Atari Jaguar

[tropic rock]

no. the vcdi.bin has already been translated from the cue.

It looks like the linux on MiSTer does not need backslashes for space or parantheses. So single quotes around the filenames without the blackslashes would have worked

[supple finch]

Well, renamed and it worked, so time to test.

My core is from May 1, I have to grab a newer one

[ashen spoke]

Wow the 3DO won? 🤯

[sterile moss]

They both get a lot of shit, but I recently learned the Jag cd is known as the Atari toilet so... Advantage Jag?

[urban mango]

@tropic rock I seem to recall the other day, the Songbird image of World Tour didn't boot for me on the core but the other variant did for some reason (Dual)

[gentle bobcat]

@urban mango - There appear to be multiple .cdi file formats... and only one works. If it doesn't work in BigPEmu, it won't work on the current Jaguar core.

[mental briar]

Hey remember how we didn't think this would work because dreamcast. Turns out

back to the lab!

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - Say what? The dreamcast tool can convert from (some) other formats to .cdi that is compatible with BigPEmu and the Jaguar core?

[mental briar]

seems to be

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - Yes, redump2cdi does work... or at least it did for me on Linux. I had to edit a .cue file to remove the lines with "FLAGS" as part of them but once having done so (Iron Soldier 2), created the file just fine and it works.

[mental briar]

Yep. I converted the set

Maybe one day it will appear on the internet somewhere. I need to do more comprehensive testing but I think klax was the only thing that didn’t boot

[supple finch]

It worked. VidGrid crashed while displaying the title page the first time. Second try, I played through all the songs once and was partway through my first at the second level when it locked up. So, still some stability issues but when it played, it was perfect. Sound was smooth, occasional bit of "static" in the image (but I seem to remember that from the PC version back in the day, too). Thank you for your help.
EDIT: I canʻt find an entry to a PC version, I must be remembering playing this on my Jag.

[outer veldt]

Vid Grid is really good. It was far better than Sega Make My Video.

[mental briar]

Grey, CD sheet is done and tested. Most things work, unlicensed games are finicky (some boot and crash, some don't boot, others work fine). I did find that I had to reset fairly regularly after a while because it wouldn't load the CD bios. Reloading the core would fix that for a while

really nice work man

[sterile moss]

Fast food 64 runs OK here, kinda trippy looking

[mental briar]

Yeah, there is something weird and transient about stuff because I definitely got ants to run once and then never again

Could be NAS vs SD card too

[sterile moss]

true, SD card here

[gentle bobcat]

If anyone wants some music bin files for the VLM, I've converted the Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, and TxK OSTs (Original Sound Tracks) and with the included, wonderful audio.cue.bin file that GreyRogue made, just set Sesson 1, load cue.bin and then load the desired .bin and you can VLM.
https://montanalinux.storageshare.net/s/zrMQ68iXcjceNsf

Only downside is that the cue.bin file was made for 45 minutes of playback but none of the bin files are that long... so after the music stops it produces static audio.

[sterile moss]

Cheers, Jesusfish found a way to convert bin/cue rips and that one's loading on the core 🙂

[forest tartan]

So, ripping an audio cd and playing it? From the posts up above, that routine for playing audi must be by jeff Minter surely?

[radiant cradle]

could this introduction be true? yes it si

[gentle bobcat]

I discovered the "Spectrum Triggers" mode in the VLM... where it appears one can create their own effects, but I haven't really found any documentation on it to do anything with it yet. I thought I heard there was a hidden Llama mode in there somewhere but maybe that was just a legend?!?

(from blank screen in VLM, * + 0 + 1 + 3 ... then select the first option and hit up/down 8 times and it goes into an effects menu, C button to back out of any menu)

https://www.thejagzone.com/jaguar/Codes/VLM.html

Ah, here's some documentation: https://www.neperos.com/article/r352re895367e664

Man, I'd love to figure all of that out, make some cool new (transient) VLM effects... and make a video tutorial on how-you-can-too... but I don't think I'm artistic enough.

Oh, BTW I figured out what the upside-down VLM logo is for... it lets you use up/down on dpad to adjust volume, and numpad to jump from track to track. When the VLM logo is right-side-up, then the numpad is for changing effects and the dpad is for interaction. In the Jag CD manual, they do give a quick list of all of the bank-effect numbers that are interactive beyond bank 9.

BTW, at the end of the night last night, I got a bit altered, and watched the TxK soundtrack for well over an hour and enjoyed optical input bliss.

