Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?

[downix]

I think the 68020 was pretty overrated - by 1993 there were other choices ( ARM was better for 3d0 - and I think one of the cheap IBM 386/486 clones would have wiped the floor with the 020 , and the flair lineage meant that they new how to interface with x86 arch ) but I still think that the 68k wasn't as important ( or as much of a millstone ) as you imply - with a longer lifecycle more optimised games would have come out.

My theory behind the m68k is that Atari was familiar with it, and was afraid of going away from it. I'd have picked a MIPS or SPARC as a better match to the Jaguar, personally, or scrapped the external CPU entirely

I didnt consider either the CD32 or the CDi as competition - and in the case of the CD32 no games used high level libraries, it was pretty much talk directly to copper and control the blitter in the same way as the jaguar. - Did you really think that CD32 3D games used library functions?

Actually, a majority of them do for most of the functioning. While the 3D rendering on Poom might have been hand-coded, the joystick control, sound, menu, and overlay were pure library.

Compared to some of the strange cpu's ( even the sound cpu on the SNES - which was a sod to debug on ) there was nothing really exotic about the Jag. The object processor was pretty easy to use compared to the 7800 ( I hated holey DMA ) and the gpu/dsp instruction set was really clean compared to TI or even motorola 56k dsps ( although I did have a soft spot for the 210x analog devices dsp )

and the blitter ALU?

Even when using it the crossproducts brief interface / debugger worked in pretty much the same way as the tools used on the SNES and megadrive.

 

I found the use of the SCU/DSP on the saturn to be very difficult to debug although you are correct in one way that higher level libraries did eventually arrive.. I never saw them with my kit though )

 

I have fond memories of Need for Speed and RoadRash on the 3d0 - they held up very well against Ridge Racer and other early PSX racers. It would be interesting to see just how close the jaguar could get, but my feeling is that no 'reading of the nets' is going to help here

Your feeling is quite wrong then. I can simulate pipeline runs internally, then simulate external feeds into those pipes, and compare the two. The jaguar was crippled by system issues, unable to get even half of the full potential of the system due to design shortfalls in the system outside of the chipset.

[Gorf]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

[Gorf]

My theory behind the m68k is that Atari was familiar with it, and was afraid of going away from it. I'd have picked a MIPS

or SPARC as a better match to the Jaguar, personally, or scrapped the external CPU entirely

 

 

You really did not need another processor. The 68k was for booting up and setting up.

The very designer of the chipset said instead of the 68k, use a small unified cache between

them and write a decent assembler/compiler for it. No 16 bit, half clock speed bottlenecks.

 

The 68k should have not touched the 64 bit bus but should have had its own 64k ram to run

AI and game logic. It is plenty fast for that stuff. Let the DSP and GPU do the thinking and

drawing and give them the entire mus and full controll of it. Let the 68k send out a packet

here and there via the unified cache so still no hit to the main bus. Fix the bugs in TOM

and Jerry and run the chips at the originally proposed 40 MHZ.

[Crazyace]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

 

Only an idiot would build lists by hand - write some macros - or have a gpu program ( or even dsp program ) do it

 

( I need a big smiley here )

[Crazyace]

My theory behind the m68k is that Atari was familiar with it, and was afraid of going away from it. I'd have picked a MIPS or SPARC as a better match to the Jaguar, personally, or scrapped the external CPU entirely

 

It would have been interesting - I think they needed an external CPU though - even taking the 2nd 'gpu' that they added to JagII with a single 64 bit I$ would have been nice ..

 

Actually, a majority of them do for most of the functioning. While the 3D rendering on Poom might have been hand-coded, the joystick control, sound, menu, and overlay were pure library.

 

Not really core systems in terms of performance though - Graphics were where all the performance work went

 

and the blitter ALU?

 

What about it?

 

Your feeling is quite wrong then. I can simulate pipeline runs internally, then simulate external feeds into those pipes, and compare the two. The jaguar was crippled by system issues, unable to get even half of the full potential of the system due to design shortfalls in the system outside of the chipset.

