The Atari Jaguar Ethernet/FLASH card

[Matthias]

Hello,

 

the project is still frozen, i am still focussing on finishing a software-project (Clicks!) before i proceed with it.

 

Regards

Matthias

[justclaws]

Hello,

 

The Atari Jaguar Ethernet-FLASH-card

So who would be interested in a pure Flash ROM card for protos and coding?

What if we persuaded Matthias to create a version like the Atari one but

which needs the uploads via a built-in BJL loader, that works for me...

The ethernet function is a great prospect, but it's use is pretty doubtful.

 

Cheers,

JustClaws.

[philipj]

That fantastic... Item like that calls for a new genration dev tools. It's time to prepare.

[vanadium]

Man, I wish this one came to fruition.

[jaguar_fan]

I would not bet on that this item will ever be publicly released, considering how old this project is.

 

But it would be great to have it, nonetheless.

[vanadium]

I think it's safe to say it'll never be released; I wasn't under the delusion that it would be--especially after this much time.

 

Just that it'd be nice if it had.

[doctorclu]

I think it's safe to say it'll never be released; I wasn't under the delusion that it would be--especially after this much time.

 

Just that it'd be nice if it had.

 

 

Yeh it would have. Oh well, get a real flash cart if you can. They're worth it.

[kskunk]

I think it's safe to say it'll never be released; I wasn't under the delusion that it would be--especially after this much time.

 

Just that it'd be nice if it had.

 

This project directly inspired the Skunkboard. I found this thread last year and it made me crazy... I wanted one of these Ethernet Flash Carts so bad I had to build my own.

 

Of course, ethernet is too expensive so I had to settle with USB. Otherwise I think the influence is pretty clear.

 

Matthias is THE MAN.

 

- KS

[doctorclu]

I sigh over the idea of the Jaguar and ethernet, but then I'm starting to realize that my Dreamcast broadband adaptor is not getting any action. And I used to LOVE bringing up Linux and telneting out with that.

 

Oh well. Guess just flash is fine for the Jag.

[Gorf]

YOu can always do USB to Lan conversion for the internet.

With the Skunk,USB networking of games is a strong feature

that I hope gets used.

[ovalbugmann]

Yeah, it would have been GREAT! if Matthias had released this hardware item for people. Very glad we have the Skunkboard now though.

[doctorclu]

Yeah, it would have been GREAT! if Matthias had released this hardware item for people. Very glad we have the Skunkboard now though.

 

Yes, I am very glad that some people got Skunkboards. I guess what I've trying to say is, the Skunk is a nice solution, it is a limited distributed solution, and not everyone that would have liked/wanted/needed one got one, so not the end all be all solution.

 

To that second group of people, we are glad that the Skunkboard EXISTED, and exists for a handful of people.

[ovalbugmann]

I'm optimistic Tursi and KillerSkunk will choose to do a second run of Skunkboards sometime during the coming year. Although I own a 2600 H6er & a 7800 and play them occasionally I am a Jaguarfan first, because I believe it was Atari's best system - even though I grew up with a light sixer -that was in the early eighties, that was then, and the Jaguar still is Atari's most recent and powerful system. The only reason I got a Skunkboard is because I follow the Jaguar scene much more closely and check JS2 for surprises like this to jump on,.. immediately. It's all about what your MOST iterested in, and it works both ways too - I did not get a Cuttlecart 1 or 2 or a Cool Krokodile Cart, because I wasn't following the 2600/7800 scene here at AA close enough and was just too late. Now I am looking at around $500.00+ for CC carts or $300.00 for a Kroko. I do however look forward to the final solution of the Chimera, which will be available in quantities for everyone, as I understand it. So don't feel bad, or angry about the Skunkbud-board situation, there are always future opportunities for everyone. For instance I look forward to the JaguarCF add-on and Starcat's EerieVale game. I just hope I have the money for these things when they come out.

 

Peace buddy.

 

BTW - thanks again for sending me WTW on CD as it's cool to use it with a modded SC, I had to buy a H6er ($30.00) last year because I wanted an ORIGINAL Atari and I think it is so neat to be playing videogames on something that is now a vintage antique!

