Jag-CD Ownership Survey

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

With upcoming homebrew games and several protos floating around, I

was discussing with StarCat this evening how many people have them.

I figured most Jaguar fans do now, so future releases on CD are good,

but Lars thinks too many Jag fans can't afford them or track them down.

Tell us...

One alternative might be the CF adapter, which *might* emulate a CD,

but I'm not sure many fans would buy another accessory like a Jag-CD.

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[Cobra Kai]

I have one....but I'm not going to buy just any crap thrown out there, everything needs to be of some decent production and worth the money.

[Starcat]

Hi folks!

 

I have two JagCDs, one which is half dead though... It's ok for reading simple stuff, but anything that uses Cinepak for example, doesn't run anymore.

 

Personally I think the CF could be a perfect replacement for the JagCD, if the folks from france get it done the way they said.

They said it will be quite a bit cheaper than a JagCD these days, which is important already.

But I think calling the CF a way to "emulate" CDs might confuse people, because CF offers much more and better features than the JagCD does.

It offers more space if you need it, it allows saving without additional memory cards, it has a MUCH faster access, no real loading times (compared to the slow JagCD), and is of course much more relieable than CD® media.

 

And it's very cheap too.

People should rather see it as a "nex gen" medium for the Jag I think. It basically combines the best from both worlds, the best features of a cart and the best of a CD.

Relieable, lots of capacity, fast access, save feature, low price compared to carts, and so on.

 

I can't wait till it's done and if they get it finished with the features that they mentioned and supply proper code to use those features, then I'm definately supporting this.

 

 

Regards, Lars.

[justclaws]

Hello,

I have one....but I'm not going to buy just any crap thrown out there, everything needs to be of some decent production and worth the money.

Me too.

I've myself bought one item which was interesting for about 2 minutes only.

Not again.

JustClaws.

[vanadium]

Well, personally I've been talking to Tomy over at Tototek.com (makers of many, many different flash carts from Game Gear to TG-16) on and off for the last six months about creating a new line for the Atari Jaguar that aren't so prohibitively expensive. I finally sent him over the flash cart schematics and says it's possible, but he doesn't have a Jag to test with yet. They can, however, put things into production given the materials (schematics and such) to do so with. (Perhaps this is a solution for production of the CF solution as well. I don't know.)

 

Personally I'd love to see Matthias' ethernet Flash cart brought to light, but I'm not sure how that'd happen at this point unless the schematics were released and everything were 100% ready to go on it. I know Tototek's quality is good as I already own their 64MB MD-PRO64+ flash cart for the Genesis/MD. I'm fairly sure a bunch of us could really talk them into putting a solution into production through them, though, especially if more people wrote them asking if they'd consider it.

 

How feasible this all is, I don't know, but it's something I've been working on and off on for a good while now because at the time I didn't have a flash cart (I got one a couple of weeks ago though) and wanted to find an alternate solution to the problem of distributing new games as well as playing with proto ROMs. I just don't have time to do al the footwork myself dealing with a company in Hong Kong.

Edited August 10, 2005 by vanadium

[Dan Iacovelli]

I have one thinking about getting another one because my cart slot on the CD drive is acting up, but other than that it still works.

Edited August 10, 2005 by Dan Iacovelli

[Matthias]

Hi,

 

i own 4 Jaguar-CD-players, i need them for testing and demoing at shows.

 

Regards

Matthias

[Alex Czarnowski]

Hi justclaws,

I just got second one today

[walter_J64bit]

I got one!

[jaysmith2000]

I'm pretty sure I have maybe one of those things.

[krupkaj]

Unfortunately I have not any jag-cd. I wish one. Beside high price it is not easy to find one here.

 

I like the idea of CF. I hope it will be available soon.

Edited August 10, 2005 by krupkaj

[walter_J64bit]

Unfortunately I have not any jag-cd. I wish one. Beside high price it is not easy to find one here.

 

I like the idea of CF. I hope it will be available soon.

908613[/snapback]

 

Just keep an eye out for one and don't give up on getting the JagCD!

Edited August 10, 2005 by walter_J64bit

[jaysmith2000]

Definitely worth working to get one. Good deals can still be had if you watch ebay closely....

[Gunstar]

Well, I have a Jagcd, it's run reliably *so far* for the last 10 years. I love my Jagcd and for more than just the 12+ games released for it, It's also about the VLM and even Cinepak movies. Especially with the recent release of the Cinepak disc image of Doom3 and The 'Ice Age' short. It shows that Cinepak alone has some promise for future release of animated short stories or what ever. In fact, I already have lined up an independant sci-fi series to be brought to Jagcd Cinepak. But I also know that my, and other's Jagcd's won't last forever, at least as a widely used Jaguar format, though a few of us will probably manage to keep ours running for years to come. This new CF cart sounds very promising to me as well, and if it truely can replace the Jagcd, then that's also fine with me. It'll save my Jagcd wear and tear and longer life for the VLM and Cinepak movies. If the CF cart could actually emulate the Jagcd, well, that's even better, though I would expect the "emulator" to be able to play at least Cinepak or other format movies, though I don't know if a "VLM" emulator could be made and with the CF that would allow such things as MP3 players with the VLM. With the VLM code IN the CF cart so no Jagcd is needed. For now, I think the best thing for developers might be to offer their work in BOTH jagcd and CF formats, if a cartridge is out of the question do to costs and/or the project needs more than the cartridge format can handle.