 

What pipeline runs are you simulating? I guess you're trying to imply that the jaguar would run faster if it had infinitely fast memory, and no CPU on the bus. I'm not going to argue about the pointlessness of the former, and running GPU code only solves the latter.

[downix]

My theory behind the m68k is that Atari was familiar with it, and was afraid of going away from it. I'd have picked a MIPS or SPARC as a better match to the Jaguar, personally, or scrapped the external CPU entirely

 

It would have been interesting - I think they needed an external CPU though - even taking the 2nd 'gpu' that they added to JagII with a single 64 bit I$ would have been nice ..

no arguements there, but the m68k was not even close to an ideal option

Actually, a majority of them do for most of the functioning. While the 3D rendering on Poom might have been hand-coded, the joystick control, sound, menu, and overlay were pure library.

 

Not really core systems in terms of performance though - Graphics were where all the performance work went

guy, drop the CD32 arguement before you make yourself look bad. You truely have demonstrated that you have absolutely no idea how the machine even ran.

and the blitter ALU?

 

What about it?

point to me the unit from the SNES or Sega Genesis/32x which compares to it

Your feeling is quite wrong then. I can simulate pipeline runs internally, then simulate external feeds into those pipes, and compare the two. The jaguar was crippled by system issues, unable to get even half of the full potential of the system due to design shortfalls in the system outside of the chipset.

 

What pipeline runs are you simulating? I guess you're trying to imply that the jaguar would run faster if it had infinitely fast memory, and no CPU on the bus. I'm not going to argue about the pointlessness of the former, and running GPU code only solves the latter.

no, I'm stating that the jaguar would run faster if it had simple changes in the anxilliary component choices. Keeping the same RAM speed but doubling the onboard RAM, using a CPU with a 32-bit data bus over one with a 16-bit data bus, wiring up the DSP with a 32-bit bus over a 16-bit bus (to match up to said CPU in both cases). if you really want a performance boost, could delve into changing bits on the ASIC, but that's getting beyond the scope of this discussion.

[Gorf]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

 

Only an idiot would build lists by hand - write some macros - or have a gpu program ( or even dsp program ) do it

 

( I need a big smiley here )

 

 

The point is there are no tools in the dev kit to help you do this. If you understand the OPL at all you would see

there are a bunch more ways to use lists and more efficient ways to build them. Then again, I suppose if you

only stay within the boundaries of the technical specs listed in the docs, and never try unorthidox things, you'll

never discover anything as we did, so its not suprising you see it this way.

[Crazyace]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

 

Only an idiot would build lists by hand - write some macros - or have a gpu program ( or even dsp program ) do it

 

( I need a big smiley here )

 

 

The point is there are no tools in the dev kit to help you do this. If you understand the OPL at all you would see

there are a bunch more ways to use lists and more efficient ways to build them. Then again, I suppose if you

only stay within the boundaries of the technical specs listed in the docs, and never try unorthidox things, you'll

never discover anything as we did, so its not suprising you see it this way.

 

 

It was a tongue in cheek comment - but I saw all of these things about 14 years ago, and then I moved on to other things

 

The Jaguar blitter isn't a big step over the Amiga blitter really, with the gourard added. The object list was a simple dma engine - basically a linked list. Only a complete idiot would blindly pile sprites on - ( or someone with a conversion where it just didn't matter ) Zone trees and gpu interupts ( to get mode7 backdrops rendered directly to the linebuffer ) are merely the initial steps one could take.

 

Once I find some time at home again I'll order a jaguar and chase up a Alpine board or BJL - until then I'm stuck with laptop and emulator - so if I get any demo ready I'll have to rely on your kindness to test it ( or anyone else on this forum )

 

It is actually a lot of fun having these discussion - the good thing about this kind of retospection is that the specifications of all of the machines are available, so it is easy to double check claims for feasiblility, not something that's easy with modern consoles

[downix]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

 

Only an idiot would build lists by hand - write some macros - or have a gpu program ( or even dsp program ) do it

 

( I need a big smiley here )

 

 

The point is there are no tools in the dev kit to help you do this. If you understand the OPL at all you would see

there are a bunch more ways to use lists and more efficient ways to build them. Then again, I suppose if you

only stay within the boundaries of the technical specs listed in the docs, and never try unorthidox things, you'll

never discover anything as we did, so its not suprising you see it this way.

