MiSTer FPGA Forum

Ash will probably get back to it at some point, failing that it's open source so nothing stopping someone else having a go.

AFAIK the CD add on was nothing more than a drive and a BIOS read by the cart slot but I haven't looked into it so could be completely wrong.

retrorepair wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 1:50 pm My understanding is the original dev kit they had subcontracted out had bugs, not the hardware and was rectified by Atari over a weekend! There are interviews with various developers that indicate it wasn't all that difficult to develop for but spending the development time on a system with an uncertain future wasn't worth it.

I agree that thread should be merged with this one.

There was nothing like a devkit at all, when the Atari Jaguar was launched. The bugs where in fact hardware bugs, if you want to know more details look at this documentation (starting at page 133):

https://www.hillsoftware.com/files/atar ... jag_v8.pdf

Guess we are both right:

https://www.exxoshost.co.uk/atari/mirro ... jaguar.htm

That's an interesting read, thanks for the link.

retrorepair wrote: ↑Fri Jun 05, 2020 2:36 pm AFAIK the CD add on was nothing more than a drive and a BIOS read by the cart slot but I haven't looked into it so could be completely wrong.

If you are correct, then I greatly hope this will be a case similar to the PC Engine CD 'core' (added function to existing PCE core). I've never seen a Jaguar CD or even a Jag in the wild. There may be only a handful of Jag Cd games, but just like the CD-i, the emulators last I checked were still spotty. I'd be most interested in trying the panned game Highlander (love the film) and the version of Blue Lightning since I loved it on the lynx.

Ehh... you're not missing a lot with Highlander and Blue Lightning... Highlander is based on the weird and mostly forgotten animated TV series instead of the movies. Kinda plays like Resident Evil but with really awkward melee combat. As for Blue Lightning, it's alright at best. While the Lynx version had some impressive (for a handheld) graphical effects, the sprite scaling in the Jaguar version was looking pretty old when fully 3D games were becoming the norm. Hopefully someone will put together a Sega X-Board core, because After Burner is still miles ahead.

As someone who owned a Jaguar CD (and most of the games) back in the days, the game that really impressed me was Battlemorph. Great music, and a welcome refinement of the concepts in Cybermorph... but then, I'm in the minority in that I actually enjoyed Cybermorph, so take that as you will. Hover Strike: Unconquered Lands and Iron Soldier 2 are moderate improvements over the original cartridge versions, and both delivered in my opinion. Primal Rage was also pretty fun and looks significantly better than the 16-bit versions, but they screwed up the combo system compared to the arcade version. Baldies was actually pretty fun too... it's kind of a Populous style game that no one seems to remember. There's an unreleased port of Robinson's Requiem that got a small print run a while back that I've been meaning to try... I can't vouch for the Jaguar version specifically, but the PC version was really cool.

I used my Jaguar CD most of the time for the fantastic VLM that Jeff Minter built in

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 10:11 am I used my Jaguar CD most of the time for the fantastic VLM that Jeff Minter built in

Worth implementing just for that!

Summary: It's worth a try.

Thanks for the input so far.

Long story short, I have an extra Jaguar and Jaguar CD that I would like to donate to a MiSTer dev. I think Ash already has reference hardware for at least the base system, so if there are any other console devs who want to take a crack at the Jaguar and Jaguar CD please let me know as I would love to put my hardware to good use and speed development along.

Your offer been taken up emceebois?

Not as of yet!

Ze_ro wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:15 am Highlander is based on the weird and mostly forgotten animated TV series instead of the movies.

You mean the one on USA Network? I have to check this out now.

retrorepair wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:04 pm

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 09, 2020 10:11 am I used my Jaguar CD most of the time for the fantastic VLM that Jeff Minter built in

Worth implementing just for that!

I would donate to get that up and running.

Xbox 360 has a Minter VLM as well with 4 gamepad control.

Nuon too I think.

