Upcoming Jaguar Game Drive Cartridge

[masschamber]

 

Getting quite excited now the first PCB's are in production.

 

I've just been looking at the fact you could add an additional 2MB of internal RAM to the Jag if you wanted.... the additional lines are on TOM (RAS1/CAS1). With some 5v SRAM and some logic to convert the RAS/CAS address into a linear address it could be done with available / in production components (nothing worse than designing something using obsolete and hard to find chips).

 

There is very little point to doing this, of course, other than the fact I keep thinking about a Jaguar based computer once the JagSD is out. As there's no reason not to build EMUTOS to run on it and have GEM running on the Jag.... potentially with 4MB internal RAM and 16MB external RAM.

 

Again.... completely pointless. But I can't help finding it appealing.

how much would that add to the cost of the multicart, I mean most of us that would be buying one probably already expect a premium product and probably won't mind a the additional cost if it allowed expanded potential of jag games. Plus if a homebrewer wanted to wouldn't copying your ram setup be pretty easy to add to normal production cart? not that I'm going to be writing any jag games, but it'd neat to see what happens with jag games when a nicer chunk of memory is available

Edited July 20, 2017 by masschamber

[SainT]

how much would that add to the cost of the multicart, I mean most of us that would be buying one probably already expect a premium product and probably won't mind a the additional cost if it allowed expanded potential of jag games. Plus if a homebrewer wanted to wouldn't copying your ram setup be pretty easy to add to normal production cart? not that I'm going to be writing any jag games, but it'd neat to see what happens with jag games when a nicer chunk of memory is available

 

No, this would be an internal modification for the Jag, there's no way to expand it like this externally. Emulators could be easily modified to allow 4mb of internal RAM so people could see what is possible.

 

Given the number of people who would potentially be interested in something this daft, I cant really see it happening. Although if it's simple enough I could do a kit.... lol, something to think about after the cart is done.

[leech]

Ha, would it be as simple/odd as sticking something over the 68k processor like people do on the ST? Something tells me it would not be.

[The Yar]

Hi everyone! Made an account just for this. I don't have my original Jag anymore but i rebought one and yes, games are getting expensive. Managed to buy some mint ones but others like Rayman, i'll have to pass There is also the Jag-CD issue that could be resolved by this catridge. I'd love to replay Myst on the Jag this time. Iron soldier 2 and Battlemorph look amazing too...

 

Battlemorph was easily the best game made for Jaguar CD and arguably the best game made for the Jaguar in general. I can't wait to play it again.

 

Also, excuse my ignorance on the development of SD Carts, but does the Jaguar CD work in a similar way? (taking the info from CD, flash a bit to the carts RAM, and loading it) Would reverse engineering the Jag CD be helpful in developing this SD Cart?

Edited July 20, 2017 by The Yar

[SainT]

 

Battlemorph was easily the best game made for Jaguar CD and arguably the best game made for the Jaguar in general. I can't wait to play it again.

 

Also, excuse my ignorance on the development of SD Carts, but does the Jaguar CD work in a similar way? (taking the info from CD, flash a bit to the carts RAM, and loading it) Would reverse engineering the Jag CD be helpful in developing this SD Cart?

 

The CD BIOS has been reverse engineered and Songbird has small CD images running from cart.

 

The Jag CD is a proper CD system, not like the NeoGeo CD for example which loads from CD into a RAM cart.

[SainT]

Ha, would it be as simple/odd as sticking something over the 68k processor like people do on the ST? Something tells me it would not be.

 

No, it's just piggybacking 4 DRAM chips, though, so it's not tricky...

 

It could probably be done as a push-on thing.

[JagChris]

Duranik wanted more memory for future projects on the Jaguar.

 

http://duranik.com/

 

And some others. Please consider this. I am all for maximum potential.

[JagChris]

Nevermind. Thought were talking about ram on cart.

[SainT]

On 7/20/2017 at 9:24 PM, JagChris said:

Nevermind. Thought were talking about ram on cart.

 

There is that too, there's 16MB on the cart, which will be all available to the programmer. Plus of course you could use the memory card if you want.... so it's pretty limitless.

Edited October 25, 2019 by SainT

[neo_rg]

+1 for the internal ram upgrade kit. This sort of mod was talked about ages ago, probably on here... Must search for it to refresh my memory. But, it was generally poo poo'd as too complicated for the average user. A push on ram kit should and would sell well. I'm sure games would be written or modified to make the most of it if it was available.

[+Sauron]

I don't think internal mods would be well supported by anyone, and purchased by few. Having RAM on the SD cart + SD storage space would be plenty enough.

[+madman]

The Jag CD is a proper CD system, not like the NeoGeo CD for example which loads from CD into a RAM cart.

What do you mean on that? How is the NGCD not a proper CD system? The Jag CD has to be the most basic CD ROM system/add-on out there, it adds nothing other than the ability to load games into RAM from a CD. No extra memory, no extra processing, nothing.

[UHATEIT]

I don't think internal mods would be well supported by anyone, and purchased by few. Having RAM on the SD cart + SD storage space would be plenty enough.

I agree on this, as long ads the car allows a decent sized SD card to load the roms on that will probably be enough!

 

I think this is asked as of recently if I am understanding it correctly, it should be able to play the Jag CD games as wlel? As long as they are converted to ROM or RAM format (or .j64 or .jag I guess)

[Zerosquare]

I don't think internal mods would be well supported by anyone, and purchased by few. Having RAM on the SD cart + SD storage space would be plenty enough.

Yeah, internal RAM expansion can be a silly "for fun" project (I believe SCPCD did that a long time ago), but it doesn't make sense to sell it: it wouldn't be cheap and wouldn't enhance the existing games. So very few people would buy it, which means no homebrews would support it, which means very few people would buy it, etc.

