Dean Odley

Yes it could be a timing issue. The crash seems to happen less often @ 60hz than 50hz. I’ve also encountered the allegedly rare bug triggered on the stairs in level 3 once, where the walls disappear. That is documented elsewhere, but does not cause the game to crash.

I would be very interested to know what was different between the motherboard revisions that prevented doom from running correctly…

There’s a K143 on our equivalent of craigslist going for ~ $400 without any carts ?

I am on the lookout for a second console locally. Imports get hammered with tax since Brexit.

@Atlantis, I have no idea of the history of the console or supplied carts, except to say that everything is in great condition and there are no chunks missing from anything Best case scenario is that Doom will work on the GD, and it turns out be be a dud cart. If not, there's plenty of other titles to explore.

I have a Gamedrive on the way so I will try to load Doom with that and we'll see how it goes.

I found this thread from 2003 !!! - appears to be the same issue.

@JagChris thanks, my serial is K14A which is October 94, later than the jags suspected of having those problems. Interesting.

@JagChris could you please send me a link to that discussion you showed? thanks.

@JagChris wow thanks for that info. AvP runs fine, it's just Doom that has the problem. Do you know if there's a way to check the manufacturing date by the serial number?

Update: I've opened the unit and the shields tabs had no tool marks etc., so it may never have been opened before. The caps look like the original ones, they are all Nichicon and the board in general, with the exception of some dust, is in immaculate condition. The only thing that sticks out is that one of the six buffer chips beneath the cart slot is different. Five of them are 74AC244 and the other (second from left) is HC244. It doesn't look like a mod.

Update: screenshot of another crash which occurred during attract mode. The text on the screen reads as follows: G_InitNew P_SetupLevel (3.2) CheckHeap: block size does not

Some more info: the sticker on the motherboard says REV H, and the label on the underside reads K14A013769.

@cubanismo thanks, i can give that a try. Can't hurt i suppose.

Hi everyone, I have just joined the forum because I finally picked up an Atari Jaguar to add to my 5th generation consoles. However, I think there may be a problem... The unit was in storage with the previous owner, who was a collector of retro consoles, and as such the jag and controller are in great condition with not a single dent or scratch on them When I connected it up I was greeted with the red screen of death on all but one of the included carts and some quick research led me to the recommended solution - so I cleaned the cartridge slot with a credit card, lint-free cloth and some IPA, and cleaned all the cart edge connectors with q-tips and IPA. All of the carts load now but the problem arises with Doom. After a seemingly random amount of time the game freezes and then the screen goes black. The jag must be powered off to recover. If I leave the game running in attract mode and come back after say, 1 hour, it usually has crashed. I have not been able to cause AvP to crash, which I assume is a similarly graphically intensive game. When it happens the underside of the console is warm, but I would not describe it as hot. The last crash was a little different - I was at the start of Doom level 3 where the green slime is found when the barrels and items started to flash repeatedly until the game froze a few seconds later. After a reset, I was able to play for 30 mins without incident and complete that level. I should also mention that I still get the odd RSOD but wiggling the cart in the slot with the power off fixes it. If I wiggle the cart gently with the power on, the screen will corrupt or the console will reset. When I insert a cart, it more-or-less sits in the middle of the slot, although there is room to push the cart backwards or forwards. I have examined the cart slot with large magnification and good light, and the pins are perfect as far as I can tell. They are uniform, equally spaced and not bent or twisted. The PSU is the original Atari one rated at 9v, center negative, but a meter shows 12.2v when disconnected from the jag. My question is this - is there some way that Doom uses the hardware which is different to other games that is exposing an underlying hardware fault? Is it likely to be cart, the slot, the caps, the DSP chips, memory...etc.? How reliable is the hardware? Most of the conversation I see is around the carts and slot. I'm hoping someone has some idea what could be wrong. Jaguars are hard to come across in the wild for reasonable prices and I would be devastated if this one is faulty. Note I have not opened it yet so I don't know if it has been modded in any way yet. That's the next thing I will do today and post an update. Thanks in advance for any help. Dean