[DrMalba]

YOu can always do USB to Lan conversion for the internet.

With the Skunk,USB networking of games is a strong feature

that I hope gets used.

 

 

Do you know something I don't ? :-) So far the two normal USB plugs are unused and not supported. The SkunkLib seems very, very skeletal. Also, from poking around the forums there may be power issues with the skunk for consoles with shitty power supplies, which might be imparted to those USB ports ... though i've only personally ever seen that flakiness with things like external USB-powered hard drives, not flash drives or network adapters.

 

 

 

Yes, I am very glad that some people got Skunkboards. I guess what I've trying to say is, the Skunk is a nice solution, it is a limited distributed solution, and not everyone that would have liked/wanted/needed one got one, so not the end all be all solution.

 

To that second group of people, we are glad that the Skunkboard EXISTED, and exists for a handful of people.

 

 

I think there will be another run as well. It just seems like too many folks that wanted one didn't get one. I figure they had their hands full with getting the basic functionality to work, dealing with unanticipated issues (folks inadvertently writing over the firmware and bricking the boards :-P) and that the next run of the skunkboard will be much more complete and full-featured, and hopefully will address some of the more incomplete aspects of the board.

 

 

 

The SkunkBoard is an elegant peripheral solution Even in its current raw form, combined with the development tools for windows, unix and MacOS, there will be quite a few more people poking around on this console. If they can get enough of these in the right peoples' hands I expect another homebrew renaissance like we had around '01-03. Iit's really quite remarkable that something like this happened over a decade after the console's death and i'm very grateful to own one.

[doctorclu]

The only reason I got a Skunkboard is because I follow the Jaguar scene much more closely and check JS2 for surprises like this to jump on,.. immediately. It's all about what your MOST iterested in, and it works both ways too

 

Then my interest that week was making sure our servicemen who protect our country had fuel when hurricane Ike devistated Galveston. When that hit most of south Texas and along the east coast were in a hurt to get fuel to the point that even emergency services couldn't find fuel. I was literally spending a few 16 hour days at work making sure we had the right pricing, hunting down sources, etc.

 

So I am a big Jaguar fan, I managed to hit here when I was taking breaks from all that. I would have hit Jaguar Sector 2 that week, but JS2 gets all wonky looking when it goes through work's firewall.

 

Tursi and Kskunk have said some understanding words to the effect of "we were going to say something on Atariage, but by the time we said something on two other forums we were flooded with E-mails". That's all fine and good. But I'm just saying my level of Jaguar fandom, in this case, had nothing to do with me missing the boat on this one. All things considered, I try to say with a smile glad further developments are possible with the Skunkboard, wish I could take advantage of them.

 

----------------

 

As for the Cuttle Cart 2... I BARELY caught that one. Bought the last of two. Right now I am wondering if I should be looking into the Intellivision Cuttle Cart 3 and the Coleco flash cart from Atarimax. I am not THAT big into those systems, but what if I do later?

 

BTW - thanks again for sending me WTW on CD as it's cool to use it with a modded SC, I had to buy a H6er ($30.00) last year because I wanted an ORIGINAL Atari and I think it is so neat to be playing videogames on something that is now a vintage antique!

 

I'm glad you liked that. (WtW=Worship the Woodgrain= A collection of Atari roms set to mp3's to use on the Supercharger) I've been meaning to see if I can get my Supercharger up and running, but really glad you got me to download that for you when it was offered up here. Nice to say I have that for when I'm ready to try them out. You mess with the Supercharger much?

 

Atari 2600+Supercharger+iPod (I believe 1 gig would be enough)=Awesome setup!!

 

Or Atari 2600+Cuttle Cart 1.... but I missed on that.

 

Really, haven't touched my 2600 since I got a 7800 and CC2. Probably never will again.

[viMaster]

YOu can always do USB to Lan conversion for the internet.

With the Skunk,USB networking of games is a strong feature

that I hope gets used.