A Nuon core would be great as it is practically a Jaguar 2, but I doubt anybody would put work into this (completely understandable), there isn't even a finished emulator for this system.

emceebois wrote: ↑Wed Jun 17, 2020 4:33 pm Long story short, I have an extra Jaguar and Jaguar CD that I would like to donate to a MiSTer dev. I think Ash already has reference hardware for at least the base system, so if there are any other console devs who want to take a crack at the Jaguar and Jaguar CD please let me know as I would love to put my hardware to good use and speed development along.

I would recommend before giving this valuable hardware away to at least verify the person has developed complete cores in the past. I'd be very, very careful with this offer.

Ditto. It's pretty important to remember that software emulators tend to come out before FPGA implementations due to slightly lower complexity of implementation, and after all this time there still isn't a solid Jaguar emulator in software.

Not to be a negative Nellie, but I do not expect a fully functional Jaguar core to be released for a very long time...if ever. As said previously, there aren't even any solid Jaguar emulators out there. I have been following Jaguar emulation for years (decades even) and while there had been some progress in the past it just never grew to fruition as other emulators did. Maybe too difficult or lack of interest...who knows. I have a real Jag myself and a healthy collection of games as I enjoy a lot of them (there are a lot of good games once you have the opportunity to explore the whole collection) and I am glad I do have them as I do believe we will not see it replicated for a long time sadly.

The wip Jaguar core is already very promising. just because there isn't a proper emulator, it doesn't mean that a simulated core would run into the same problems. Emulation and hardware simulation are different.

Chris23235 wrote: ↑Fri Jul 03, 2020 5:52 am The wip Jaguar core is already very promising. just because there isn't a proper emulator, it doesn't mean that a simulated core would run into the same problems. Emulation and hardware simulation are different.

This.

The core as it stands is quite far along, it just needs some work/refactoring and as soon as someone has the time to do it I've no doubt it'll be as great as some of the others MiSTer has to offer.

All the time someone comes along and says that Core XY will not happen in a long time and than boom core xy release.

Happened with mega cd / gba/ pce etc. We dreamed about a x6800 / pc88 emulator and look how far we are now.

Vic20-Ian wrote: ↑Fri Jun 26, 2020 8:55 am I would donate to get that up and running.

Xbox 360 has a Minter VLM as well with 4 gamepad control.

Nuon too I think.

There was a prototype VLM 0 that was not made widely available. The Atari Jaguar had VLM 1.
The Nuon players featured version VLM 2.
VLM V3 was used in the video game Unity, and was the base for Xbox 360 and Minter's Space Giraffe.

http://www.minotaurproject.co.uk/vlm.php

I always hope that there is something from Unity that leaks one day to the internet. But as it was a Lionhead Studios project, I guess the chances are slim and Jeff Minter isn't able to show anything without risking major legal consequences.

Is there any interest in the CoJag platform the arcade variant of the Jaguar? It was used by Area51 and Maximum force

http://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=778

I would adore seeing that as a core someday. No arcade is complete without an Area 51 cab!

I have question how to boot game. I use rbf from mega server, last version was from end of february. Only option to boot this thing is to set option to that do sth with roms, but I am unable to go past the bios screen.

mrtomato wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:40 pm I have question how to boot game. I use rbf from mega server, last version was from end of february. Only option to boot this thing is to set option to that do sth with roms, but I am unable to go past the bios screen.

Are you pressing the F12 key to get to the screen to select something to launch?

Vic20-Ian wrote: ↑Mon Aug 10, 2020 7:40 am

mrtomato wrote: ↑Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:40 pm I have question how to boot game. I use rbf from mega server, last version was from end of february. Only option to boot this thing is to set option to that do sth with roms, but I am unable to go past the bios screen.

Are you pressing the F12 key to get to the screen to select something to launch?

Yes I loaded rom from Mister Menu, but it is not booting past BIOS screen

It loads games but crashes pretty quickly. I am able to run Tempest 2000 for about 2-3 minutes, then it just goes black.

rcade wrote: ↑Tue Aug 11, 2020 12:13 am It loads games but crashes pretty quickly. I am able to run Tempest 2000 for about 2-3 minutes, then it just goes black.

It's a WIP core so this is normal at the moment.