The "I got my Skunkboard!" Thread

[disjaukifa]

The faq says those pins aren't used other than in the manufacture, so you could possibly snip them off & it'd be a complete case on the outside... if you're feeling brave. Don't try it without checking first, I won't be held responsible!

 

Yes, it's very unlikely anything but my private hardware will ever use the 6-pin expansion port! I snipped the pins short on one of mine with cutters. My advice: Wear eye protection if you try that.

 

- KS

 

Hey save2600,

 

Yeah it doesn't seem like there is any use for them on our end!!!

 

-Disjaukifa

[disjaukifa]

 

I think Tursi said he used it those pins during development of the board but they have no use now . . . I might be wrong about that though . .

 

-Disjaukfia

 

Hmm... may as well desolder those too then. lol I'm getting excited about placing that poor bare naked Skunkboard in a case! B&C sells blank cases and I'm fresh out of White Men Can't Jump carts. lol I do have a Flip Out and Val d'Isere no one seems to want. B&C requires a minimum order placed on the blanks. I wonder if we here could get a pool together, save a few bucks and NOT have to ruin a game or clean off its label? lol

 

I would go in, I want to redo the one I have, I want to either shave the inside of the back of the cartridge or something so that I have a clean front and back, not too happy with my first attempt, but for the time being its working.

 

-Disjaukifa

[+save2600]

 

I would go in, I want to redo the one I have, I want to either shave the inside of the back of the cartridge or something so that I have a clean front and back, not too happy with my first attempt, but for the time being its working.

 

-Disjaukifa

 

Okay... just bought 4 of them from B&C. Cost me $19 shipped. I'll set one aside for you Grant and send it along with the Skyhammer cart :-) That means I'll have 2 left. Cost on these will be $6.50 each shipped if anyone is interested.

Edited November 6, 2009 by save2600

[Tursi]

BTW: anyone know what the expansion port pinouts are? I really haven't had much time to mess around with my Skunkboard, but perhaps a battery could be placed across a couple of the pins to serve as nonvolatile memory? Not sure if there are provisions for that kind of memory to be saved for that matter. I'm thinking save slots, etc. I know the device "remembers" which file you've placed in either of its banks.

 

It's a JTAG port.

 

I'm not sure what you expect a battery to power... there is no volatile memory on the Skunkboard (it's flash), and you can't power the Jaguar RAM from the cartridge port (at least I wouldn't try it! ). Did you mean battery backed RAM?

[Gorf]

You can't just change the title to Frog 2000 huh?

 

It would require much more than that.

 

lol Oh and yes, sorry... spaced out our conversation. Short term memory ain't what it used to be. Well, I'm sure you covered all the bases and just thinking out loud, but perhaps Midway or whoever owns the rights now just need to be persuaded with a little more cash? Gorf 2000 seems like a better Jaguar investment than some of these other "newly" found prototypes, etc. selling for $50-$90 - IMHO. Sorry your work is tied up like this :-(

 

I remember when I put together that Scott Adams TI-99 Adventure disk, he and his lawyer *did* limit my production to just 50 copies. Wasn't a big problem though because that's about all I had orders for at the time anyway. Just wonder if a new contract could be written up or perhaps, you don't have enough orders to make it worth anyone's while.

 

Seems to me though that Jag collectors will pay just about anything to have a "complete" collection and future generations would be interested in acquiring a Gorf 2000 cartridge, CD or ROM image.

 

Unfortunately Gorf 2000 wont ever be released. I am certainly not going to shell out a 'little cash' as you say

to obtain rights from Warner(Midway's new owners) just to see pirates dump it as they did with Mad Bodies before

we ever got our cost back. The homebrew world has become much less interesting to us. We might at best release

another game or two but outside of that I see very little future for our games to see light of day on Jaguar.

The risk and the time involved are simply no longer worth it.

[+save2600]

 

Unfortunately Gorf 2000 wont ever be released. I am certainly not going to shell out a 'little cash' as you say

to obtain rights from Warner(Midway's new owners) just to see pirates dump it as they did with Mad Bodies before

we ever got our cost back. The homebrew world has become much less interesting to us. We might at best release

another game or two but outside of that I see very little future for our games to see light of day on Jaguar.

The risk and the time involved are simply no longer worth it.

 

Well that just blows. Pirating has always been around and it's not leaving any time soon. I think one of the reasons pirating is so prevalent here is because of perceived value. I do not want to get into the economics of how much people need to make in order to break even, in order for it to be "worth it" or whatever. $90+ in any economy, especially this one, is going to be a tough sell. Historically, there have been tons and continues to be, all sorts of great authors that release things to the public domain, shareware or have contributed ala open source. Quality programs that meet and often exceed peoples expectations. The Jag and its users always just seem to be getting the short end of the stick here. I can't blame people for not wanting to spend $90 on a puzzle game. What I would blame them for is pirating AND then enjoying said game. This is where a culture of shareware becomes relevant. A community centered around shareware is much tighter and close knit. It's an opportunity to turn guilt into money. It works and it would be just. Try before you buy sort of thing. You could implement a limited gaming session of sorts and then users would have to purchase a key or password in order to fully unlock the game.

 

Since you can't change what's around you (a lot of perceived pirating, etc), I guess you've already made your choice. Either stop making games OR change the way you think about your time & effort and MAKE the business work for you. There's alternatives here and I highly doubt MOST of the serious Jag users are really pirating as much as you think. If that was the case, how do you explain the ridiculous prices this stuff often fetches? Sorry to sound optimistic, but people who are likely to pirate were never your customer to begin with is what I say. They're such cheap bastards in the first place and/or consider it a challenge to try to crack something. On the flipside, realistic price<>value prices need to be realized if anyone wants to continue making a buck. History has shown this time and time again with other electronic products. The Jaguar should be no exception.