Do you know something I don't ? :-) So far the two normal USB plugs are unused and not supported. The SkunkLib seems very, very skeletal. Also, from poking around the forums there may be power issues with the skunk for consoles with shitty power supplies, which might be imparted to those USB ports ... though i've only personally ever seen that flakiness with things like external USB-powered hard drives, not flash drives or network adapters.

You wouldn't need the 2 normal USB ports on the skunk to have it used the way Gorf is saying. It already has the mini-USB port on it, which obviously plugs into your computer's standard USB port.

You only need 1.

Yes, I am very glad that some people got Skunkboards. I guess what I've trying to say is, the Skunk is a nice solution, it is a limited distributed solution, and not everyone that would have liked/wanted/needed one got one, so not the end all be all solution.

To that second group of people, we are glad that the Skunkboard EXISTED, and exists for a handful of people.

I think there will be another run as well. It just seems like too many folks that wanted one didn't get one. I figure they had their hands full with getting the basic functionality to work, dealing with unanticipated issues (folks inadvertently writing over the firmware and bricking the boards :-P) and that the next run of the skunkboard will be much more complete and full-featured, and hopefully will address some of the more incomplete aspects of the board.

The only serious problem that I saw was the failure rate. Tursi didn't send those ones out, though. That was the manufacturer's fault, but there was nothing that could be done about it.

Who was screwing around with their skunks trying to overwrite the firmware or was that something inadvertent?

 

Other than that, I don't know of any issues making it "incomplete."

 

I'm guessing if there's another run (which I thing may happen) it will simply be the same specifications, but with a different manufacturer and probably a separate distributor.

[ovalbugmann]

doctorclu,

 

Wow! You have a CuttleCart 2 - that's the GOOD one man. It loads both 2600 & 7800 programs and the 7800 has some very nice games. I missed that one entirely, but I am glad some people got one, there is no way I could afford $500.00+ for one now, so I am waiting for Chimera. I missed the Kroko cart by one or two days when the last ones were sold, and that was shitty for me because I know that thing is cool.

 

Yes, I do load up programs on the Supercharger -about a few times a month I play around with it, but I usually use cartridges in my H6er as I have about 200 VCS carts. I play 7800 games more I would say. Do you play 7800 games more or do you play 2600 games in the 7800 Pro-System?- since you don't use the 2600 unit itself at all.

 

I see your a Jagauarfan also like myself, definitely, and the Skunkboards sold out so fast I'm actually surprised I even got one. If it wasn't for your works' firewall messing up JS2 viewing I'm sure you would have seen it and taken 5 minutes to send Tursi a PM to secure one. When the second run hits, and I'm sure it will, next year I would think, I will send you a PM or email as soon as I find out about the re-release so you can pick one up, just in case you have a lot going on when it gets announced.

 

Have a good one man!

[DrMalba]

You only need 1.

 

Yeah I totally misunderstood the point of SkunkLib. Now that I looked more carefully through it I see that code is linked in with the game itself and used to handle I/O to and from the Skunk from the perspective of the console.

 

 

As for the extra ports, I guess I had tunnelvision there, assuming the mini port was always connected to the PC. Obviously if you flash the game to the onboard chip you can disconnect the Skunk and free up that port to do whatever you want with it. The comments I made about it being "incomplete" were more in reference to the fact that Tursi posted in the support area on his site that I/O to the two standard USB ports isn't supported functionality yet, which could be rectified with a future firmware update if necessary. I guess if you want a peripheral you can probably just use a usb female to mini jack/extender to experiment with ethernet adapters like Gorf hinted earlier, flash memory sticks etc. so it should be perfectly adequate to experiment with those types of things as it is.

 

 

The thing I am most intrigued by is the remote GDB host for interactive debugging of binaries loaded on the Skunk. That's an incredibly useful piece of code right there. Previously if you wanted to single-step through your code I assume you had to use one of the available GPU/DSP sims available, now you can debug directly on the console. That's huge.

 

Who was screwing around with their skunks trying to overwrite the firmware or was that something inadvertent?

 

There was an update to the firmware with the latest version of JCP. I guess initially there were one or two cases where flashing certain ROMs caused accidental overwrites of some of the memory areas where the board firmware was located and bricked the boards. The board I got already had the updated firmware installed though, so it must have been very early on in the process.

