Any flash cart interest

[Gunstar]

Officially, Skunkboard is a developement cart, there is no support for running commercial games, but it may work. That means that many of commercial games qhould work but if one does not, skunkboard promotors won't help you to make it run... but they are allways helpfull if you have some problems with a in-dev game.

Basically, running commercial games is a side-effect of the skunkboard, it sometimes (or to be more precise, nearly each time) works but it was not the primarily commercial behaviour of the cart.

 

Some (hopefully most) of us who do or have owned a Skunkboard, that aren't developers, use them to run betas and or homebrews, not the commercial games. I'm just adding that onto the above answer. With Jiffi and a Jag CD, there's less need, as long as the file fits in Jag main memory. But there's a lot that's made for cartridge only, so the Skunkboard or similiar flashcarts are still needed for those of us who like messing around with betas.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Gunstar

[Clint Thompson]

Some (hopefully most) of us who do or have owned a Skunkboard, that aren't developers, use them to run betas and or homebrews, not the commercial games. I'm just adding that onto the above answer. With Jiffi and a Jag CD, there's less need, as long as the file fits in Jag main memory. But there's a lot that's made for cartridge only, so the Skunkboard or similiar flashcarts are still needed for those of us who like messing around with betas.

 

I'll stand firm on this and that just like every other Atari console on this site is easily emulated and copied, I don't see a reason why the Jaguar is or should be treated any differently. It's very unfair to say we have this flash for the 2600 or 7800 or can SIO2PC to the 800 all day long or download every game known to man on the ST or even the Lynx for that matter... but when it comes to the Jaguar, it's off limits. Why? With the rate/prices of Jaguar games are going for the only people it troubles are the ones who are currently price gouging on eBay and to be honest, it's not stopping them with that anyway, just look at the prices, they're ridiculous. If I were to place my bets, I'm guessing only 30-40 people are using the skunk for any 'real' development uses, with proof from only a handful of people actually appearing as a result of homebrews being made and released.

 

I want a flash cart so I can do whatever I want with it but I'm not about to spend $300 - $500 on it from some third party price gouger trying to turn a profit on something they paid $150-$200 for. If anything isn't fair, it's that in itself.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Clint Thompson

[Tempest]

but when it comes to the Jaguar, it's off limits. Why? With the rate/prices of Jaguar games are going for the only people it troubles are the ones who are currently price gouging on eBay

Bingo! I think it's time things changed.

[sh3-rg]

Sometimes changes take place over months and years rather than days and weeks... you just wake up one morning and things are different... you can't say why exactly or when... but things are somehow not as they once were and are better for it :-)

[Edi (FZ2D)]

Unfortunately it seems that Igor Golubovsky has no interest in creating a Flash Cart for Jaguar. Or if he has not show because, before the Master Everdrive I got to ask him in an email and he simply ignored this issue, until one day it was on the site ready and the product being marketed.

 

I think his lack of interest in such a project is due to low demand from people who buy a Jag Everdrive.

[Gunstar]

Bingo! I think it's time things changed.

 

I agree that all the old releases on the Jag that nobody developed or released the game has a monitary interest in anymore or may not even exist, shouldn't have a stigma attached to them that it's some aweful form of piracy either, to me it's like claiming the theft of your trash or discarded junk. One man's trash is another's treasure and so on...I'm refering to those current developers and publishers in the underground/homebrew scene that have a current vested interest in their work. For example, I had one copy of Doom at one time and I had a Skunkboard, I sure as hell loaded up the released rom image to the Skunkboard to play linked Doom games. But I'm not going to track down a rom image of say...Skyhammer and load it onto a skunkboard becuase it is technically still in print (Songbird may have ample stock still and not making new copies) and being sold still by the publisher, that's piracy to me. But some developers are releasing cartridges and later on releasing the rom to all, so that's cool, but it's not like these are epic games like Skyhammer, Battlesphere or Atari Owl Project either...

Edited November 17, 2012 by Gunstar

[Edi (FZ2D)]

Even with a flashcart I would not discount the possibility of adiquirir my favorite games.

At the moment I have 27 games Atari Jaguar, but a Flash Cart would be especially crucial in deciding which games to buy.

