Felix

FELIX

Felix MotherboardPictured here is one of the early development system motherboards for Jaguar game development. This particular one has a name called "Felix."

The system used SIMM style memory, slots to plug in various cards, and a early prototype of the Jaguar chip set.

Unfortunately, I don't know if this particular board works or not. It's missing the video board.

This board was designed to fit inside a standard IBM AT style case. It is powered by a standard AT power supply.

This board sure looks like it cost Atari a lot of money to design and build. Far from the simpiler design they went later with the Alpine board.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prototype Jagaur ChipsetPictured to the right is a Toshiba I.C. that was used to design the Jaguar chipset on. This is some sort of Application Specific Integrate Circuite (ASIC) that Atari used on the Felix development system. The final production chipset's were probably not available yet.

Since the motherboard has a slot for the DSP hardware, I believe that this chip only contains the Graphics Processor Unit (GPU), Object Processor, and Blitter.

I wonder if there's a way to read the contents of this chip and reverse engineer the inner workings of the Jaguar.... Oh well, beyond my capability at this time. I did try and contact Toshiba on this, but they are sticking with their Non-disclosure agreement.

 

 

Felix Board ConnectorThis is a close up view of the board connectors on the Felix motherboard.

Pictured is the DSP and Cartridge board ports. Along with the missing Video board, this system is missing the DSP board also.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Felix Rom BoardHere is a picture of the ROM board for the Felix system. On this board are the ROM's that contain the Stubulator. The Stubulator is the program that run's inside the Jaguar to allow communication between the Jaguar and the programmer's host sytem. This allows remote debugging of programs while the game is in development.

You know, not every programming idea works the first time. You need a method to figure out what went wrong.

This board has a January 7, 1993 version of the Stub. The latest and last version available is the November 1994 edition.

 

Felix Timing BoardThis is a close up view of the Timex board for the Felix system. This board provides the clocking references for the rest of the sytem.

Notice the copyright year: 1992...

That was a quick year for the Jaguar going from something like this Felix system to the commercial product we see today!

 

 

 

 

Felix Joypad BoardHere is the Jaguar Joystick Interface board. Not much to describe here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Felix I/O BoardLast but not least, the I/O board. This board provides the I/O interface to the host computer for Jaguar development. There's circuitry for serial and parallel communication.

The parallel communication was designed to communicate with a PC or ST/Falcon printer port.

None of the development software I have today has been able to communicate with the Felix or Rapier system. I found a note in the developers manual saying this,

"Q: The newer versions of RDBJAG cannot transfer data correctly to a Sylvester development syste?

A: Boy, do you have an old system! If you are still working on a Sylvester, you should immeadiately contact Jaguar Developer Support to exchange it. The Sylvester is very outdated and should not be used for development any more."