 

Not trying to start a flame war, lecture, preach or tell anyone anything they might not have heard or felt. Just talking out loud here because I think more people should step up to the plate and confess that they'd be more likely to buy and less likely to pirate if the prices were more down to earth. And no, I am not projecting either. I am not interested in playing just any old game on a Jaguar. Especially a puzzle game. They're not my thing. Be nice to see some real 'fun' non-puzzle type games that show off the machines hardware to tell you the truth. And not at an 'expense' that's obviously funding someone's programming learning curve - which better quality games that were promised NEVER stood a chance from said revenue to see the light of day anyway :-(

[+save2600]

Did you mean battery backed RAM?

 

Yes, was thinking along those lines...

[Gorf]

 

Unfortunately Gorf 2000 wont ever be released. I am certainly not going to shell out a 'little cash' as you say

to obtain rights from Warner(Midway's new owners) just to see pirates dump it as they did with Mad Bodies before

we ever got our cost back. The homebrew world has become much less interesting to us. We might at best release

another game or two but outside of that I see very little future for our games to see light of day on Jaguar.

The risk and the time involved are simply no longer worth it.

 

Well that just blows. Pirating has always been around and it's not leaving any time soon. I think one of the reasons pirating is so prevalent here is because of perceived value. I do not want to get into the economics of how much people need to make in order to break even, in order for it to be "worth it" or whatever. $90+ in any economy, especially this one, is going to be a tough sell. Historically, there have been tons and continues to be, all sorts of great authors that release things to the public domain, shareware or have contributed ala open source. Quality programs that meet and often exceed peoples expectations. The Jag and its users always just seem to be getting the short end of the stick here. I can't blame people for not wanting to spend $90 on a puzzle game. What I would blame them for is pirating AND then enjoying said game. This is where a culture of shareware becomes relevant. A community centered around shareware is much tighter and close knit. It's an opportunity to turn guilt into money. It works and it would be just. Try before you buy sort of thing. You could implement a limited gaming session of sorts and then users would have to purchase a key or password in order to fully unlock the game.

 

Since you can't change what's around you (a lot of perceived pirating, etc), I guess you've already made your choice. Either stop making games OR change the way you think about your time & effort and MAKE the business work for you. There's alternatives here and I highly doubt MOST of the serious Jag users are really pirating as much as you think. If that was the case, how do you explain the ridiculous prices this stuff often fetches? Sorry to sound optimistic, but people who are likely to pirate were never your customer to begin with is what I say. They're such cheap bastards in the first place and/or consider it a challenge to try to crack something. On the flipside, realistic price<>value prices need to be realized if anyone wants to continue making a buck. History has shown this time and time again with other electronic products. The Jaguar should be no exception.

 

Not trying to start a flame war, lecture, preach or tell anyone anything they might not have heard or felt. Just talking out loud here because I think more people should step up to the plate and confess that they'd be more likely to buy and less likely to pirate if the prices were more down to earth. And no, I am not projecting either. I am not interested in playing just any old game on a Jaguar. Especially a puzzle game. They're not my thing. Be nice to see some real 'fun' non-puzzle type games that show off the machines hardware to tell you the truth. And not at an 'expense' that's obviously funding someone's programming learning curve - which better quality games that were promised NEVER stood a chance from said revenue to see the light of day anyway :-(

 

Not the place to discuss this. I've made my case all over the place and I will not repeat it anymore.

It is plain and simply not worth it for us to bother.

 

Now...where were we....oh yeah.....skunk board rules!

Edited November 7, 2009 by Gorf

[doctorclu]

configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH

 

Found GCC 3.3 and GCC 4.0 on my Tiger OS X install discs, thought I installed them. Still get this error. I'll keep trying.

 

After installing it may be possible your path needs to be re-sourced. Closing the shell and brining it back will do that automatically.

 

 

Ok, the only thing more frustrating than not being able to figure something out, is realizing that at one time you got something to work and later you can't.

 

I've installed GCC 3.3 and 4.0. I am working on setting up the libusb-0.1.12 library and trying to configure that. I am getting the "No acceptable C Compiler found in $Path" error again. I have closed out of the terminal. I have reset the computer. I have even had the Disk Utility clean up the file system. I cannot get this Mac to acknowledge there is a compiler there.

 

Any ideas of what I need to do at this point?

 

 

 

 

[doctorclu]

Ok, note for anyone trying this that was lost like I was... make sure to install the XCode and Developer Tools packages.

 

If nothing else, a note to myself when I try this again in a year or so.

[LinkoVitch]

Sorry for reading this thread so late, When I spotted your first post I knew immediately what you had done, alas I am reading this now and you wrote that in 2009

 

I have build JCP on a PowerPC based mac without issue, so I know it should run fine. Hope you get it working.

[doctorclu]

Sorry for reading this thread so late, When I spotted your first post I knew immediately what you had done, alas I am reading this now and you wrote that in 2009

 

I have build JCP on a PowerPC based mac without issue, so I know it should run fine. Hope you get it working.

 

Got it working already.

 

Did all that to load the new hack in Checkered Flag. It was worth it actually.

[LinkoVitch]

TBH I bet doing all that was more fun than actually playing Checkered Flag :D

 

Always good to get something working