[JagChris]

I don't think internal mods would be well supported by anyone, and purchased by few. Having RAM on the SD cart + SD storage space would be plenty enough.

I believe internal ram would be much faster though.

 

I would do it if it was a low-risk modification maybe future developers can have their programs detect the extra onboard internal Ram.

 

As for not being supported that might be a chicken or the egg thing.

[leech]

Hmm, now normally I'd say that a console is a console, and pretty much modding things like memory on it would be beyond your typical console owner. But only hardcore nerds at this point probably own the Jaguar. You'd almost have to just provide any cartridge / CD that required the extra memory to have it included with the game. Nothing would suck more to get "Ultimate Jaguar game!" and then read that it required more memory than standard, and the person making the expansions had stopped years before.

 

I guess there isn't a way like on almost all other consoles out there to do it via the Cartridge port? Like the FX chip and such on the SNES.

 

I do kind of like the idea though, port TOS over to it with more memory too.

[tonma]

I keep thinking about a Jaguar based computer once the JagSD is out. As there's no reason not to build EMUTOS to run on it and have GEM running on the Jag.... potentially with 4MB internal RAM and 16MB external RAM.

 

Just yummy yummy

[leech]

Throw on some MIDI ports and keyboard/mouse (USB) and were in business! Though I wonder can it do any higher resolutions for desktop use?

[aminor00]

Throw on some MIDI ports and keyboard/mouse (USB) and were in business! Though I wonder can it do any higher resolutions for desktop use?

 

The max resolution of the Jag appears to be limited somewhat by available RAM: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/156971-questions-about-the-jags-max-resolution/

 

So in this instance, with 4MB of onboard RAM it sounds like a developer might at least be able to do a 1280 x 576 x 24 bit colour image. Scale that down to, say the ST Hi-res mode of 640x400 and you would easily be able to do that in 24bit colour. I'd have thought. I'm not a Jag developer though so there may be other limitations.

 

But, yeah, I'm with you on this one. The idea of a JagPC with keyboard mouse and VGA is appealing.

Edited July 21, 2017 by aminor00

[soob]

I thought a full Jag set sits in not that much space (but I can see wanting to reclaim it):

 

 

(Not my collection)

Well yeah....retro games in general. With 20-odd systems, if it wasn't for flash carts I'd need to dedicate a lot of space to it which is not something I'm willing to do. That said, I was up to 50 Jag games and those boxes aren't small!

[UHATEIT]

Well yeah....retro games in general. With 20-odd systems, if it wasn't for flash carts I'd need to dedicate a lot of space to it which is not something I'm willing to do. That said, I was up to 50 Jag games and those boxes aren't small!

Curious. Are you the guy from New Jersey who was selling a ton of Jag games on ebay a week or two ago? Someone seemed to be selling off their entire collection and had nearly every game including a lot of rare/expensive ones. I actually bought 2-3 of them form him to ad to my collection.

[Zerosquare]

The max resolution of the Jag appears to be limited somewhat by available RAM: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/156971-questions-about-the-jags-max-resolution/

 

So in this instance, with 4MB of onboard RAM it sounds like a developer might at least be able to do a 1280 x 576 x 24 bit colour image. Scale that down to, say the ST Hi-res mode of 640x400 and you would easily be able to do that in 24bit colour. I'd have thought. I'm not a Jag developer though so there may be other limitations.

 

But, yeah, I'm with you on this one. The idea of a JagPC with keyboard mouse and VGA is appealing.

Which development system would you rather use?

 

Something running on a PC from 2017, with:

- modern IDEs features

- existing software to handle graphics, music and sound effects creation

- lots of screen space

- multitasking

- Internet access for reference

 

Or something that has to run on a piece of hardware made in 1993 that was never meant to be a general-purpose computer, with all its limitations?

 

The idea of a self-contained development system is attractive at first sight, but it makes little sense in practice, especially now that decent emulators exist and uploading code to the real hardware is quick and easy.

One of the reason the JagCF project was never released was feature creep. I hope SainT doesn't make the same mistake, I want to see his project released

[leech]

I think for me, it isn't so much as Jag as a computer that is appealing, but it's the last hardware from Atari (well until the Ataribox? maybe? Even then, last from ST era). I would have LOVED to have seen where TOS 5.x would have gone. If we'd gotten a TOS with builtin TCP/IP, MiNT shined up for 100% professional use (and by that I mean it's awesome, but the occasional dump of crap out to the screen is pretty bad). Get a browser, and it'd still remain this nice light weight system without all the crap that Windows has. I actually tend to think it'd be somewhat MacOS like (except better, some concepts on that always were kind of weird (dragging a floppy to the trash to eject it... how is that intuitive?))

 

Anyhow, completely off topic, I mainly want this cartridge because pulling the carts out of the boxes adds wear and tear, and being able to just leave this cart in the slot also helps with wear and tear on the Jag itself.

 

Can't remember if it was this thread I said this in, but I just got a used copy of i-war, and it was doing the red Jag logo (after I pulled out the CD-rom to make sure it wasn't that) and then when I tried putting the JagCD back on, it wouldnt' spin up the drive... had to go in and fix up some crappy solder work I'd done before so that it'd work again...

[+madman]

Anyhow, completely off topic, I mainly want this cartridge because pulling the carts out of the boxes adds wear and tear, and being able to just leave this cart in the slot also helps with wear and tear on the Jag itself.

Who are you preserving the boxes and Jag for? You'd rather not play a game just so that some random person in the future can buy a better condition box/Jag? That makes no sense. Buy games to play them, not preserve them for someone 30 years from now.

[leech]

Ha, well you have a point. But if I can play them on a cartridge that sits in the Jag instead of having to wear down the Jag itself (especially the CD mechanisms) isn't that better?