Imagine when the SuperStation One comes out... and you get the CD dock... if there would be a way to play an audio CD directly with the VLM? Converting stuff is a pain and I wonder what the final media file format might be that GreyRogue settles on... assuming he has time and desire to even investigate that stuff. (me thinks aloud)

[blazing lance]

trying to load Iron Soldier 2 and it keeps taking to the Audio CD player

let me try another game

[warm oasis]

Here is the manual you were trying to post dowdle:

https://dn721604.ca.archive.org/0/items/jag-cd-guide/JAG CD Guide.pdf

[blazing lance]

this romset must be messed up, downladed Battlemorph and it's playing Hoverstrike lol

[gentle bobcat]

You have a bad .cdi file. I had that myself. Ended up getting the Redump BIN/CUE version and using redump2cdi to convert it... and the output file works fine.

Here's an updated video without the flaws... and without any music that causes YouTube copyright strikes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iljn2kpW6bQ

I also show loading CD games.

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, I ran into that too (Battlemorph was really Hoverstrike). Have since corrected my set.

[grizzled bloom]

The set I got from archive had a duplicate of hoverstrike named battle morph. A quick google search of ‘battle morph Cdi’ and I ended up getting it from a “dope” place that also happened to have roms. It was a 4 part file I think. Solved my problem.

[mental briar]

I have heard from someone who would know that there will be a set on archive in the next few days

[thorny swift]

Don’t smoke crack and watch VLM kids 🤣 (kidding)

[thorny swift]

Lance has it on his list for tomorrow

[tropic rock]

One thing that will be needed eventually is the memtrack rom which is also known as the nonvolatile ram. Not sure if it is in a similar position to Jag BIOS and CD BIOS.

[warm oasis]

What does memtrack ROM do?

[tropic rock]

Saves for CD games

It identifies itself to the CD BIOS and presents routines to access the eeproms used for saving and loading

The ROM portion of the memtrack lives at 0x800000. It replaces the cart there. So it is possible to load it with existing cart load, but eventually it would be nice to move it to boot rom and have it automatically applied when using the memtrack.

The idea is to have the BIOS, CD BIOS and NVRAM BIOS all loaded and stored in DDRAM where they can be copied from as needed.

Eventually

[warm oasis]

That would be nice and clean, so boot.rom, boot1.rom, boot2.rom?

[cosmic willow]

Anybody get Brutal Sports Football to work?

[mental briar]

on single or double?

it should work fine on dual ram

i can test on single in a sec

yeah, working ok here. what are you seeing on your end?

[cosmic willow]

Intro Jaguar screen just goes Red. Single core.

[warm oasis]

I had that today as well on the most recent dual ram

[gentle bobcat]

That's normal. Just load a cart and go.

[mental briar]

might be your rom is bad

let me grab the CRC of mine

[warm oasis]

I am using the MiSTer Kun one added to the WIP DB

[mental briar]

No, they are talking about brutal sports football

(I assume) when they load the rom, they get the red error bios

The CRC of my Brutal Sports Football rom is bcb1a4bf

[warm oasis]

Ah, I got the red BIOS screen on core load

[mental briar]

oh yeah, that's normal on core load

if you load a game and get that, then there is a problem

[warm oasis]

Just to confirm, if you boot an actual Jaguar with no cart in there you get the red screen?

[sudden palm]

Turn on Cart checksum patch option

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - That happens to me every time. Is that not supposed to happen?

Nevermind, TheJesusFish did reaffirm it is normal. 🙂

@mental briar - Now figure out for me, how to create a .cdi audio disc.

[mental briar]

You could try that redump to cdi if it’s in bin/cue

[gentle bobcat]

I did try that but it gave an error saying it is only for data cds.

[mental briar]

Ahh interesting. You could try mounting it and then using disc juggler to gen a cdi image

[gentle bobcat]

But maybe I can make a data CD with audio tracks. I mean several of the games are data/game CD images but they have audio tracks that the VLM sees just fine.

[mental briar]

Or wait for grey to drop a script on us 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

I wonder if he has decided on an audio disc format that might be optimal for the Jaguar core?

[sterile moss]

tried ripping an audio cd to .cdi with disc juggler 6, doesn't seem to work. It sees the 17 tracks in cd player

ok either I just did something stupid or it needed a reset, working now

[gentle bobcat]

@sterile moss - Glad to hear something can make those. I'm guessing they don't make a Linux version of Disc Juggler?

[sterile moss]

I ran it on an old XP laptop, VM I guess

had to find an actual audio CD, was too lazy to make a cue n convert stuff to wav :p

no idea how it'd go with wine

"DiscJuggler is compatible with Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, and 11. It also works very well with the Wine compatibility layer on Linux when the wineprefix is set to Windows XP 32-bit mode. "

from dreamcast.wiki

ooh, you want vlm-r

very pretty, had a mate who used to be obsessed with milkdrop

[gentle bobcat]

@sterile moss - Thanks for the info. I'll look into it.

