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Starcat

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Everything posted by Starcat

  1. Compact flash adapter

    Hi! You are welcome. If I can do anything to help you, like testing or whatever. I'd be glad to help out at some point and I'll support your idea if I can. I asked around some other developers and the opinions on the CF are split. Some don't see the advantages of it (yet), which I personally can not understand. Others want to wait to see it finished and relased, before commenting on it. And a few, like myself, can't wait to see it finished. I have always been upset about the high JagCD prices and its quality and the way development is done for it, but there was hardly a different option before. Carts were too small and too expensive. So for me this CF idea is exactly what I have been waiting for. Regards, Lars.
  2. Compact flash adapter

    Hi! Here is a first reply from Glenn Bruner who asked around some of his atari contacts, this is what he wrote: "Lars, Looks like my assumption is wrong. Here's what David Schwartz happen to share with what he can recall: Quote from David Schwartz: As I recall, the Butch chip that Tim designed was the master. Tim should know. I can't remember what happens to those lines when a cart is plugged in. Bear in mind the CD can be used AT THE SAME TIME as a cart, although no games I can think of tried that mode. The question regarding the tri-state might be answered through research into the I2S bus specifications. I would imagine that the Butch and other parts of the Jaguar would adhere to that specification. I'll let you know if Tim Dunn responds. I don't know if I'll get a reply." So I don't know if he will get more info, but when more about this is posted on UGD, I'll forward it to this forum. Hope that helps.
  3. Compact flash adapter

    Hi! Sorry, I can't help you with your questions as I have never looked much into jag hardware development. I could post your questions to UGD however or if you are a member of UGD you could ask yourself. Tell me what way you prefer it. It's great to hear that the CF adapter will be finished by christmas. Will you also have the routines that are needed to support the adapter in future games finished at that time? Regards, Lars.
  4. Compact flash adapter

    Hi! One thing that just came to my mind was, as the JagCD passes its data directly to the DSP (if I got that right) and does not hog the main bus, would there be a way of doing this with the CF adapter too? Or maybe make it optional somehow? so that you can use the main bus to speed up access, but you could also use the same way of the JagCD? That might be cool, because depending on your needs you could choose which access is better for you. But of course this is just a theoretical idea. No idea if it's possible. Just out of curiosity, can you tell any details on how you want to increase the bandwidth of the CF adapter? Also, can you estimate how long it might still take until the CF adapter is finished? Do you think it will still be this year? Regards, Lars.
  5. About sprites collisions..

    Hi! Actually there are some other things missing for me to be happy on the Jag But that's another question. I usually use bounding box. Never used bounding circles and I could imagine, on the Jag this would be too slow in most cases and not really that useful. Another thing that you could use is collision by using a sceeen buffer of some sort that you draw into and when there is a pixel already at the position you write to, you know that there is collsion. You probably know what I mean. Although this usually is too slow and consuming more memory too. So most of the cases bounding box is the best way I think. Regards, Lars.
  6. Compact flash adapter

    Hi! Good point. But then again we could just as well "stream" the data of the CF... Any access is definately faster than from CD I could imagine. The only problem in that case could be the bandwidth. But only tests could answer that question. Also I think a very important aspect to make this CF adapter a success, would be the price. Because the more people have to pay for it, the harder it will be to make clear to them why they should get one. It's always hard to establish a new medium I think. Because on one side you need software that uses it, or many people won't be interested. On the other side you need a userbase already, or developers might wonder if it's worth to make games that use this technology. Of course software has to be there first in this case I guess, so the developers have to "risk" supporting the CF adapter without knowing how big the user base will be. But if the price is good, it's easier to imagine that people will buy it. Good software can make people buy the CF adapter, but for example many people don't have a JagCD either, because they think it's not worth the money, even though it has a few of the best Jag games. Can you tell me how much building the prototype for example costed? (just material costs) So maybe I could get a general idea of what a finished version might cost? Regards, Lars.
  7. Compact flash adapter

    No Problem! I'm always glad if I can help. Regards, Lars.
  8. Welcome to the non-froggies people !!

    Hi folks! Just thought I'd say hi to :-) I'm looking forward to some great Jag dev discussions and exchange of ideas and maybe some new interesting Jag projects will be the result of it. :-) See you around. Regards, Lars.
  9. Compact flash adapter

    Hi folks! This this really awesome news! I can't wait until this is finished. It could become the future of the Jaguar. About the piracy problem I had an idea and posted to the Atariage thread already. Here is basically what I wrote over there... Citation "Hey! There was just one thing that came to my mind about piracy protection. If it's possible to protect a CF that it can't be read or written on PC, one way might be to manually enter a password on the Jaguar to make the CF readable. But that means the user knows that password and can always read it on PC as well. So piracy is still a problem. BUT, what if there was a Jaguar program that generated a key and "locked" the CF. I mean a Jag program that writes onto a CF a password that it generated and that it considers valid. On PC you can't read it, because you do not know that password. So if this was actually possible, publishing could be like this: -Developing your program. -Writing it to the CF. -Inserting it into the CF cart on the Jag -Starting the tools on the Jag (the stuff I am just imagining at this point) The Jaguar would then create a password that it considers valid and lock that cart for any device that doesn't create the same password. Of course the way the password is generated should be kept private, otherwise this whole idea won't work. Another option of that tool would have to be formating the CF though. (because if something goes wrong, you don't want to throw away the CF, if you can format it entirely, it will be as new) And everytime you boot up the CF in the Jag CF cart, the boot rom could do a check, see if the CF is valid and run it. Of course it could also run ones that are not protected. The important thing would just be that a user can not read the data off it on PC. Only choice is, to use it on the Jag or to format it. (Which he certainly shouldn't do. But I don't think anybody would do that accidently) I hope any of this makes sense... Keep in mind that I never used password protected CF, so if what I wrote is not possible, then please correct me." Actually it could even be very useful for Eerievale. Because I could imagine that the filesystem and access times would make many things so much easier and better and also faster. Keep up the great work. Regards, Lars.
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