Boot ROM screenshots anyone?

[Shamus]

I ran across some screenshots of the opening BIOS with the Atari logo flying in somewhere on the net a while ago, but haven't been able to find them again since. I was wondering if anyone else knows where I can find those and/or could post some screenshots of the BIOS screen with the letters flying in?

 

Any help would be appreciated!

Edited July 29, 2005 by Shamus

[Starcat]

Hi Shamus!

 

You mean this?

 

I captured it ages ago and put it on my site, sorry that I can't offer you a higher res animation though...

 

Btw, FYI the Jag actually has no bios, just a boot rom that sets some values and displays that intro sequence. But it doesn't have bios functions like PCs or other systems with a real bios have.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Shamus]

BIOS, boot ROM, yeah yeah yeah... Actually, what I saw was someone who had "hacked" the boot ROM to display some group's logo on the spinning cube instead of the usual spotted cat we all know and love. They actually had some decent side-by-side static screenshots showing before and after the modification. Damn. If I had been on top of things, I would have grabbed them. Oh well. I guess my only hope at this point is for some kind soul to post some screen captures.

 

Here's what I'm talking about:

I'm pretty sure that the incoming "A" shouldn't look like that, and that the shading on the side of the vertical letters should be continuous instead cut across the diagonal.

Edited July 28, 2005 by Shamus

[Tyrant]

Ok, I've just had a look on my Jag, and your screenshot is actually correct.

 

The first A does corrupt like that, it seems its back face is either missing or with its normals inverted (you'd have to disassemble the boot rom to check which, not that it matters ), and the letters are shaded, with a fairly bright to darker diagonal edge where yours has a diagonal edge, but not so harshly, it seems to be simply be that your display has too much contrast to properly see the shading. The tops of the letters for example should be a mid-dark grey, rather than the almost black they are on that piccie.

 

Im using a green stub jag holding B on startup btw, but Im pretty sure its the exact same startup sequence as I've noticed the broken A on other ones too. The shading however does look accurate, just with too much contrast.

 

On the subject of the boot screen, did you know that pressing pause will let you play with the cube via the d-pad? You can change its speed and direction, and make it smaller or larger (up to its normal size). This also holds the completed word on screen long enough to study it properly (unfortunatly no way to hold the letters in place in the middle of their spinning animation (to study the broken A)).

[Matthias]

Hello Shamus!

 

BIOS, boot ROM, yeah yeah yeah... Actually, what I saw was someone who had "hacked" the boot ROM to display some group's logo on the spinning cube instead of the usual spotted cat we all know and love. They actually had some decent side-by-side static screenshots showing before and after the modification. Damn. If I had been on top of things, I would have grabbed them. Oh well. I guess my only hope at this point is for some kind soul to post some screen captures.

 

Perhaps you are talking about the logo-patch program on my Jaguar-page (in the tools-section):

 

http://www.mdgames.de/jag_eng.htm

 

The mentioned patch-program exchanges the 64*64 CRY-pixel texture which is used for the spinning cube in the intro-sequence (which is part of the Boot-ROM) which you then have to load and run as any other homebrew-program.

 

 

I think Starcat had used a patched intro-sequence on several demos for his JaguarDevelopmentClub.

 

Here's what I'm talking about:

.....

I'm pretty sure that the incoming "A" shouldn't look like that, and that the shading on the side of the vertical letters should be continuous instead cut across the diagonal.

900187[/snapback]

 

That's something i haven't seen before but after doing some more disassembling of the intro-sequenze it should be possible to find and hack the data table for the 3D-objects used for the "ATARI" letter-output.

 

 

Regards

Matthias

[Shamus]

Hi all!

 

Tyrant: Hmm... I know the Jag had lots of bugs, but you'd think the guys writing that intro over at Atari would have caught that. Especially with all of the debugging I'm sure they had to do on it! And yes, I did know about the pause trick on the boot screen.

 

Matthias: That's the image, but I'm almost 100% sure I saw it somewhere else--someone had taken a bunch of screenshots to show the difference side-by-side with the original. Unless I'm totally misremembering what I saw, which I suppose is possible. But I don't think so.

[Starcat]

Hi!

 

Are there different sequences in the boot roms?

Because I don't ever recall seeing a corrupted sequence like Tyrant said.

 

At least my Jags don't have corrupted atari letters during boot up. (like the first A in the virtual jaguar screenshot)

 

So I would suspect it's still an issue of virtual jaguar of some sort, or maybe a bad or different rom dump?

 

Regards, Lars.

[Tyrant]

Hi!

 

Are there different sequences in the boot roms?

Because I don't ever recall seeing a corrupted sequence like Tyrant said.

 

At least my Jags don't have corrupted atari letters during boot up. (like the first A in the virtual jaguar screenshot)

 

So I would suspect it's still an issue of virtual jaguar of some sort, or maybe a bad or different rom dump?

 

Regards, Lars.

900784[/snapback]

Are you sure? look closely. It only gets broken when its spun round and facing away from us, and thus is only broken for a very short time before spinning round the right way again and showing us its front face which looks fine. The bug is there in the green stub rom (when holding b to boot a cart), and Im fairly sure its in the normal boot rom too, but I havnt checked. I am not aware of any differences in the stock (consumer) boot roms, so if it is there it will probably be there on all of them.

[Shamus]

Could someone post a screenshot from a real Jaguar? That would put the controversy to rest.

[Starcat]

Hi Tyrant!

 

I just have my dev Jag installed right now and when looking closely the first A actually seemed to have some kind of glitch on the back. But if you don't look closely it's easy to overlook, which might be the reason I never noticed it before.

 

Not sure about the stock boot roms though, maybe I always overlooked it there too.

 

Regards, Lars.

[Atari_Jaguar]

Yup. You sure did.

[Shamus]

Gee, who'da thunk it would be so easy to spam the entire forum with useless one line replies? And having said that, nobody should pay any attention to said spammer. I think I now know why that the glitch wasn't really noticed--a fix in the blitter code shows things pretty much as they are on a real Jag.

 

In my not-so-humble opinion, of course.

 

[Tyrant]

Gee, who'da thunk it would be so easy to spam the entire forum with useless one line replies? And having said that, nobody should pay any attention to said spammer. I think I now know why that the glitch wasn't really noticed--a fix in the blitter code shows things pretty much as they are on a real Jag.

 

In my not-so-humble opinion, of course.

 

902388[/snapback]

Yep, that looks right, although the lack of gamma correction on my monitor makes the dark greys look darker than they are on my tv, but its looking spot on to me.

[jesusc]

and you guys think I should be banned?