[Gorf]

Do you know something I don't ? :-) So far the two normal USB plugs are unused and not supported. The SkunkLib seems very, very skeletal.

 

Not supported means the bios does not to anything with them. They are quite connected

and can be used by addition of a driver and software. I can write code for them right now

if I wanted.....I really dont want to as I wrtie game logic and AI code. Scott does all that

boring(at least I think so) tech coding. He digs that kinda stuff.

 

 

Skunk board is plenty complete and should be considered the realase of the year, if

not the entire exsistence of the Jaguar homebrew movement, period.

[kskunk]

The comments I made about it being "incomplete" were more in reference to the fact that Tursi posted in the support area on his site that I/O to the two standard USB ports isn't supported functionality yet, which could be rectified with a future firmware update if necessary.

 

Firmware is friendly way to make the host ports work, but the "Jaguar Way" is to let you, the developer, bang on the bare metal. The Skunkboard maps all the registers for both ports and they do work. I wrote a little scrap of code that reads data off a USB stick in either port. It's not firmware-worthy, but it helped validate the design.

 

If you are serious about doing this, just check the data sheets for the CY7C67300 USB host chip used in the Skunkboard and go to town! You'll get better support by PMing me than, say, Official Jaguar Developers received from Atari.

 

The thing I am most intrigued by is the remote GDB host for interactive debugging of binaries loaded on the Skunk. That's an incredibly useful piece of code right there. Previously if you wanted to single-step through your code I assume you had to use one of the available GPU/DSP sims available, now you can debug directly on the console. That's huge.

 

Yeah, I love this feature. I've written some Jaguar code using Eclipse, a graphical C/C++ IDE that supports 68K and has a visual debugger compatible with GDB. Not only can you single step through your code and inspect variables while your game runs on the Jaguar, GDB also uploads and launches your code. So you can literally just press 'Play' on the Eclipse IDE and the Jaguar resets, your code compiles and uploads, and the cursor stops at your first breakpoint. It's magical.

 

There was an update to the firmware with the latest version of JCP. I guess initially there were one or two cases where flashing certain ROMs caused accidental overwrites of some of the memory areas where the board firmware was located and bricked the boards.

 

Not quite. Tursi was afraid one user had hit this, but when he got that board back, the firmware was intact. Still, firmware protection is good! Just ask these guys: http://blogs.computerworld.com/when_linux_...0e_ethernet_bug

 

- KS

[DrMalba]

The comments I made about it being "incomplete" were more in reference to the fact that Tursi posted in the support area on his site that I/O to the two standard USB ports isn't supported functionality yet, which could be rectified with a future firmware update if necessary.

 

Firmware is friendly way to make the host ports work, but the "Jaguar Way" is to let you, the developer, bang on the bare metal. The Skunkboard maps all the registers for both ports and they do work. I wrote a little scrap of code that reads data off a USB stick in either port. It's not firmware-worthy, but it helped validate the design.

 

Not serious per se, but it occurs to me those ports might be immediately useful if I wanted to simulateneously share the skunkboard and a single console between a few systems. This may be another ignorant question, but not knowing anything about low-level driver protocols for usb comms...can the board also be controlled from those ports, or is that only possible via the mini?

 

The thing I am most intrigued by is the remote GDB host for interactive debugging of binaries loaded on the Skunk. That's an incredibly useful piece of code right there. Previously if you wanted to single-step through your code I assume you had to use one of the available GPU/DSP sims available, now you can debug directly on the console. That's huge.

 

Yeah, I love this feature. I've written some Jaguar code using Eclipse, a graphical C/C++ IDE that supports 68K and has a visual debugger compatible with GDB. Not only can you single step through your code and inspect variables while your game runs on the Jaguar, GDB also uploads and launches your code. So you can literally just press 'Play' on the Eclipse IDE and the Jaguar resets, your code compiles and uploads, and the cursor stops at your first breakpoint. It's magical.