Will give Bottles a try.

[gentle bobcat]

It actually seems to be working. My USB CD drive just started up and it is capturing an image to .cdi file.

[sterile moss]

nice 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, I saved it to my Documents\Music folder in there... and I'm having trouble finding it on my Linux filesystem. It's buried somewhere in a dot directory structure.

Thank goodness for locate

[sterile moss]

the paths/symlinking on steam deck definately took some getting used to

with all the compatibility stuff

[gentle bobcat]

There it is:
/home/dowdle/.local/share/bottles/bottles/DiscJuggler/drive_c/users/steamuser/Documents/Music/Emancipation-CD1.cdi

Now to transfer it over to my microSD card and see if it works like you reported.

[sterile moss]

i played through the disc, some tracks seemed to end too early and next one would start

[gentle bobcat]

I know where all of my CDs are so, like you, I think it just easier to rip them.

It may be the streaming method. GreyRogue, I think said, it likely needs a buffer/cache added... and that as is it can periodically miss reads.

[sterile moss]

yeah FMVs can be a little glitchy (amercian hero) at times

dont play that with kids around :p

[gentle bobcat]

Wow, that works great. Loads/plays instantly (although like you, I had to restart the Jag core after loading the cdi file.. so it would play.

I can jump back and forth or directly to a track.

I do have the original T2K soundtrack CD... but for Defender 2000 and TxK, I think I'll make an audio cd image (I think K3B can do that) and then make a cdi file out of it with DiscJuggler... tomorrow or later in the week.

I think it is nice to provide some samples people can use.

Appreciate your knowledge and experience.

And no longer limited to 500MB in size.

[sterile moss]

cheers. I'm sure there must be a simpler way to just convert bin/cue or mp3s to cdaudio .cdi, but using the original program seemed easiest to get it going 🙂

DJ can prob open the cue and save as .cdi? didnt try

[thorny swift]

Lance Charlson says hey. He said Jaguar is cool and very archived. Jaaaaaag

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, just converted the Tempest 2000 Original Sound Track audio CD to a .cdi file. Posted at that share link I gave a while back.

[warm oasis]

Oh, it looks like there is now a "Jaguar CD CDI" pack on a well known archival website. That's handy.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/bZVCm.gif

[thorny swift]

Our man Lance strikes again

[warm oasis]

As an aside, the Jag CD BIOS is in the WIP DB now until it eventually goes into the release folder when core goes live (assuming people are fine having this one on GitHub, it is presumably as public as the other Jag stuff now)

[gentle bobcat]

What would be a good search term?

OH, I see quotes above. DUH.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/Aibq.gif

[thorny swift]

rumor has it that JAAAG Clarkson Edition is also applicable

possibly also MiSTer FPGA Super Happy Fun Times

(Lance never takes anything too seriously)

[mental briar]

an inspiration to us all

[mental briar]

If folks are playing games on single ram, please make sure you're filling out the spreadsheet. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sQCMOA5qBsIpLPPkCMn3Z0FSxr4p4RhZB1TMZLeMF8Q/edit?gid=0#gid=0 (and the JagCD tab)

[silver vault]

Thanks so much, and I'm really interested, but I can't figure out where to find the link to the file! I'm a noob 🙂

[tranquil cape]

Haven't had to time to thorough test anything, but CD stuff is working fine so far on my older single RAM build. If something doesn't work on the first try it does on the second (especially the (Unl) games).

[tranquil cape]

I got everything to run. Awesome work!

[ashen spoke]

@gentle bobcat I apologize for removing your link but I am erring on the side of caution as I believe there is copyrighted material and we’d like to avoid that.

However I’ll bring this up to the mod team so they can review if I was overbearing in removing that.

[gentle bobcat]

I appreciate your caution. No worries.

[gentle bobcat]

I can tell you that all of the music in the share I provided a link to is available on YouTube and on archive.org as well... and I published a video that has quite a bit of music from the T2K soundtrack in a YouTube video... and they allowed it an cleared it of copyright violations. Still isn't definitive.

It should also be noted that all of the music stuff is in a format that is very hard to consume except on the Jaguar core.

[warm oasis]

The issue with sharing copyright stuff is often less that the copyright holder might have an issue with it, but a bad actor could use it as a means to try harm this community for hosting copyright material and breaking Discord TOS.

[glossy iron]

Really nice progress on the cd core!

Tried some games as I know the jaguar cd library quite well.
The music in battle morph runs too fast, setting Cpu turbo and max compatibility doesn't change it.
Single ram version

[mental briar]

Friends, I beg of you, I don't want to play all the game again with single ram. Do me a solid and update the testing sheet with anything you find https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sQCMOA5qBsIpLPPkCMn3Z0FSxr4p4RhZB1TMZLeMF8Q/edit?gid=0#gid=0

[gentle bobcat]

Is Discord direct message also a bad idea?

