The Atari Cougar project

[Kernal]

Part A.

remember that april fools joke a few years ago:

The Atari 15600 promises to offer more power than 12 PS3s, 36 Xbox 360s, or 156 Nintendo Wii consoles (the inspiration behind the number in the console’s snazzy name?).

 

Don’t believe me? Just check out these system specs. The thing’s a bloody beast:

One 1TB hard drive

One 80GB hard drive

16GB AF3-15600 DDR4 2666MHz RAM

AF 15600 Dual Core Hyperion-DX Processor at 6.4 GHz

Two custom NVidia GTXi732 Graphics Processors a 8GB each

802.11b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0

Four USB 3.0 inputs

Two SD card slots

 

 

Well what if we made a proposal to make a new atari console that would run ALL previous atari software plus develop new games that would rival a 360.. and do it at a marketable price.. prehaps 3.0ghz dual core would be cheaper...

 

call it the Atari COUGAR.

 

it would be great...

 

B.

also the alternative if possibly we didnt do it thru emulation. is to get motorola to develop a new chip set that reads ALL the previous code of the older chipsets (im going to talk to a motorola rep to see if that is possible.)

 

also..

 

C.

[Kernal]

Alternative C.

 

A Mix of a and b to create C.

 

We could prehaps have a intel based system with a motorola expansion board that would read the old atari chipset commands..

 

add xio ports so you could attach your old atari hardware as well...

 

when i speak of developing new games.. possibly base it off of jaguar but better due to the more expanded hardware..

 

prehaps we could develop a prototype and present it to the current atari owners and say hey.. lets do this.

[MEtalGuy66]

I would not call it the "cougar"... Thats a common term used for a rich old whore that likes young guys..

[Goochman]

I would not call it the "cougar"... Thats a common term used for a rich old whore that likes young guys..

 

I think that would sum up old Atari coming into the new market quite nicely

[S1500]

Isn't this what the next gen Amiga was going to be, or was that Commodore? Ie a regular PC with the Commodore or Amiga named slapped onto it. Seems more like a re-badge.

 

Here's my take. Instead of doing an uber-specced out system that will be obsolete in a year(there's nostalgia for you!), how about a USB interface that can read all Atari cartridges from 2600-the Jaguar, a 5.25 floppy drive that can read the 8-bit series, & a 3.5 inch drive that can read Atari ST images.

 

Then another USB interface that can read all Atari joysticks, from the 2600 all the way up to the Jaguar.

 

Get some good(ie bug-free) software emulation that can read said cartridges & disks & enjoy.

 

Is it an entire standalone system? No. But put 'er as a neat package, and you could have some classic fun.

[STE'86]

i ask for another vote option:

 

q. are you all on drugs?

 

option 1 YES option 2 no (unlikely)

[+CharlieChaplin]

Well,

 

I would prefer:

 

a) an "Atari Multi Cartridge Console" or just "AMC-Console" that looks like a console but has cart. slots for: 2600 carts, 5200 carts, 7800 carts, 800/XL/XE carts, Lynx carts and Jaguar carts (which gives a total of 6 cart slots!). On the motherboard you would find one (FPGA or whatever) chip near each cart slot that contains the whole console or computer in one chip and fires it up, as soon as a cart is inserted - which means of course that only one cart should be inserted at a time (and not a VCS2600 cart and a Jaguar cart at the same time, giving you Jaguar gfx for the 2600 cart or 2600 gfx for the Jag. cart, ha ha ha)...

 

b) another (Atari?) console that has multiple cart.-adapters (which are in fact a cart. with a FPGA on it) for each system, the console has just one cart. slot, but whenever you want to put in a 2600 cart, use the 2600 cart adapter, whenever you want to put in a 5200 cart, use the 5200 cart adapter and so on... as said before the cart-adapter has a FPGA on it running the required system. The new console could then be something like a next-gen console (a la PS4) which plays Blue Ray`s (or whatever media comes next) but via one cart-slot and the cart-adapters it also runs the old and original Atari carts (and maybe also the Jag-CD`s)...

 

Of course some kind of emulation, where you don`t use original carts, but only (pirated) images could be much easier... Anyways, dreams can be fun... -Andreas Koch.

[Shawn Jefferson]

Let's see... a computer that can emulate all old consoles, and new games can be written for it as well. Wait a sec! I think I'm typing this message on that computer, and I already own it. Sweet!

[S1500]

i ask for another vote option:

 

q. are you all on drugs?

 

 

 

COUGAR RULEZ!

[tjb]

I'd like to see someone build an FPGA based 8-bit and/or 16-bit Atari along the lines of the Minimig or one-chip MSX. I think this would be more reasonable and doable. It would be great for it to have an SD card slot, VGA and joystick ports, etc. I'm a little surprised this hasn't already been done. If it has please send me a link. MetalGuy are you listening?

 

tjb

[barnieg]

There are an awful lot of "neoretro" machines out there at the moment and I'm hoping we are seeing the beginnings of an hobbyist/community led change in computers/games machines available what we need is for someone to commercialise what's available to the next step.

 

As an example of what an 8-bit machine can do have a look at:

http://www.retroleum.co.uk/

 

Barnie

 

I'd like to see someone build an FPGA based 8-bit and/or 16-bit Atari along the lines of the Minimig or one-chip MSX. I think this would be more reasonable and doable. It would be great for it to have an SD card slot, VGA and joystick ports, etc. I'm a little surprised this hasn't already been done. If it has please send me a link. MetalGuy are you listening?

 

tjb

[Kernal]

this is why i posted this here.

 

pure west baby.. pure west.

 

also metal guy im almost ready to do my 130xe.. but do you know how to do my 1200xl to 7.16mhz *(i saw that other thread)*

 

mebbe we could do the upgrades to my 1200xl instead =)