 

That's an impressive trick! Some of the guys on the gui side at work use Eclipse for java development. I knew it was an open framework, but the fact that you've customized it to do jaguar dev is really interesting. I've actually been considering dragging the jag and skunk in to have to play with at work to keep the mind focused on coding when it wanders...and maybe to try and win a few more converts with its exotic cult-ness and, err, "quirkiness" to develop for :-) If I can demonstrate an eclipse environment to assemble some of the sources available, it might intrigue a few folks into also toying with it. But i'd probably need another skunk or two (nudge nudge).

 

Myself, i'm just priming up on this stuff. I have a lot of pre-coded source to play with though, so the next step is to link assembly and and build something from scratch and load it up to the Skunk. If I can get comfortable I can then proceed to tinker. I have a fairly useless, but fun project in mind ultimately.

[kskunk]

Not serious per se, but it occurs to me those ports might be immediately useful if I wanted to simulateneously share the skunkboard and a single console between a few systems. This may be another ignorant question, but not knowing anything about low-level driver protocols for usb comms...can the board also be controlled from those ports, or is that only possible via the mini?

 

Naw, host ports can only connect to devices, device ports can only connect to hosts (like your PC). The middle port is a device port, the outer ports are host ports.

 

There are hubs out there that let multiple PCs share one USB device: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-multiswitch-hub.htm

 

I'd be interested to hear how it works on the Skunkboard.

 

- KS

[Tursi]

Tursi and Kskunk have said some understanding words to the effect of "we were going to say something on Atariage, but by the time we said something on two other forums we were flooded with E-mails". That's all fine and good. But I'm just saying my level of Jaguar fandom, in this case, had nothing to do with me missing the boat on this one.

 

Dr Clu, I am a little disappointed when I read things like the above. I felt it a little out of line the first time that you saw fit to lecture me about not avertising here on AtariAge, which I could not possibly support. You also misquote me above - it was a very simple situation. I did not have enough boards to distribute them everywhere. KSkunk was not involved in that choice, or the support, it was just me. Please be patient.

 

I have one spare if you really can't wait, Dr Clu. Is that all you need?

 

To cover other points:

 

-Power issues: This only affects the high-speed flash write, which needs a full 9v coming in. Underrated power supplies (and so far there has only been one reported case, using a non-Atari power supply) may not have enough power, so they can't do the write. The slow write and the rest of the Skunkboard runs off the system 5v line, which has not shown any issues in any of our testing.

 

-Quality issues: The Malaysian manufacturer gave me a full 30% failure rate. This was a large reason I limited distribution and did not profit, I planned on more like 5%. The failures were clearly the manufacturer's fault and not design (poor placement, damaged traces and defects in the gold coat). We won't be using them again.

 

-There was one case of a bricked Skunkboard. The testing results were somewhat inconclusive about how it got into that state. The BIOS update addresses it by locking the flash - inadvertant overwrite should now be exceptionally unlikely in normal use. (And this is why I strongly recommended all boards take the update).

 

-The side USB ports are unsupported. There are no plans to extend that at the moment.

 

-GDB - At the moment this only works with 68000 code. Of course, you can write your program to work with that.

[doctorclu]

KSkunk was not involved in that choice, or the support, it was just me. Please be patient.

 

I have one spare if you really can't wait, Dr Clu. Is that all you need?

 

Oh you are just now reading this? You know, people ask "Where were you when Kennedy was shot" or "where were you when a man landed on the moon?" or "Where were you when the first Space Shuttle launched?"

 

In the Jaguar world that question is asked on such moments like when Atari folded, when Battlesphere was released, etc. I had someone say I should have been more attentive when the Skunkboard was released and I was replying on "where I was" when the Skunkboard was released.

 

Tursi, if you really believe there will not be another batch of Skunkboards, yes I'd love to buy that off of you. If you believe there will be another batch, then I will wait.

 

Either way, I promise not to tell my hurricane Ike story since you were kind enough to make that offer.

 

(Actually I would love to try out some of these developer tools I hear of, but yes, I've been shamed.)

[doctorclu]

KSkunk was not involved in that choice, or the support, it was just me. Please be patient.

 

I have one spare if you really can't wait, Dr Clu. Is that all you need?

 

You know on second thought, that is a generous offer, and I thank you. PM sent.