[mental briar]

What the all seeing eye doesn't see doesn't happen

[gentle bobcat]

I think I figured out how to take audio media files and convert them to an audio .cdi image. Unfortunately, it requires I write out a CD-R as part of the process.

[gentle bobcat]

Luckily, I still have CDs of most all of my music.

[glossy iron]

requested access

[glossy iron]

Added single ram testing results

[mental briar]

@warm oasis is the keeper of the sheets

I just fill them out

[warm oasis]

Added you earlier @glossy iron

[glossy iron]

Thanks @warm oasis

[tropic rock]

Thanks for testing everyone.

[gentle bobcat]

I have two minor bugs with VLM related stuff... and I know those would be at the bottom of the priority list. One is weird... and it is the time display as a track plays both on the playback controls and the bottom of the screen display when the controls aren't on screen... when the seconds reach a multiple of ten, it doesn't advance the tens position and it drops a digit. So it goes... 17, 18, 19, 1[blank space], 21, 22, 23 . I definitely don't remember that on the original. The other bug is that when one loads an audio cdi file, the Jaguar resets (as it should) and the number of tracks for the loaded image are correct when it comes up, but play won't work and you have to reset the Jag again, and then it works perfectly. That seems to be pretty consistent.

I think a few .cdi audio files might appear in an archive later today.

[gentle bobcat]

Good terms "JagCD Music CDI"

[gentle bobcat]

BTW, I mailed an Atari YouTuber a MiSTer Pi setup for him to give everything a try... although I think he is primarily interested in the computer cores.

[tropic rock]

I did this but have not been able to test it. It takes a bin and cue file from Brasero and creates a "cdi" file (close enough to use with the core hopefully). So if it works it should allow ripping an audio cd to cdi for the core ---- Deleted bad version of code

[gentle bobcat]

That was the piece I was missing... as I was burning that to a CD-R and then using DiscJuggler to rip the audio CD to a .cdi. I'll give it a try and let you know. I was using Brasero to make the bin/cue files.

Same as with CD Game .cdi files, if it works with BigPEmu, it'll work with the Jag core.

It gives me an error about not finding the .bin.bin file. I'm attempting to read C which is not good. 🙂

$ ./bincueaudio2cdi Iron_Soldier_2-OST.cue
Searching file: 'Iron_Soldier_2-OST.cue'
Found cue file. Opening...
Found. Trying '/home/dowdle/Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin'...
Not found. Trying '/home/dowdle/Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin.bin' instead...

/home/dowdle/Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin.bin: No such file or directory
File not found

You may have typed a wrong name or path to source CDI image

There is a Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin file in the directory

[gentle bobcat]

$ ls -lh Iron_Soldier_2-OST.*
-rw-------. 1 dowdle dowdle 500M Jul 16 07:49 Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin
-rw-------. 1 dowdle dowdle 491 Jul 16 07:49 Iron_Soldier_2-OST.cue

I think I figured it out. Path isn't correct in my cue file.

-rw-r--r--. 1 dowdle dowdle 500M Jul 16 12:37 Iron_Soldier_2-OST.bin.cdi

Will test it here as soon as the .cdi file gets done transferring.

@GreyRogue - BigPEmu says it is not in the correct format. 😦

(/me goes to lunch. BBL)

[cosmic willow]

He's right, I had the wrong rom crc for Brutal Sports Football.

[gentle bobcat]

I wonder how game cd cdi files differ from audio cd cdi files?

@tropic rock - When using the file selector in BigPEmu, the working .cdi files show a tool-tip type of thing showing the HASH of the media in FNV-1a whatever that is. It does not show that for the .cdi file made by convert.

[tropic rock]

Fixes

I don't have a complete description of the cdi format. This fixed a few things that I did wrong and copies more of the header from a working cdi, but I don't know what all the values mean.

This source code is based off code for cdirip

I ripped an audio cd with brasero and converted with this and it worked with BigPEmu. I did have to swap the bytes on the audio data from what Brasero created (done in the convert). It is possible left and right need to be swapped...

[gentle bobcat]

I'll give it a try.

Yes, works for me too!

[gentle bobcat]

Now I have no excuse to not create more .cdi audio images... although I do still have a spool of CD-Rs.