 

Doom is not on my list because I have the 32X version of me that is enough already, but would love to try other games to see if I really like them enough to buy them.

[JagChris]

We need more developer hardware that is in good supply so it cant be price gouged. I say make 'em.

[Clint Thompson]

Completely agree Gunstar!

[+wood_jl]

Unfortunately it seems that Igor Golubovsky has no interest in creating a Flash Cart for Jaguar. Or if he has not show because, before the Master Everdrive I got to ask him in an email and he simply ignored this issue, until one day it was on the site ready and the product being marketed.

 

I think his lack of interest in such a project is due to low demand from people who buy a Jag Everdrive.

 

Apologies for ignorance, but is this "Krikzz?"

 

I suppose the Jag aftermarket (21st-century) is probably tiny, compared to even the Master System, then? However small, the Jag fanbase is so hardcore, they'd probably pay double for an Everdrive for it.

[Tursi]

shouldn't have a stigma attached to them that it's some aweful form of piracy either

 

I just want to clarify (again)... a lot of people combine the "the Skunkboard does not officially support commercial ROMs" statement that I did make with the above statement that I did not, as if that was my opinion.

 

I blocked one game with several variants as a concession to the developers of it, after checking with numerous developers what the minimum required lockdown would be. That's a pretty small lockout given the huge importance assigned to it.

 

As for everything else, my personal stance is simple. Do what you want with it! I didn't make anyone promise to use it for development. I said I don't /support/ anything else. Me. I. Not the hardware. I know everything works, at least, everything I've thrown at it. But having people come to me every day complaining that some game they downloaded off a torrent site didn't work was not something I wanted to spend time on (except for the odd curiousity like Raiden). It's purely from a customer support standpoint, not a hardware support standpoint. Although in fairness it does amaze me that the 16-bit bus runs all the 32-bit bus games so well.

 

I do wish we could make more. The driving force behind the second and third runs was to try and get enough of them out there to prevent prices from shooting up, but I guess that's impossible, especially with people screaming 'rare' in every single auction. (I remember emailing someone who had posted that the Rev3 Ghost Skunk was the rarest of the entire line, when it's not even close. To his credit, he fixed the description... but I don't look at most of them.) Since I sold off my spares I can't even cash in myself, hehe.

 

There were other flash chips out there. A 3.3v chip could be used by adding more voltage conversion to the board. I did find another 5v tolerant chip two years ago but the pinout was different, so a board change would still be needed (and it was also end-of-life and may not still be common). Probably the best way forward is a new microcontroller-based design with an SD slot and some RAM.

 

[Gunstar]

I just want to clarify (again)... a lot of people combine the "the Skunkboard does not officially support commercial ROMs" statement that I did make with the above statement that I did not, as if that was my opinion.

 

I blocked one game with several variants as a concession to the developers of it, after checking with numerous developers what the minimum required lockdown would be. That's a pretty small lockout given the huge importance assigned to it.

 

As for everything else, my personal stance is simple. Do what you want with it! I didn't make anyone promise to use it for development. I said I don't /support/ anything else. Me. I. Not the hardware. I know everything works, at least, everything I've thrown at it. But having people come to me every day complaining that some game they downloaded off a torrent site didn't work was not something I wanted to spend time on (except for the odd curiousity like Raiden). It's purely from a customer support standpoint, not a hardware support standpoint. Although in fairness it does amaze me that the 16-bit bus runs all the 32-bit bus games so well.

 

I do wish we could make more. The driving force behind the second and third runs was to try and get enough of them out there to prevent prices from shooting up, but I guess that's impossible, especially with people screaming 'rare' in every single auction. (I remember emailing someone who had posted that the Rev3 Ghost Skunk was the rarest of the entire line, when it's not even close. To his credit, he fixed the description... but I don't look at most of them.) Since I sold off my spares I can't even cash in myself, hehe.

 

There were other flash chips out there. A 3.3v chip could be used by adding more voltage conversion to the board. I did find another 5v tolerant chip two years ago but the pinout was different, so a board change would still be needed (and it was also end-of-life and may not still be common). Probably the best way forward is a new microcontroller-based design with an SD slot and some RAM.

 

I find it very interesting that the Skunk has 16-bit bus and runs software made for a 32-bit bus, I guess that means the throughput could have handled much more than was used with the 32-bit bus on most or all games.

