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Upcoming Jaguar Game Drive Cartridge


SainT

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Any chance that it will play disc images as well, much like how the Cuttle Cart II supported Supercharger tape games?

 

Or will it be cartridge titles only?

Yes, discs should be supported as well. Although this may be a feature which comes after release as an update.

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Haha lol, the jag sd card is still not in complete form but everybody is now already hungry for a jag version of it and a thread has been already made.

I tout an version for the jag already existed with support for 4MB games,but i guess i am confused with a usb version of it to allow asingle or more roms on it.

But the sd card version sounds great and with possibly 700MB ram in it ,cd's can be supported in the near future,so that(mamy non working) toilet shape cd addon then become obsolete.

And remember,back in 1995 cartrides could only hold 4MB as opposed to 700MB of cd's(remember the N64 fiasco), nowaday's thanks sd cards,cartrides can hold ,over 32GB of space,so now,cd's along with it's slow loading times become obsolete.

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Yes, discs should be supported as well. Although this may be a feature which comes after release as an update.

It's not so bad with the Jag. All the CD access goes thru a BIOS call. Simulating the BIOS is a lot easier than emulating it.

 

The only tricky part might be audio streaming but again a DSP interrupt could do that.

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Very good news! I'll finally be able to play Battlesphere at home. :)

 

Ah! The disappointment! When you load it up... play it for 10-15 mins and then go "Ah... so that was Battlesphere... Next!!"

 

Then you put T2K, IS & Wolf3D on, and realise how much better those games are for a fraction of the price...

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Yes, discs should be supported as well. Although this may be a feature which comes after release as an update.

 

This is probably a stupid question, but you wouldn't need the Jaguar disc drive attachment installed then, correct?

 

While my knowledge about the inner workings of the Jaguar are limited, I don't remember the CD attachment ever being mentioned as having added memory, a coprocessor, etc (Unlike say the 32X that must be installed on a Genesis in order to play 32X titles via an Everdrive).

 

My CD drive isn't 100% reliable anymore, so this will be nice to see.

Edited by Atariboy
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This is probably a stupid question, but you wouldn't need the Jaguar disc drive attachment installed then, correct?

 

While my knowledge about the inner workings of the Jaguar are limited, I don't remember the CD attachment ever being mentioned as having added memory, a coprocessor, etc (Unlike say the 32X that must be installed on a Genesis in order to play 32X titles via an Everdrive).

 

My CD drive isn't 100% reliable anymore, so this will be nice to see.

 

If so, that would make this even that much more incredible and desirable!

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Eagerly anticipating this as well as my Lynx SD card! Great work, thanks for all your time, patience and effort in working on these projects - makes having these consoles great! =D

What Clint said, tenfold.

Excellent news indeed.

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It's not so bad with the Jag. All the CD access goes thru a BIOS call. Simulating the BIOS is a lot easier than emulating it.

 

The only tricky part might be audio streaming but again a DSP interrupt could do that.

 

Yes, spot on. Apparently the streaming audio side is handled via the I2S. I know talking to the JagCD unit is entirely I2S hardware wise, but I am lead to believe this is one bit of code which actually ends up in game code rather than the BIOS. It will require some forethought, but I'll make sure the hardware side will support everything required for full CD functionality.

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It'll be nice to have an idea of price whereabouts.

Anyway given it's 6/12 months away there will be time to see.

 

It's a guess, but I'm reckoning the £100 mark. Ultimately I wont know until I get to the point of building a final unit, as until then everything will be in flux (soldering pun not intended ;)).

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On 6/21/2016 at 5:53 PM, Atariboy said:

 

This is probably a stupid question, but you wouldn't need the Jaguar disc drive attachment installed then, correct?

 

While my knowledge about the inner workings of the Jaguar are limited, I don't remember the CD attachment ever being mentioned as having added memory, a coprocessor, etc (Unlike say the 32X that must be installed on a Genesis in order to play 32X titles via an Everdrive).

 

My CD drive isn't 100% reliable anymore, so this will be nice to see.

 

No, you'd just select the CD ISO from the memory card and play.

Edited by SainT
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I was thinking about how the roms could be categorised on the menu. Perhaps sub menus such as commercial releases cart, commercial releases cd, demos, reboot releases, orion, mathias, St conversions, cinepak and so on.

 

As with the Lynx cartridge I'll open source the interface libraries such that people can do what they like. I've even been thinking about an ethernet connection and having an app-store type service with all ROMs on, so you could browse and download directly from the Jag.

 

I may be getting ahead of myself slightly, but this is the sort of thing that will be possible with this hardware.

 

I'm pretty sold on the ethernet idea, partly because someone mentioned networked games. If it was possible (not sure yet), then I'd love to give the hardware the ability to connect JagLink / JagNet / whatever its called games together over the internet. You'd connect via IP in the game menu, then boot the game, and the hardware would act like it was just connected to the other Jag.

 

All just wild dreams atm, but you get where I'm going... :)

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As with the Lynx cartridge I'll open source the interface libraries such that people can do what they like. I've even been thinking about an ethernet connection and having an app-store type service with all ROMs on, so you could browse and download directly from the Jag.

 

I may be getting ahead of myself slightly, but this is the sort of thing that will be possible with this hardware.

 

I'm pretty sold on the ethernet idea, partly because someone mentioned networked games. If it was possible (not sure yet), then I'd love to give the hardware the ability to connect JagLink / JagNet / whatever its called games together over the internet. You'd connect via IP in the game menu, then boot the game, and the hardware would act like it was just connected to the other Jag.

 

All just wild dreams atm, but you get where I'm going... :)

It's all fine and dandy but I'd stick to a barebone design first.

 

I've witnessed 2 projects so far for the Amiga CD32 that have been "in the works" for years because they kept on adding stuff (or just plain started too ambitious) and there's still no end in sight with the exception of the occasional "almost there", "here this are the schematics I'm working with" etc...

 

An SD card only version of the board (a la Everdrive) even without dev (USB) support and even without ISO streaming support would be already a huge step ahead for the Jag scene and likely keep the costs under control (and I mean so we can finally all enjoy the complete library for £100 or so).

But you already know all that so chop chop chop, time to work :)

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