@tropic rock - As always, tank-you-verdy-much! (in Latka voice)

[gentle bobcat]

I discovered a movie this evening that I hadn't previously heard of, and was able to stream it from kanopy.com using my local library account. In other news, I think .cdi files aren't restricted to the 700ish MB that a physical audio CD would be. I just made a .cdi file of 29 instrumental guitar tracks by Ewan Dobson I had got from YouTube years ago... that were about 1 hour and 55 minutes. I loaded it up into BigPEmu and it was able to play 27 of them. Will have to try it with the Jaguar core. I wonder if it will do the same and what the exact limit might be.

[gentle bobcat]

I'll have to test more but on the 29 songs, it showed 18 tracks rather than 29... but when I played the 18th track, when it finished, another song played, and then another, and then another. Due to time limitations, I couldn't continue to listen to see how far it'd go... but it seems that track 1-18 were a total of 1 hour and 19 minutes... so it looks like it can take upto about that much... before it decides it doesn't want to list any more tracks... yet can still play them tacked on the the last one. Doom Eternal's soundtrack is absolutely massive so that'll be another good test case.

Doom Eternal's OST is 59 tracks with a whopping 4 hours and 13 minutes worth of music.

[tall sequoia]

Dual RAM Mister. Newest Core. Correct CD settings. Correct CD BIOS file, games as .cdi files = Iron Soldier 2, Vid Grid and World Tour Racing do not start. They go into the Audio CD menue - you can play the CD tracks but the games don't start. Help because I'm dumb 😛 .

[tropic rock]

I did not add any checks for size in the code, and I do not remember seeing any checks for max size in the BIOS so it is possible larger will work on the core that would fail for real CDs. There are limits though as I am only using 30 bits of addressing so it will fail above 1000MB for sure. Also, the current core only uses 6 bits in places for tracks so 64 tracks or more will cause issues currently. I think I will need to expand that to 7 bits to make the hockey CD game work.

[tropic rock]

Have you tried your rips on BigPEmu? If they don't work there they won't work on the core.

[tall sequoia]

I just did that and all 3 of them don't work on the BigPEmu 😦 . I have those 3 games as BIN / CUE files as well and they work perfectly fine on the BigPEmu. So I guess the .cdi files from Archive are bad ???

[tropic rock]

#1055574003810578503 message

[tranquil cape]

I had to reload the games sometimes to get them to load

[tall sequoia]

Thanks to @glossy iron I got the 3 games working 🙂 . My dumps were just bad 😦 .

[mental briar]

Hopefully they were not the lance clarkson edition dumps

[ashen spoke]

You should talk to a doctor about that

[glossy iron]

no they were different

[supple finch]

Thanks for this. I apparently had the wrong CD BIOS and although ANTS worked, the others would load then crash. I followed the Count's instructions and everything seems to be working now.

[gentle bobcat]

I have had a few days of pure joy with the VLM and the various .cdi audio images I've made from "techno metal" type tunes. The file read can infrequently have issues and stop and need to be started again... but other than that... I is happy.

[warm oasis]

That's cool this feature is already working pretty well. Do we have any idea what may be causing the bugs there?

[gentle bobcat]

I believe GreyRogue said that the current reading is unbuffered and that can cause read errors every once in a while if there is a timing issue. The solution, I think, was to make a cache/buffer for it. That is my non-programmer understanding which is somewhat imaginary.

[warm oasis]

Ah cool, good to know GR has it on his radar

[gentle bobcat]

Just got a Raspberry Pi monitor which is like 15.6" or something. Powered over USB. Will be testing it powered by MiSTer here shortly. Pretty portable setup.

Has built-in speakers but I haven't heard it yet.

I'm not expecting a whole lot for audio quality.

It does have an audio out jack.

[mental briar]

The video latency on it is not great. It’s too bad because it’s good looking

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - I'll see if I can feel the latency or not in just a few minutes.

[warm oasis]

Didn't realise such a thing existed

[gentle bobcat]

I don't have any mid-high end display equipment so I imagine most all of my stuff sucks from a spec perspective. 🙂

[warm oasis]

Got a mister Laggy?

Could check what you have

[mental briar]

Here is when I tested mine

[gentle bobcat]

41ms of lag is how many frames?

I couldn't feel it playing T2K.

[ashen dune]

~2.5 frames for 60 fps games

[gentle bobcat]

That sounds good to me. I guess I'm pretty low demand. 🙂

[ashen dune]

or if it's 30 FPS, ~1.25 frames

[gentle bobcat]

Hmm, someone USED to make a Jaguar controller-to-USB adapter (https://www.2600-daptor.com/Jaguar-daptor.htm) but they don't make adapters anymore.

Here's where everyone jumps in and calls me crazy for actually liking the Jaguar controller. It rulez!

[gentle bobcat]

If the Raspberry Pi monitor only had a swivel kickstand for portrait orientation.

[warm oasis]

That seems like something someone would make, there not something that does this on Ali Express for small monitors?