[Clint Thompson]

My understanding for not making more Skunkboards comes down to the chips. I downloaded the package a few weeks ago and thought about possibly trying to have a few made for myself in a cool red PCB, even found the chips that are "obsolete" or "out of stock" (I spent about 5 hours one evening doing some legwork in finding these chips and despite them being obsolete/out of stock at most places, I found two places that have them still) but I doubt that I'm skilled enough to figure out how to get the rom to operate the whole thing on their properly much less solder the bits on myself, although I do have some friends that have SMT soldering experience, I fear I would just be burning through some expensively made one-off PCBs though I do like the idea of trying.

[Tursi]

I find it very interesting that the Skunk has 16-bit bus and runs software made for a 32-bit bus, I guess that means the throughput could have handled much more than was used with the 32-bit bus on most or all games.

 

KSkunk took advantage of fast modern hardware there, the Skunkboard runs only 16-bits, but at half the bus cycles of the original Jaguar cartridges (possible because the memory controller is very programmable, and the bus speed and width are part of the cartridge header). So the overall throughput is actually the same. It's either luck or a rule by Atari that no cartridge seems to reprogram the bus width registers after the BIOS runs.

 

[Tursi]

My understanding for not making more Skunkboards comes down to the chips. I downloaded the package a few weeks ago and thought about possibly trying to have a few made for myself in a cool red PCB, even found the chips that are "obsolete" or "out of stock" (I spent about 5 hours one evening doing some legwork in finding these chips and despite them being obsolete/out of stock at most places, I found two places that have them still) but I doubt that I'm skilled enough to figure out how to get the rom to operate the whole thing on their properly much less solder the bits on myself, although I do have some friends that have SMT soldering experience, I fear I would just be burning through some expensively made one-off PCBs though I do like the idea of trying.

 

The flash in particular, yeah. I spent a good six months trying to find a source, finally Mouser announced a new run was being made. But nobody knew when. We eventually got two companies to source us from the new run when it happened, but this was after getting an entire shipment of pirate flash chips seized by customs. (Luckily we recovered the cost).

 

I did find one-offs here and there.. and I even have four chips in my parts box that I found while cleaning up. But hard to find in quantity and usually pricey.

 

I managed to refurbish a few boards using a hot-air rework station at my job, and that was easier than I thought (I practiced on other boards first), but that's not quite the same as building from scratch.

 

Even though the flash is the killer.. the LDO keeps going obsolete (we changed it at least once), and IIRC the CPLD and the USB controller were either at or approaching end of life too.

 

[+CyranoJ]

Pirate chips are yummy - 'even' Reboot likes them!

 

[sh3-rg]

Pirate chips are yummy - 'even' Reboot likes them!

 

I'm sure you shouldn't be eating junk like that, even Reboot members would find that hard to stomach

 

 

so that's cool, but it's not like these are epic games like Skyhammer, Battlesphere or Atari Owl Project either...

 

And those mentioned are either not homebrews or not even close to being games.

[Gunstar]

I'm sure you shouldn't be eating junk like that, even Reboot members would find that hard to stomach

 

 

 

 

And those mentioned are either not homebrews or not even close to being games.

 

That's true, I wasn't using them as examples of homebrews but as examples of "epic" on the Jaguar to differentiate from non-epic stuff like Blackout or something like Zoop. I never cared for the term "homebrew" myself anyway, it makes it sound "second rate" or "unprofessional" which is not always the case, and the same could be said about of flood of commercially released games anyway. Is there even a rock-solid definition of "homebrew?" I personally don't consider anything being done by a professional programmer or team of programmers to be homebrew, just becuase the project is done in spare time without a budget or any money.

Edited November 18, 2012 by Gunstar

[sh3-rg]

I never cared for the term "homebrew" myself anyway... Is there even a rock-solid definition of "homebrew?"

 

Agree completely, it gives off all the wrong vibes, but it's difficult to use a term that would be as accepted by as many people as it is.