 

 

It was a tongue in cheek comment - but I saw all of these things about 14 years ago, and then I moved on to other things

 

The Jaguar blitter isn't a big step over the Amiga blitter really, with the gourard added. The object list was a simple dma engine - basically a linked list. Only a complete idiot would blindly pile sprites on - ( or someone with a conversion where it just didn't matter ) Zone trees and gpu interupts ( to get mode7 backdrops rendered directly to the linebuffer ) are merely the initial steps one could take.

 

Once I find some time at home again I'll order a jaguar and chase up a Alpine board or BJL - until then I'm stuck with laptop and emulator - so if I get any demo ready I'll have to rely on your kindness to test it ( or anyone else on this forum )

 

It is actually a lot of fun having these discussion - the good thing about this kind of retospection is that the specifications of all of the machines are available, so it is easy to double check claims for feasiblility, not something that's easy with modern consoles

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

[JagChris]

I repeat.... There were no tools at all to handle the real power of the Jaguar.

 

The Blitter, OPL and two RISC's have to be hand coded and the OPL lists buils by hand

and the blitter commands built by hand.

 

You need to code the Jaguar and I dont mean the 68k either. Then you will understand that you dont

know what you are saying.I have to say, from your posts, it sound like you really do not know the

same machine I've coded for the last 13 years.

 

Only an idiot would build lists by hand - write some macros - or have a gpu program ( or even dsp program ) do it

 

( I need a big smiley here )

 

 

The point is there are no tools in the dev kit to help you do this. If you understand the OPL at all you would see

there are a bunch more ways to use lists and more efficient ways to build them. Then again, I suppose if you

only stay within the boundaries of the technical specs listed in the docs, and never try unorthidox things, you'll

never discover anything as we did, so its not suprising you see it this way.

 

 

It was a tongue in cheek comment - but I saw all of these things about 14 years ago, and then I moved on to other things

 

The Jaguar blitter isn't a big step over the Amiga blitter really, with the gourard added. The object list was a simple dma engine - basically a linked list. Only a complete idiot would blindly pile sprites on - ( or someone with a conversion where it just didn't matter ) Zone trees and gpu interupts ( to get mode7 backdrops rendered directly to the linebuffer ) are merely the initial steps one could take.

 

Once I find some time at home again I'll order a jaguar and chase up a Alpine board or BJL - until then I'm stuck with laptop and emulator - so if I get any demo ready I'll have to rely on your kindness to test it ( or anyone else on this forum )

 

It is actually a lot of fun having these discussion - the good thing about this kind of retospection is that the specifications of all of the machines are available, so it is easy to double check claims for feasiblility, not something that's easy with modern consoles

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

Easy now guys.

[Gorf]

It was a tongue in cheek comment - but I saw all of these things about 14 years ago, and then I moved on to other things

 

The Jaguar blitter isn't a big step over the Amiga blitter really, with the gourard added. The object list was a simple dma engine - basically a linked list. Only a complete idiot would blindly pile sprites on - ( or someone with a conversion where it just didn't matter ) Zone trees and gpu interupts ( to get mode7 backdrops rendered directly to the linebuffer ) are merely the initial steps one could take.

 

Once I find some time at home again I'll order a jaguar and chase up a Alpine board or BJL - until then I'm stuck with laptop and emulator - so if I get any demo ready I'll have to rely on your kindness to test it ( or anyone else on this forum )

 

It is actually a lot of fun having these discussion - the good thing about this kind of retospection is that the specifications of all of the machines are available, so it is easy to double check claims for feasiblility, not something that's easy with modern consoles

 

 

WEll I'll test anything you like but dont say I did'nt tell you so when you learn a few more things about the JAguar that you do not understand just yet.