Something like this that showed up in google
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adjustable-Bracket-Surface-Portable-Monitor-Black/dp/B08L4W9C9N

Although maybe that one doesn't swivel, but there is likely something out there for tablets that would work for a small monitor like that

[gentle bobcat]

You can clamp the monitor on whatever axis you want... so it's repositionable... which is almost as good as swivel. That seems fantastic for the price ($19.99 for amazon.com / US)

Although maximum width is too small.

Oh, and it does swivel.

[hidden blade]

Because it isn't that high. You have to subtract 16,7ms, because in 60Hz this is how long it takes on a CRT to render a full frame.

24ms Input Lag is ok-ish for most stuff.

[dreamy hinge]

24ms is not an accurate number given those tests above. you do not subtract 16.7ms because that's how long the scanout is. these systems don't use framebuffers, they beam race the output so whatever is displayed at the bottom is not 16.7ms 'stale'. and that test shows roughly a consistent delay in all spots so it's probably buffer about 2 frames, maybe a bit more

[hidden blade]

You mean because it's an LCD/LED? On an OLED though it's what i've said (it starts high, middle is better and at the scanout CRT and OLED are pretty close to equal). Which is very close to 16.7ms anyway. Thought newer LCD/LED don't use frame buffer anymore.

[dreamy hinge]

plenty still do, even oleds

[hidden blade]

Really? Which OLEDs? Can't imagine LG doing it. Gives the measurements we get via Mister Laggy (around 17.5ms bottom on my C9 in low latency mode).

[dreamy hinge]

you don't always have to buffer a full frame. the amount of buffering is going to depend on the difference between the panel refresh rate vs the incoming frame rate and what options you have turned on etc

[hidden blade]

Yeah, a game mode is prefered of course for that ( i guess this one above doesn't have it anyway). On my C9 it's very clear that enabling VRR enables the low latency mode too (26ms without VRR, 17.5ms with VRR).

[sterile moss]

Reflex adapt from misteraddons supports Jag @gentle bobcat

pretty sure JesusFish has an original controller, prob some other options too

[mental briar]

yeah, I have a jag controller hooked up to a reflex adapt. But, if we are being honest here, you’re better off importing an SNES NTT controller and using that. It’s a much better controller

[sterile moss]

Yeah I went with the NTT too, works great

[dreamy hinge]

still gotta keep the modified jag controller with spinner + reflex for real tempest

[mental briar]

atari needs to unleash that controller with the homer simpson car vibes

[sterile moss]

I never got the buttons on my grs spinner working for tempest

like the core needs to accept l/r mouse buttons as joypad buttons

[mental briar]

yeah same

[sterile moss]

game has fire/jump/superzapper tho, so wouldnt be ideal with 2 buttons even if mapped

[dreamy hinge]

you also need full dpad for bonus stages

[sterile moss]

id been holding a snes pad along with the spinner 🙂

like im playing a piano accordion

[gentle bobcat]

I have a reflex adapt and an original controller.

[sterile moss]

ahh nice, sorry thought you were looking for an adapter

time to add a spinner

[gentle bobcat]

No. I was just looking for a way to use a Jaguar controller on a PC... for use with BigPEmu.

I got the keyboard figured out so I'll live.

[sterile moss]

reflex should work on PC too

[ashen spoke]

If you’re gonna play the Jag, you need to go MAXIMIM JAG

[mental briar]

Yeah, reflex should work on PC

[gentle bobcat]

But I wanna use all 5 of my Jaguars and play a network game of Battlesphere. 🙂 (3 MiSTers, 1 Jaguar, and 1 PC with BigPEmu). While there isn't a way to make that happen yet, it could someday.

[radiant cradle]

sega genesis is 16 bit, 3do is 32 bit

the atari jaguar is SIXTY-FOUR bits, which is more advanced?!?

[glossy iron]

CD core works great. Watched the whole American Hero movie yesterday so CD read timings seams at least ok ^^

Black ice white noise didn't start but that could be a bad dump

Varunas forces worked great

[midnight robin]

Someone said that the .cdi files needed for CD games have been made available on a certain "archive" site. What should I look for, please?

[sterile moss]

#1055574003810578503 message

[ashen spoke]

Please do not ask where to find games. I know no one gives a shit about the CDi from a legal standpoint but we gotta be careful.

[midnight robin]

I am not asking about the games themselves, which I already have (Jaguar and Jaguar CD games are available VERY easily!).
I understand those .cdi files are akin to .cue files, right?

[ashen spoke]

Nah, they’re the actual games themselves converted to .cdi format.

[midnight robin]

Oops, then I will search more or wait until standard CHD support is in place.
Anyway, this is what happens when we use things like Discord... how I hate this thing, I'd go back to IRC any day of the week.