 

I always thought homebrew referred to making games for machines that you shouldn't be able to - so games consoles and other devices that are not directly programmable as home computers are... but these days with all these touch devices etc. where development is done away from the target machine, that muddies the waters. If you produce your CDs or carts at home then sell them yourself are you a hombrewer? If you wirte you game at home and hand it over to a publisher are you an indy?The Jaguar being an open platform - does that make everyone programming for it an indy? I really don't know :-)

[jmetal88]

I remember emailing someone who had posted that the Rev3 Ghost Skunk was the rarest of the entire line, when it's not even close. To his credit, he fixed the description... but I don't look at most of them.

 

So is the Revision 1 the rarest then? There were less than 50 of those, right? I still have mine, despite trying to get rid of it twice.

 

Of course, I realize it's also the least desirable of the Skunkboards, having the smaller memory bank.

[Tursi]

So is the Revision 1 the rarest then? There were less than 50 of those, right? I still have mine, despite trying to get rid of it twice.

 

That's correct. I manufactured 50, roughly 15 of them failed from the factory (which is why I didn't use that factory again, very visible quality issues), some I fixed but I don't remember anymore how many. There are between 35-40 rev 1 boards.

 

How much do you want for it? It's the best board for development because it has the fastest flash. (I suppose that probably helps just playing games too, since it can program faster).

 

I wish I'd kept the failures, today I probably could have repaired most of them. Live and learn.

 

Of course, I realize it's also the least desirable of the Skunkboards, having the smaller memory bank.

 

In my eyes that should be somewhat minor. I never did a survey, but I get the impression that very few gamers use both banks of the Rev 2/3, and there are no 6MB titles to worry about. The form factor makes it slightly less desirable, since you can't easily mount it in a shell (but I did one by putting a couple of rivets through the through-holes in the PCB )

 

[jmetal88]

How much do you want for it? It's the best board for development because it has the fastest flash. (I suppose that probably helps just playing games too, since it can program faster).

 

Well, at the moment, I'm not sure I still want to sell it. I go through periods of "Do I really need to keep this?" and "Man, this thing is super nice for playing homebrew on."

 

Both of the times I tried to get rid of it, I just wanted to trade it for a working Jaguar CD unit with power supply, haha.

[doctorclu]

....I know everything works, at least, everything I've thrown at it. But having people come to me every day complaining that some game they downloaded off a torrent site didn't work was not something I wanted to spend time on (except for the odd curiousity like Raiden).

 

When I was in Kuwait serving overseas, I had my Jaguar, and thanks to the Skunkboard I had the whole library available (since toating along 50 carts would have been difficult since I only had a few duffle bags.)

 

So had the Skunkboard, and my regular plays like Cybermorph and Bubsy. And later I had to buy a copy of Raiden off Ebay since I wanted to play that and realized "Oh yeh, Skunkboard doesn't load that one"

 

Getting to play Kobiashi Maru and Tube when they were released while over there was just awesome. Thanks again Tursi and all involved with the Skunkboard.

[Tursi]

I'm glad it was useful.

 

Regarding Raiden, the problem was just the game not setting the vertical blank interrupt. The Jaguar BIOS leaves it on, but to make booting development software more reliable, not to mention Skunkboard doesn't use an object list that needs updating, Skunkboard boots with the interrupt off. The standard Atari startup code always sets it, so we figured that was fine. (Not sure how Raiden slipped through the QA cracks. )

 

I understand that the "PAL" version works correctly, though if it matters to anyone, it's a simple patch to make the original one work too. If anyone cares, remind me in a week after I am moved, and I'll take a look.

 

[dudeydude]

I would be very interested in anything 'Flash Cart' related for the Jaguar.

 

I was very close to owning a Skunkboard and unfortunately was beaten to the post at literally the last second. I was gutted to say the least...

 

For me personally I would like to explore the possibility of 'commercial' games but for me, the ability to play ANYTHING Jaguar would be fantastic. Are there any solutions in the pipe or available now, however expensive, for me to explore.

 

My Jaguar is something I like a lot but alas I have literally four games... IMO its not enough. I would like more.

 

Games round my neck of the woods are just way too expensive for what they represent. They are the same price as when they were new back in the day. I cannot justify that price for one game...

 

I am a PAL kinda dude... :-)

 

I appreciate its a really touchy subject talking about commercial games and such. For me personally I just wanna play more Jag games... :-)