash cart to see if it can be modified to run on the Jag. I have yet to find the time or money to buy him a cart yet.

[doctorclu]

ToToTek eh? Would be interesting if it did work.

 

I think I picked up a Flash Card a few years back for $350. One came available after the Skunkboards came out. Again, not bad in a pinch, but for me getting the software to flash the card seemed like you almost had to surprise or trick it.

 

But it has been flashed with the same game for years now. (mainly because I use the Skunkboard now... much much easier to use and has a Mac program.)

[Tursi]

Also, to clarify, there are exactly two games that the Skunkboard rev 3 looks for to prevent running: Battlesphere and Battlesphere Gold. Anything else should work, but, like the promised 6MB cart functionality, it just might not. YMMV.

 

Sorry to necro, but why are you implying that the 6MB function doesn't work? It worked last time I tested it (which was when then rev 3 BIOS was released). Do you have a test app which it fails on? I've only got one test app, which is just a silly little BMP slideshow (fast way to fill 6MB ).

[Shamus]

I was going on the word of someone else, who, as it turns out, has a v2 Skunkboard. So I was wrong about that.

[ggn]

Awww, I can't let Shamus take the blame for this (although he did post it in the first place without asking me ), so anyhoo:

 

Yes, I do have a test app in which (at least from my tests) the 6mb feature didn't work as expected: qUaKe. Basically it takes a bunch of pics, resizes them to 640x480, BPEGs them up and then packages everything in a ROM to be distributed. As I was writing the ROM generator I thought "heck, why not go up to 6MB ROMs as well?" and just added support from that, assuming that the area between $c00000 to $e00000 is fully available and linear like the area from $800000-$c00000.

 

From my tests it had the same behavior as Virtual Jaguar (which is of course agnostic to anything above 4MB ROMs): the BPEG decoder would not produce any result after the 4MB limit for the source data has been hit. Now, either the GPU has trouble accessing that address space (which I think is a bit unlikely, but let's not rule that out), or my code and/or ROM builder had a bug (I'm pretty sure I've triple checked everything, but again I can't be certain), or the Skunkboard has a problem. Granted, I didn't spend tons of time researching this (I have no proper debug tools, and also lacked the time/motivation), but I do remember reading from the Skunkboard docs that the cart is configured for 6mb mode when you use the -6 switch on jcp (and from what I've read from butcher.s this is true) and of course tried to set 6MB mode on my own just when the code started and didn't succeed. While I was trying to figure this out, nobody online on IRC had any experience with that, and of course couldn't be arsed testing anything, so I just shrugged gave up!

 

Still, if anyone's interested, the source code & builder is available and is more than welcome to try building a 6MB ROM and submitting a fix if I did something wrong (and given that I've written 0 lines of Jaguar specific code, that's a good possibility ).

Edited May 14, 2013 by ggn

[TXG/MNX]

There is also a flash cart with Ethernet (proto) from Mathias Imdgames) I got one overhere... next to my skunk 2 and 3 flashcard (atari) I got 2 normal atari flashcards and one with the cable directly attached to the pcb (soldered) bought that one for 0.99 euro on ebay because the seller didn't know what the hell he was selling

 

One cart did/does contain supercross X instead of Supercross 3D ...

[sh3-rg]

Nice eBay deal :-) What's Supercross X? Have you dumped it?