[ashen spoke]

Ok so seriously, not being jokey. This is basically just modern IRC, right?

[midnight robin]

No, it's run by a company and censorship is heavy here.

[ashen spoke]

Ahhhhhh really good point.

IRC was more of a standard not a product

[midnight robin]

IRC was wild west, you could easily get anything via DCC or asking in the open... better times. Capitalism has destroyed communications as it does with everything it touches. IRC servers were usually at universities (at least here in Spain) and was zero censorship.

No commercial involvement in any form

[ashen spoke]

Laws are different everywhere and while we are a community surrounding an open source project that is completely free, we have to respect those laws. I’m sorry that it’s frustrating but I do sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.

[midnight robin]

Hey! What's with that? I am perfectly ok with what you said before, no need to justify or apologize. We're lucky to have a moderator so kind and coherent as you, Robby

[ashen spoke]

Well, I understand where you’re coming from, I really do.

It sucks and it sucks I gotta do this lol

because who gives a shit about Jaguar, literally no one is being harmed playing these games

maybe police should focus on stopping actual criminals hurting actual people

sorry I’ll stop ranting

but thank you

[midnight robin]

Mass criminals are mass murdering right now, but we can't get ahold of some Jaguar CD games. This is what the world has come to.

[radiant cradle]

it's extremely unlikely that someone would get into trouble on discord for posting jaguar cd games but it does technically break laws which can put communities at risk which is seemingly why this discord doesn't allow it at all

actually THEY are trying to stop the distrobution of advanced 64 bit software because its TOO POWERFUL for the masses

they are restricting access to doing the math

[midnight robin]

I have also listened a clue on a YT video about where to go in certain archive.. but I think my english is not good enough to solve the riddle 😄

[warm oasis]

Yeah, we can't make it any more obvious, if you read the previous messages that have even be relinked to just above then you have what you need to search for.

I am just going to repost exactly what I posted in this chat a few days ago:

The issue with sharing copyright stuff is often less that the copyright holder might have an issue with it, but a bad actor could use it as a means to try harm this community for hosting copyright material and breaking Discord TOS.

[ashen spoke]

That’s a good point, @warm oasis

[warm oasis]

So good I had to make it twice in a week as people either don't read back in chats or have goldfish level memories.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/Wkic.gif

[radiant cradle]

mom!!!! they posted the gamecom roms on discord !!!

[warm oasis]

Remember how one bad actor tried to get someone here's YouTube account shut down with bogus copyright claims? Yeah, well because of people who would do things like that we have to run a very clean ship here.

[midnight robin]

And I perfectly understand that, of course! 😄

[ashen spoke]

Can we name them directly or is that a potential legal problem too

[gentle bobcat]

I still use IRC for Linux-related stuff. It still exists... but isn't as friendly to new users.

Much of Linux has switched to Matrix which they have, to some degree, integrated with IRC. Matrix is too complicated. I used it for a while but went back to IRC.

[forest tartan]

Jaguar wasn;t really 64 bits. "Tom" and "Jerry" only ran 32bit instruction sets. You know, what would be good to see. If someone could write a simple cinebench type thing for all systems. Amiga 68020 would come out top?

[radiant cradle]

someone didn't do the math

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, it had two 64-bit chips in it so that's 128-bit! 🙂

[midnight robin]

I also used Matrix when developing KMS/DRM stuff for SDL2 and whatnot. That was a good way to reach the KMS/DRM/GBM devs... Nowdays I use ChatGPT to ask about API functions when I need to.

[forest tartan]

Jaguar was a bit of a con saying 64bit, one 32bit chip handles some stuff, the other 32bit chip handles other stuff. So by that reckoning, say an Archiemedies must be 112bits or something like that!! 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

@forest tartan - We've only heard this a billion times and no one cares.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/bctb3.gif

[forest tartan]

All I did was be civil and reply to Nobaddy, as nobody else had. It's called being polite and courteous.

[mental briar]

yeah, I dunno why you got clapped back

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - I don't know if it is fact, but it feels like one for me. I don't mean specifically here in this channel but like... everywhere.

[stiff pebble]

I care

[mental briar]

yeah but I think they were just having fun. it's ok to have fun at the jaguar's expense. we can love it and accept that the marketing around it was absolutely silly

just like we can say that genesis does what nintendont

[gentle bobcat]

I'm on the side of the argument that it was a 64-bit system but I have no desire to debate it.

[radiant cradle]

i was joking, i was quoting the jaguar commercial

[gentle bobcat]

It is totally true that the vast majority of games for the Jaguar, were written mostly using the Motorola 68000 CPU and those games are indeed 16/32bit. I wonder what games were actually written fully using the Tom and Jerry. I know Battlesphere did... and that took them a long time... although they were doing it in their spare time with other full-time jobs.... and they wrote their on development tools. Doom was also. Not sure about any thing else.

