[Scart interference, horizontal feint transparent lines moving rapidly]

Hi,

 

I've noticed that my Jaguar produces feint flickering horizontal lines that move about the screen, like interference, nothing seems to really improve it. I've tried the official S-Video cable and a third party scart cable to a CRT via a GBS-C and directly in an LCD TV via scart. I've tried moving between the official power supply and a third party one, again no change.

 

I have two Jaguars. when I compare the output to my other Jag (same cable), there is definitely an issue, it's just very hard to capture via video/camera. Hopefully you can see it in this very short clip from Wolfenstein, just not sure what I can do about it... I was considering replacing the Caps, but that always seems like a clutch move. Has anyone seen anything like this?

 

Thanks

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

I wanted to post back on this as I finally got the new replacement CD transport from AliExpress and I'm happy to report it fixed everything! It runs Hoverstrike and the CDR backups I have, there was a quite a lot of difference between the one I bought previously and the new one, both motors were much bigger, making the entire transport much heavier, the CDs seem to spin more fluidly (Previously there was a lot of spin-up and spin-down and that horrible disc-slip sound), so if you you need a source for a replacement this one comes recommended, provided you get the same unit I did as shown in the image they provide! https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32326866322.html?dp=cd6568285673894cdf20a682df16fe35 

[JagGD does not work when plugged into CD unit]

I'm in the same boat, I'd really like to run the 240p test suite for the hardware tests on the CD unit as I've been having issues with CDRs and a few retail discs.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

10 hours ago, cubanismo said:

JVC Pro should be quality discs. If those don't work, I'm personally doubtful others will (I've tried various "colors" of discs and haven't seen any correlation there personally, but I'm not calling @Stephen Moss out. All my info is somewhat subjective. I didn't use a scientific process. I just burned a shitload of discs, and it probably varies by JagCD and burner to some degree).

 

I should also clarify the laser transports themselves with black platters aren't necessarily worse quality other than the grey platter ones in practice. One of my best performing drives (I have two that work really well) uses a cheap small-motor replacement from eBay that came with a black platter. The issue is just that the magnet in these platters is too weak to hold down the clamping piece in the JagCD lid. Either it's just some non-magenetic ferrous material that attracts a magnet in the lid, or it's not as strong of a magnet as the one the grey platter contains. Hence, the disc slips when the platter spins up, and generally doesn't work because it never spins up to the proper speed, or spins up too slowly. If you swap the good platter over from your old transport though as described in my supplemental guide (Platters don't go bad. They don't have moving parts. It's the motors and gears and stuff moving the laser around that go bad, perhaps the laser itself wears out too, don't know), chances are it'll work fine. It's just a PITA, and these transports tend to come with the cheaper looking motors that are supposedly less reliable. I myself haven't had problems with motors going out in replacement transports, but then again, it's only been a year or two on all of them I've done, and I don't use them *that* often.

That all makes a lot of sense, I did at one point get a burned disc on the JVC Pro to work, which was Primal Rage, another difficult one to get working. So the concept that the disc is slipping more does feel like that could be the case more, I did notice yesterday that it made some odd noises, unfortunately like an idiot I got rid of the original transport thinking I wouldn't need it, I'm hoping that I can build a Frankenstein between the current and one on order to get the best of both. Thank you for those articles, they made everything very clear! Much appreciated!

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

3 hours ago, Stephen Moss said:

Personally, I had lots of problems with CDR's in that generally the only PC that would read it was the one that burnt it. I eventiully discovered out that if the disc has the coloured die surface  (typically they are either slightly yellow or blue tinted) thye were always trouble, also with the Jag. But those with an untinted silver surface, just like pre-recoreded glass mastered disc always seem to work.

 

Have you checked to see it is not dirty (i.e. fingerprints)/heavily scratched as that can be enough to create read problems.

If a few finger prints are present ususally just breathing on them and wiping with lint free cloth (such as for cleaning glasses) is enough to remove them. Just remember to always wipe the disc from the centre to the outside not around in a circle, that way if you were to somehow scratch it during cleaning it would only result in recoverable bit errors and not potentially unrevoverable block errors.  