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

When people complain about Jag-CD reliability, they should remember the

average life-span of the early Playstation drives. Very few of the early ones

will be in service, and of course the Jag-CD was produced by Philips earlier!

 

As I've not had one die yet, hats off to them, despite the Tramiel cheapness!

I still want an MPEG cart and a Photo-CD browser disk to full use it though...

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[Starcat]

Hi Gunstar!

 

When Justclaws wrote the CF would "emulate" a CD, I think he didn't mean it literally.

The CF works entirely different and can not emulate a CD, in the sense that you could upload a rom image to it or so.

Games that use the CF would have to be written to support it.

 

Justclaws:

Of course early playstation drives sucked badly too, but at least they fixed that as time passed. Most PS units I've seen dying actually was due to badly done modification or wrong handling. (and many early ones due to overheating)

I mean if so many people, even completely unskilled ones, modify their units, it's no wonder they get faulty. But that's not really a topic here.

 

Ok, the fact that the JagCD was done by Philips explains a lot. (although this is nothing new to me) I don't have a high opinion of them. Whatever I saw from them was usually quite low cost and junk. Not important if you look at monitors, stereo setups, TV / video related stuff or even normal household articles. The only thing that actually seems to work properly and rather relieable are some of their coffee makers

The funny thing on the other hand, even the CD-i players which were very far from low cost (at least judging from the sales price), had terrible CD units already.

 

Fact is, JagCDs are getting faulty quite often. Many people had problems with it. Everybody who has not had trouble, should consider himself very lucky. And the units are picky about the media too, as we found out. Glass Mastered probably works best, but when that can become a problem when units get old.

My first JagCD unit can not play anything with cinepak anymore and even original CDs that are completely clean and unscratched won't always boot on it.

 

So whatever way you turn it, JagCDs are rare, expensive and not too relieable.

In my opinion, those points alone are enough to look out for something better.

 

Regards, Lars.

[JRob]

Hi all,

 

in my opinion the CF Card reader by SCPCD and Jagware Team opens the Jaguar

for future projects a little bit.

As SCPCD wrote it will support FAT32 so faster development is establised.

 

I hope the rom on the CF Reader will support streaming possiblities for Video and sound, that means simple file handling, which is easy to use and more

flexible to programm.

 

With the CF Reader you have no production costs and software can be

made available for download from the net as share or freeware.

 

Sure the JagCD is a fine medium, but i think the CF Reader could replace it,

when it comes to software. Noone can replace the VLM :-) off course.

[Nick Harlow]

Got a couple... Jag Cd's that is...

 

Nick

[philipj]

I'm planning on getting one although I would like to see more cartridge games.

[Songbird]

IIRC I have one that I use, another new unit still sealed in the box, and a third CD dev unit which I've rarely used (it does boot unencrypted CDs, which is kind of cool)...

Edited August 12, 2005 by Songbird

[PeterG]

I have one CD unit too. I always look out for another one in case there comes a link game for cd or my old unit gets broken. But it's working now straight for 9 years so I don't have to much worries. The problem is, that my cd drive is hungry because I rarley play anything with it anymore other than IS2 and some unreleased or proto stuff.

It's hungry :-)

Peter

[Hyper_Eye]

All Jag owners should have a Jag CD. I think most new games are going to be on cd. I know of at least one without a doubt.

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

For anybody looking for a Jaguar-CD, I see Telegames UK still has some.

They are in fact no more expensive than they were at launch, from Atari.

http://www.telegames.co.uk/product_info.ph...roducts_id=5364

I am sure that some other dealers can offer similar deals on a Jaguar-CD.

Perhaps any/all dealers who have these available can post their links here?

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

I am sure that some other dealers can offer similar deals on a Jaguar-CD.

Perhaps any/all dealers who have these available can post their links here?

I just noticed Nick at 16/32 Systems (also UK) has some GREAT deals on them.

http://www.1632-sales.zenwebhosting.com/ac...g/Consoles.html

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[justclaws]

Hello,

I am sure that some other dealers can offer similar deals on a Jaguar-CD.

B&C also list Jaguar-CD drives on their Jaguar catalogue, and dev-Jag drives.

http://www.myatari.com/bcjaguar.txt

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.