The amiga blitter is no match for the Jaguar blitter as similar as they might be. 68k is very similar to a 68060....performance is a nother story altogether.

Edited January 23, 2008 by Gorf

[Crazyace]

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

I think I've got a very good idea of what the Jaguar was capable of - and if Atari hadn't gone down I would probally have spent a bit more time coding for it.

However they did go down, and I moved on to other machines

[BuddyBuddies]

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

I think I've got a very good idea of what the Jaguar was capable of - and if Atari hadn't gone down I would probally have spent a bit more time coding for it.

However they did go down, and I moved on to other machines

its not too late to go back tho...

[JagChris]

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

I think I've got a very good idea of what the Jaguar was capable of - and if Atari hadn't gone down I would probally have spent a bit more time coding for it.

However they did go down, and I moved on to other machines

its not too late to go back tho...

 

Hell Buddy, send him one of your Alpines.

[downix]

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

I think I've got a very good idea of what the Jaguar was capable of - and if Atari hadn't gone down I would probally have spent a bit more time coding for it.

However they did go down, and I moved on to other machines

 

Ok then, challenge time:

 

How many multiply and carry commands can the Jaguars blitter execute per cycle? How many can the Amigas?

[superjudge3]

Here's what I would do...very simple actually.

 

I'd wait until the summer or fall of 1994 to release it. That way, the bugs could be ironed out, more time could be spent on the DEV kits, and a lot of good games would be available for launch. AvP, Iron Soldier, Doom, Tempest 2000, Raiden, and perhaps a fixed Checkered Flag and a better Kasumi Ninja since they'd have more time to work on them.

 

Think about it: If the Jaguar would have launched with Alien vs Predator, Tempest 2000, Iron Soldier, and Doom and/or Wolf 3D, people would have taken the Jaguar much more seriously and a lot more would have been sold outright.

[kevincal]

Yep, that's exactly what they should have done!

[Gorf]

Bad decisions and impatients never helped anyone.

[downix]

it's quite clear now you actually have no idea as to what the Jag was capable of. best to leave the subject alone before you embarass yourself more.

 

I think I've got a very good idea of what the Jaguar was capable of - and if Atari hadn't gone down I would probally have spent a bit more time coding for it.

However they did go down, and I moved on to other machines

 

Ok then, challenge time:

 

How many multiply and carry commands can the Jaguars blitter execute per cycle? How many can the Amigas?

Ok, you've read, didn't comment, so I assume either you don't know or are offended in some way. If I seem antagonistic, it's because I know both blitters rather intimately, and beyond the fact that they can blit, there is scant similarity to the designs.

 

The question I posed existed to try and get you fustrated enough to actually look it up, at which point you'd realize, "Hey, the Jaguars blitter has an ALU in it, and can do these sorts of math functions, but the Amiga's doesn't, and cannot do that on it's own".

 

The original Jaguar documentation never discussed the blitter math capability much, and the demonstration code given didn't touch it. But the functionality was there, and truely pushes the envelope for what the machine can do.

[Crazyace]

Sorry Downix,

 

I haven't had time to think about it seriously - I didn't think it was a timed challenge.

Amiga blitter had better general purpose bit ability - I could implement a full adder ( Cin+A+B->out+Cout ) in two blits , full arithmetic just needs more blits..

Never actually came up with a use for this in a game though.

Trying to think how many multiply commands are on the blitter - cant see many.. lots and lots of adds though.. I'm sure I can overload the Z increments and blend adds ( by enabling the carries ) to get lots of 16 bit adds.

[downix]

Sorry Downix,

 

I haven't had time to think about it seriously - I didn't think it was a timed challenge.

Amiga blitter had better general purpose bit ability - I could implement a full adder ( Cin+A+B->out+Cout ) in two blits , full arithmetic just needs more blits..

Never actually came up with a use for this in a game though.