 

I have cleaned the laser with isopropenyl on a cotton bud very gently, and of course all the other retail discs work fine. I do clean with a lint free cloth from the inside outwards, the disc itself looks to be spotless. I could look for some un-tinted CDRs, both brands I have Philips and Japanese made JVC Pro brands have a green/yellow tint as usually seen.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

I've pulled the trigger on: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32326866322.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.59151802jZzit4, wish me luck 

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

10 hours ago, cubanismo said:

There's a thread somewhere about getting the right laser mechanism replacement on AliExpress. You can check out some comments there on my supplemental CD repair guides (Made to supplement Linko's more complete guide):

 

https://www.theinnocuous.com/jaguar/jagcd_suppl/

 

Generally, if you can purchase a laser transport with the nice grey platter, it's going to be sufficient quality to improve on what you have now. Even better if it has a "big" motor (Look at the motor in your stock transport, notice it fills the cavity it's in. The cheap small motors fill about 2/3rds of that space). If you get the cheap black platter, it's going to require a rework to swap the platters (See my guides. Ideally do this before installing it), and it may or may not suck in general. DO NOT trust the pictures on eBay. They tend to show the higher-quality units but you still have good odds of getting the cheaper version with the useless black platter. I prefer AliExpress at this point, but don't have a link to the top-quality ones handy. Maybe others do.

 

Also, regarding CD-R quality, I have done a *lot* of research on this personally. I've bought over 10 different types of CD-Rs and 4 CD burners to experiment with, from an ancient Sony IDE burner that will still burn discs down to 1x speed, up to a flimsy laptop drive in a USB enclosure. My subjective analysis leads me to believe the burner and burn speed matters, but far less than the CD-R quality. My most reliable burner is the cheap laptop-style drive in the USB enclosure (LG brand DVD-RW drive), but I get working burns out of all of them most of the time. The retail CD-R brands are nearly useless as indicators of quality these days. Almost all of them will be manufactured by CMC magnetics if you actually look at the ATIP information (Use ImgBurn on Windows or cdrecord --atip on Linux), which is the cheap crap. Buy new-old-stock JVC/Taiyo-Yuden or Sony (look for ones made in Japan) CD-Rs if you want something that works on nearly all Jaguar CD units. The atip should actually say Sony or Taiyo-Yuden. CMC Magnetics actually bought the rights to Taiyo-Yuden's process, and uses it to produce the "CMC Pro" line. These discs will even report Taiyo-Yuden as the manufacturer in the ATIP info, but they're manufactured in Taiwan rather than Japan, so it's not actually the *exact* same factory. It's not clear to me how much of the process was actually replicated. Regardless, these seem to work nearly as well, but not *quite* as reliably as the actual old stock ones. That said, I use the CMC Pro watershield ones for most of my final burns these days, because they usually work and the quality of an inkjet printed label when printed directly on one of these is really nice and they don't smudge easily.

 

All that said, I've had two JagCD units that would play every retail disk but hardly ever accepts any CD-R, no matter how high quality. I replaced the laser in one, and it fixed it right up. Plays everything now. In the other, I left it, since it's nice to have around to test CD quality. If something's borderline, it's no going to work on that unit.

 

Edit: One more note - Hoverstrike is probably the most stubborn of all the retail discs to get a "backup" of. I've burned direct copies of my actual retail disc as well as copies of images from around the web, and it always takes several tries regardless. On one of my burners, the drive itself straight up errors out ~halfway through almost every time I try to burn Hoverstrike. There's something odd about that one, so I'm not terribly surprised it's the only one you have problems with, even with a retail copy. Next to that, Primal Rage was the next-most problematic one to back up in my experience.

This GOLD, thanks so much for posting this!

If anyone reading this does have any links to AliExpress of a quality unit, I'd very much appreciate it, there's a mass of them, seems the last one I bought from Amazon had pictured the grey spindle and I got the black one, I didn't know at the time these were lesser quality.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

2 minutes ago, madman said:

You may (or may not) also want to grab a replacement laser or two. The OG guide on Jag CD repairs is here: http://jaguar.linkovitch.me.uk.s3.mytilde.co.uk/cdrepair/

I remember reading that, I actually replaced mine in March 2021 with this item: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07YDPLRLF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1, maybe it's just poor quality.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

15 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Most certainly an issue with your Jag CD, as its reliability (or lack thereof) is the stuff of legends. Try using the Jagtopia boot CD to run HS:UL, I've had good luck with using that utility to boot finicky Jag CD games in the past.

