Zerosquare

Bah. Next time I'll tell people to use cartridges instead, like I usually do

I thought you said there were some problems with Philia for one person who did a video?

Reboot released the source code for their Project One game. Details and download here: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/234798-project-one-source-code/

General What is it ? It is a 4 megabytes reprogrammable Jaguar cartridge, also known as a "flash cart". What is it used for ? The main use is allowing homebrew developers to release cartridge versions of their games. It can also be useful to people who don't have an Alpine Board/Atari Flash Cart/Skunkboard, to run cartridge-based games or betas. What's the point, since blank cartridge PCBs already exist ? / If this is meant for building cartridges, why make it programmable more than once ? The whole point is price and availability. The standard blank PCBs need special EPROMs chips that are expensive and hard to find, whereas this new cartridge uses modern parts that are cheap and readily available. Since Flash memory chips (which can be rewritten many times) are now cheaper than EPROMs, we thought we might as well make it reprogrammable. Are cart shells included ? It will depend on what people want ; we have a way to get them for a reasonable price. What is the current status of the project ? Hardware has been finalized and shown to work. Software is being worked on, and prices are being negotiated with suppliers. When will it be available ? When it's done -- no hard schedule, sorry Does this mean the JagCF project has been cancelled ? Not at all. These are separate projects with different goals. The JagCF is still being developed. Pricing and ordering How much does it cost ? We don't know for sure yet, since it will depend on the sales volume (electronic parts can be much cheaper when bought in bulk), and we have yet to get a quote on the assembly (soldering and shipping costs. For information, for 10 boards, the PCB and parts alone add up to less than 15 € (approx $19). A cart shell adds a few euros. How many units will you manufacture ? Do I need to preorder right now ? No need to hurry -- we'll take preorders once we know the final prices. There won't be a limit on the number of carts either ; we'll manufacture based on the number of orders. Will you ship worldwide ? Will you accept PayPal ? Yes to both. Can I get a discount if I buy several carts at once ? Unfortunately, no. Our profit margin will be very low, so we can't afford to offer discounts. Hardware and support software How is it programmed ? By plugging it into the Jaguar, connecting a BJL cable to the second controller port, and running a flashing program on a PC. Will I need a BJL-modded Jaguar, a JagCD, or something else for this to work ? No. The cart will include the necessary code for communicating with the PC (like the Skunkboard does), so you won't need anything apart from the BJL cable. My PC doesn't have a parallel port to plug the BJL cable into. Why didn't you include a USB connector on the cart ? Because USB is complicated to support, and would have made the price significantly higher ; since one of the project's goals was to make the cheapest design possible for large releases, we decided not to include it. At this time, the cart requires a parallel port, either built-in or on a PCI/PCIe/PCMCIA/PC Card/ExpressCard. We're currently working on adding support for USB-based parallel port adapters, but it is too early to confirm if it will work. What operating systems are going to be supported ? Windows (from 98 to 7) and Linux. What about Macintoshes ? If the support for USB parallel ports works (as Macs don't have a built-in parallel port), and if we can find someone to port and maintain the code, it may be possible. Usage Will betas / commercial games work on this device ? First, an important note : commercial games are not officially supported, and respecting copyright and other applicable laws is the user's responsibility. We don't condone or accept any liability for any illegal usage of this device. That said, technically, the cart has a lot in common with the Skunkboard, meaning that the expected compatibility is about the same : most games will probably work fine. Can I use it to play BattleSphere / BattleSphere Gold ? See above. (oh, and by the way : it has not been tested, but we have reasons to believe it will not work). Can I use it to run BJL games ? To create a cartridge version of a BJL game ? Yes, both uses will be supported. Can I use it to run CD games ? In general, no. Do game saves work ? Yes. For developers Is any unauthorized software list / unique identifier / copy-protection hardware... included ? No, as these features would have made the cost higher (and we don't think they're very useful or effective, anyways). If you need them, we suggest using a Skunkboard or manufacturing your own carts. I don't want my games to run on this device. No problem. Contact us, and we'll give you technical information on how to detect the cart and block it. Can it be write-protected once it has been programmed ? Yes. The included communication code can be removed after use, and there is a solder pad on the PCB which prevents any writes to the flash memory if it's enabled. Keep in mind that a motivated used could reverse both of these operations, though. In what ways is it different from a "real" cartridge ? The main difference is that the bus is only 16-bit wide instead of 32, and that the read accesses are 5 cycles instead of 10 -- the same as the Skunkboard. The EEPROM for saves works just like the one in commercial cartridges. The header (from $800000 to $801FFF) is not available, as it is used for the PC communication code ; the MEMCON setup value is also different to account for the different bus width and read cycle length. Is there a way to program a large number of those boards quickly ? Not really. Putting the contents to be programmed on a CD and using the JagCD could be a solution, but it remains to be seen if it's actually faster, not to mention the JagCD's flaky reliability.