Trying to think how many multiply commands are on the blitter - cant see many.. lots and lots of adds though.. I'm sure I can overload the Z increments and blend adds ( by enabling the carries ) to get lots of 16 bit adds.

right on there. The Amiga's blitter clock-for-clock was an amazing machine, but it scales up badly. Jags could scale better for comparison.

 

Jag's blit could mul, but doing so was very poorly documented (didn't even realize it could till I dived in). It was one of those neat features that Atari never discussed, nor really explored. Quite fustrating once I found out about it.

[Crazyace]

I'll bite - couldn't think of anyway to multiply, except by repeated addition ( across A1, and Z/G interpolaters ) - no actual multiplier there.. ( unless you're thinking of the blitter on Jag II - which I never looked at in much detail )

Is that it?

[downix]

I'll bite - couldn't think of anyway to multiply, except by repeated addition ( across A1, and Z/G interpolaters ) - no actual multiplier there.. ( unless you're thinking of the blitter on Jag II - which I never looked at in much detail )

Is that it?

 

pretty much, but I asked how fast. But you have the idea.

 

While I see similarities in the design I see a lot of improvement in the Jaguar, and especially the Jaguar II's blitter design. A Jaguar can pull it off in a few cycles, vs dozens for the Amiga as a result of the improvements in the fundimental concepts.

 

I'd love to gab with you about optimization techniques as well.

[spiffyone]

I wouldn't have released it in '93. Late '94 at the earliest, and probably a push back to Fall '95. Sure, that would've put it in direct competition with PSone and Saturn's US respective US releases, but it also would've been a year ahead of N64. 3DO Multiplayer, like it though I do (ahead of it's time, that console was) was a non-factor. The initial high price point killed any hope of 3DO being a great selling product.

 

So, again, no Jag in '93.

 

Instead, I would've released Panther at it's intended date (1991). Some other poster mentioned that it wasn't "finished" and that's why Atari shelved it in favor of Jaguar. This isn't true. Jaguar was developing faster than Atari expected, not faster than Panther. Panther was pretty much complete. There are at least a handful of prototype Panther developer units out there, and there were developer documentation manuals. Jeff Minter supposedly programmed a dev version of Pong for Panther, and we all know Cybermorph (and Trevor McFur, probably) were originally developed on Panther.

 

The initial specs of Panther put it more powerful than Genesis/MegaDrive and even SNES. It was really the best of both of those consoles, but even better. Fast 68k processor that Genesis/MegaDrive had (but at a faster clockspeed), and a grapics processor that like SNES was capable of all manner of fancy effects (but more powerful). At the very least it would've been assured a large library of games from the ST line as it apparently shared some similarities. And it would've had upgraded ports of Genesis/MegaDrive and possibly SNES games.

 

Sure, one can point out that one of the things that killed Jag's image was the amount of ports from the 16-bit consoles (particularly Genesis/MegaDrive). But that's missing two points: 1) Jag was marketed as 64-bit, and having any ports of 16-bit games made for bad market image and 2) Panther was a 16-bit console (well, "16/32", but that's only if one counts the 68k as a "16/32" component...technically it is, but marketing-wise, at least in game consoles, it's 16-bit). The latter point means that Panther would've have suffered a bad image by having better quality ports of games from the 16-bit consoles, because it was one.

 

And while I don't think Panther would've taken #1 in the market (Japan, at the time, was Nintendo country, and the US was by that point taking to Genesis what with the Sonic bundle), I think it would've done very well in Europe and maybe gotten a sizable foothold in the States. Certainly it would've had a higher install base than Jaguar did in '93, as it would've taken on a Genesis/MegaDrive just on the cusp of going mainstream, and a SNES that had just lauched in Japan and the US. The 16-bit market was just taking off in '91. By '93, it was fully entrenched. Jag was released too early to gain a sizable foothold, and more powerful consoles were only a year away.

 

So Panther in '91. Get a sizable install base. Then launch Jag in late '94, possibly even '95. Reasons why in my next post.