I have Jagtopia on a CDR as well as a few backups, but it won't read any of them properly, which has always been the case, I know there's some threads about on brands, but they are all very old now and I'm not sure those brands/models exist. One of the brands I tried was Philips CD-R 800 MB and another a Japanese brand I read about.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

So, the plot thickens, the retail CD works fine when using the BigPEmu emulator, so this has to be an issue with the Jaguar CD unit in some capacity? Or at least that's what having the game running on a PC tells me.

[Jaguar CD - Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands - Question mark or jumps to CD audio player]

Hi all...

 

Pretty much as the title says, I have a Jaguar CD unit that works with every other game I own... However, I keep finding that 'Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands' either produces a question mark after being inserted or goes straight to the CD Audio player (where tracks will play as you'd expect). I do remember a while ago this game worked fine, so I'm scratching my head as to why only this one has an issue (Tested: VidGrid, Baldies, Myst (DEMO), Blue Lightning). Any thoughts? It's pretty hard to find any recent or relevant information about issues like this on-line.

 

Thanks!

[Every microSD is 'memory card unreadable']

Just to bring this thread to a close in some way. I partitioned mine the same way as you did sheath, performed numerous formats, changed block size etc... In my case though (as SainT stated), the contacts on the microSD card slot were bad, my replacement has had no issue at all with the 8, 32 and a 64gb cards. I don't believe the firmware will flash again if it recognises that the existing firmware is already up to date.

[Every microSD is 'memory card unreadable']

The 8 and 32gb don't work, yes the correct firmware from the QR code is in the root of the microSD, I'm leaning more towards what SainT has stated, that the contacts are bad, I've tried Isopropanol on the microSD card and inserted it a number of times, no change.

[Every microSD is 'memory card unreadable']

Hi,

 

I recently bought the Jaguar GameDrive from Retro Gamer Stuff in the UK.

 

I've been through 3 microSD cards, an 8, 32 and a 64gb one (Lexar and two Samsung EVO cards), every time I turn on the system I get 'memory card unreadable'. I've tried formatting in different cluster sizes, also as a logical and primary partition all Fat32.

Could I be doing something wrong? I've cleaned the cartridge slot and cartridge. Any help very much appreciated! I've run out of ideas.

 

Thanks.

[Lynx 2 plastic screen cover replacements?]

Hi,

 

Is anyone selling these? I'm looking to replace a few that are in a bad way. I'm based in the UK.

 

Thanks!

[Atari Lynx II screen banding problem]

Ahh nice, that'll sort it ??️

[Atari Lynx II screen banding problem]

Unfortunately, after recapping the issue didn't change, so it must be a screen issue, just thought I'd post back to let you know.

[Atari Lynx 2 recap]

Many thanks for that!!

[Atari Lynx 2 recap]

Hey man... I removed the L17 as part of another mod and need to solder it back... I don't believe it matters which way round it goes back on? Did you replace it with a modern equiv?

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

I've seen Ben say in another post it's the LQ035NC111.

If I can separate the PCB from the LCD (It might be glued) that might worth a try, I'll just need to source a genuine Sharp LQ035NC111.

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

Indeed, It could have been worse as you say! Hopefully Ben gets some more stock soon. Thanks again for your help.

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

Yes, that's the issue... Looks beyond repair to me, I think the plastic bracket may have dug into it, possibly over tightened, either way it's not in my skill set
 

 

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

Ohh... That makes more sense, okay, I'll check that closely, thanks again!

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

Thanks for the reply... I'll look inside the ribbon connector, the LCD mod doesn't require it of course, but there could be something in it I missed.

[BennVenn Lynx screen help (over bright and mirrored)]

Hey all...

 

I'm at a loss on this one... My electronics skills are fairly basic.

 

I recently transferred my BennVenn screen over to another Lynx 2 (as it was in much better shape, I un-soldered the wires and soldered them onto another Lynx), initially it worked fine in my first brief test, which was great, but after removing the L17 Inductor the screen is now in reverse (like viewing in a mirror), the display is also over bright and flickering, has anyone come across this?

 

I did some continuity checks between the LCD pads and the points on the Lynx all successfully beep. I'm worried now I've somehow trashed the LCD (via static or something?)  ... I could replace all the wires, but I wasn't sure if there was much point if the continuity tests worked. I've dropped Ben and email, but the guy is probably hyper busy! The video shows how bright it is as it has to adjust the white balance.

 

Thanks