Hi Matthias, For games that have been released using Jagtopus boards (Another World, Elansar...), I haven't been involved in the financial aspects - I gave the manufacturing company contact info to the developers, so that they could order directly. As a consequence I don't know the current prices. If you have a project, let me know so that I can get you in touch with the right persons.

Programming the Jaguar is now easier than ever, thanks to the new release from Reboot: Raptor BASIC, a BASIC port with plenty of Jaguar-specific features. http://atariage.com/forums/forum/161-raptor-basic/

To answer your original question, you can use JiFFI to autodetect if your file has a header, and generate a BIN file without the header if this is the case. If it doesn't, then simply change the file extension to BIN.

You don't need to bother with that. Download ULS by Reboot and you'll be able to convert your .ABS game to a burnable CD image with a few clicks.

USB serial ports are not visible in the BIOS, only in Windows. You should be able to use the method explained here even with current Windows versions, except : - MAKETRK.EXE and PADCD.COM may not run directly under Windows. You can use DOSBox to run them. - Windows Vista and above no longer include HyperTerminal, but you can use TeraTerm instead. - The USB serial port will probably have a different name (i.e. COM3 instead of COM1). I don't know if anybody actually tested it. Maybe Matthias Domin knows? I know he visits AtariAge and Jagware from time to time.

Salut, Comme le dit SCPCD, ça doit être un bug dans VJ. En même temps, je crois que cette démo est le seul code connu qui utilise cette feature, alors bon...

The USB -> serial port adapter should work. Or you can use Orion's version of Matthias' CD encryption program, which use the BJL cable. It's in the ZIP file SCPCD mentioned above, in the CDEncrypt folder. But you need a PC with a built-in parallel port for that.

Checkpoint strike again on the Jag demo scene. They've released an invitro for called "Morphonic Lab XIII : Contarium" with some innovative and impressive effects. The demo can be downloaded here ; there's also a , and a Pouet.net page.

What kind of bugs? I must have been lucky, but I haven't had any problems with Atari's ALN and MAC.

Orion_ has released a free ROM version of his "Orion_'s Jaguar Collection" cartridge:

The maximum amount of memory that can be mapped in the cartridge space is not 8 MB, but only 6 MB, because the upper 2 MB are reserved for things like the boot ROM, GPU/DSP RAM and hardware registers. You could have on-cart RAM, but: - if it's SRAM, suitable chips are probably expensive - if it's DRAM, you'd need a FPGA or memory controller to manage it - the performance will be limited because of the cartridge timings (at best 5 clock cycles per R/W access). - the performance will be limited because of the cartridge bus width (at best 32 bits, but that would require several SRAM chips, or a FPGA with lots of pins, plus voltage translators) Basically it's doable but not cheap, and it would be significantly slower than internal RAM.

Here's a little idea I had to circumvent the Jaguar's UART bug. The ZIP file contains a detailed description and a demo program (the source code is included). Enjoy ! TestUART.zip

I'm not sure if they still visit Jagware, but happy birthday anyways

Why don't you try yourself? It is much less complicated than supporting USB on the Skunkboard

Happy birthday

I don't use C on the Jaguar so I don't remember it is widely known or not, but I found one (or two ?) GPU/DSP compiler(s) while looking in old stuff tonight. The first archive is from Roine Steinberg's Jaguar Server page. There's not much info on it: http://home1.swipnet.se/%7Ew-11410/js/jagcc.zip The second archive is from the Favard brothers' web site. It contains a lot of stuff, including what appears to be Atari's port of GCC targeting the 68K, GPU and DSP: http://laurent68k.free.fr/Site/Jaguar_files/JagOSFavard.zip (take a look at "Official Jaguar Kit\Docs\Gcc.txt")

Ctrl-F + "Jaguar CD Dev Pack"

Added a mirror of Roine Steinberg's Jaguar Server page.

Virustotal (a meta-virus scanner that checks files using several dozens of commercial antivirus engines) tells me that both the site and the file itself are clean. So it's probably a false positive. Use another browser