[spiffyone]

The reasons why:

 

Jag hardware in '93 was incomplete and buggy. At least documentation was. The 68k in the unit, CPU or not (we all know it's arguable at best) made it so many devs treated it like a 16-bitter, especially since the documentation on the RISCs and the hardware as a whole had issues.

 

So Jag in late '94, early '95. Enough time to implement these changes, fix bugs, and have proper documentation and dev tools:

 

1. 64-bit bus throughout the unit. Not just relegated to Tom, the 64-bit bus would go to and from Tom, Jerry (so no 16-bit bus for this one, which hampered effectiveness), and the "CPU", which leads me to...

 

2. The new "CPU". The 68k is outta there. And while I like the idea of the 020 being in there...even there I'm shaky. Frankly, the more I think about it, the more I agree with Gorf's earlier assessment that an extra RISC would have been the best solution as a CPU. Here, though, our opinions differ. Gorf thinks another Tom would be good (pretty much like in the proposed Jag II, relegated to computations). I, on the other had, would go MIPS R3000, which also used in CoJag games. And it was a better CPU than the 020 used in the first CoJag games, as that 020 was the lower cost EC020 which had a smaller address bus (24-bit instead of 32-bit). And the R3000 had built in additions that weren't on the 020. Plus, MIPS processors were used in PSone and N64 (indeed, the R3k was used in the PSone), so multiplatform developers could have feasibly targeted Jag alongside PSone and N64.

 

3. C based programming tools alongside a better documented (and better all around) Jag assembly toolset. The former would've given the Jag far better dev support (it was one of the main reasons PSone got so much early support over Saturn), while the latter would allow those that wanted to dive deeper into the beast to do so without so many migraines.

 

4. More RAM. Not too much, but enough to help alleviate concerns. One can never have enough RAM. Maybe 4-6MB total.

 

5. Larger internal caches for Tom and Jerry.

 

6. Pro Controller as standard. Oh...and remove the keypad. I know that might be seen as an unpopular idea with some here...but, seriously, most games didn't really use it, and those that did have the same stuff mapped to the face and shoulder buttons on the Pro Controller. Maybe keep 2 or so of the keypad buttons, but move them to the center of the pad alongside start and select. Take that keypad out, but keep the handles. The Jag pad was comfortable, but the keypad made it seem too large.

 

On the issue of cartridge vs. CD-ROM...I'm a bit on the fence. CD-ROM drives are a bigger expense, and that might've driven up costs too much alongside all the other improvements I listed. And I don't know that Atari could've done both (improve the console and add CD-ROM standard). As a nice middle ground, I would've supported a larger cartridge ROM sizes (rather than go up to 6MB, I would've supported cartridge sizes up to, say, 32MB). It can't match CD-ROM storage, and it would've made for more expensive carts on the higher end, but it also would've made for more storage than we did end up getting. Look at it this way: Iron Soldier 2, with textures and all, is on cartridge as well as CD-ROM. What did they have to remove? FMV and some audio. With a larger cartridge size, the audio would've still been there. FMV? Loads of CD-ROM based games used it. It didn't make for better or better selling games. It just made for bigger and better storage, most of which went unused in that gen (unless there were huge amounts of FMV).

 

Still, if I could've added CD-ROM standard alongside the other more important improvements without sinking Atari deeper into debt, I'd have given it the "go" sign.

 

So, there it is. The bigger, better Jag. 5 RISC processors (MIPS R3000 as CPU, Tom as GPU, the Object Processor, the Blitter, and Jerry's DSP handling sound among other things) all connected by a 64-bit bus and with larger internal caches. Around 4-6 MB of RAM. Larger cart sizes, if not CD-ROM standard. And a modified Pro Controller as the standard controller. And most importantly C based dev tools alongside better documented Jag assembly tools.

 

All released in '94 at a lower price point than the real Jag's during the '93 launch ($199 instead of $249). At the very least the $199 price point would've made it an attractive alternative to consumers vs. the $299 PSone, the $399 Saturn, and whatever the hell 3DO was priced at the time (I think they went down to $199-299 iirc).