Maybe AvP too?!?

[radiant cradle]

yeah ill program my games on the tom and jerry as long as you handle the bugs bunny chip

[gentle bobcat]

4Play (the company of the 3 devs that did Battlesphere) did release their development tools freely/publicly but that didn't seem to spike and uptick in folks developing Tom/Jerry native code. Of course that was after the Jaguar was officially dead.

[mental briar]

Is battlesphere good? Now that we can play it? It looked cool when I booted it up to test it.

Admittedly, for as much as I love the jag, i’ve only played AVP to completion

[glossy iron]

It is indeed! But it's "only" a space combat sim

Nothing more. Like a remake of star raiders

[gentle bobcat]

I would love to play T2K to completion bit it kicks my ass... and most everyone else's... but there have been plenty of folks who have completed it. There have been a few other games I've completed (besides AvP) but that was back in the day. I think Brutal Sports Football had a bug in it where it would crash deep into the levels... so that one technically wasn't completable. Lots of people have completed Rayman, Doom, and a handful of other titles.

[glossy iron]

No story or mission mode

Just defend your starbase and kill enemies. It's fun in multiplayer though

Played it networked about 15 years ago on a Jagfest in Germany

With 8 people

[gentle bobcat]

The controls in Battlesphere were hard for me to get used to so that was my main barrier... BUT... I'm a wimp when it comes to complex controls and as a result, I don't play very many modern games with modern controllers because I flub the controls so bad. My older son, on the other hand, started life with a Nintendo 64 controller and loves the more complex controls in modern games.

Some folks love mission-based games and there are quite a few of those like Iron Soldier (and 2), Battlemorph, etc.

I guess a platformer is a sort of mission-based game as are shooters. 🙂 You mission is to not get killed.

[mental briar]

Alright, I need to check it out. Tempest is another one but my spinner’s buttons don’t work so I can move my man, but not do anything else. game is a little rough on a jag controller

[gentle bobcat]

My friend who has the JagCD completed T2K as well as D2K. I'm terrible at regular Defender and D2K introduces a playfield that isn't only larger horizontally than will fit but also vertically. So I was doubly bad at D2K.

:%s/no one cares./no one cares to debate it./g

(that's pretend vi syntax for an edit)

@mental briar - I've not played T2K with a spinner, and having started off with the Jag controller's dpad for it, I can't imagine using a spinner. We definitely disagree about the Jag controller, and that's ok. (In Stuart Smalley voice)

A bit if personal trivia that I don't believe I've mentioned. Tom Harker was the fourth partner in 4Play but had to drop out. Tom ran his own company that catered to Atari users from 8-bit up... under a company named ICD. Anyhoo, I had pre-ordered a "CatBox" from ICD and at that time in my life I only made about $13K/year and that was a lot of money for me. Long story short, ICD went out of business before fulfilling very many pre-orders and I completely lost my money. Kinda like kickstarter projects that went bad but before the Internet.

Here's the modern equivalent - https://stoneagegamer.com/jagaioa-plus-humble-bazooka.html I'd love to buy one of those but I don't know what I'd do with it... as I do still have a physical Jaguar.

A bit ago I fantasized about someday being able to use three MiSTers, a physical Jag and BigPEmu to have a 5 player Battlesphere game. I just need four other people to play with me. 🙂

My A/V cable for the Jaguar is the S-Video with composite so... I really wish the JagAIOA Plus included the HDMI output they have in another, more expensive product (https://stoneagegamer.com/jag2hd-video-adapter-for-atari-jaguar-humble-bazooka.html).

Or maybe if they made a hybrid that just added network and HDMI.

[mental briar]

It’s also entirely possible that I have two bad revision controllers. They are both grey button’ed, but that may not be the mark of quality

[gentle bobcat]

Looks like eBay has two JagLinks for sale. One out of box for $55 OBO, or one SIB for $500 (cough).

[gentle bobcat]

See... err listen to 10:03 from this: https://atarijaguargamebygame.libsyn.com/00-obligatory-introduction I just discovered this podcast and it might be dead now... but I emailed to see if they next episode they had scheduled (The Virtual Light Machine) might come out.

[ashen spoke]

98% of the N64 library was 32-bits

[dusk slate]

You're 32-bits.

[fresh urchin]

Better than 100% of the jaguar library being two-bit 😉

[mental briar]

how dare u

[fresh urchin]

I’m still sore from the purchase all those years ago 😄

[ashen spoke]

It’s fun being able to appreciate these consoles without financial investment. I think my perspective would be different if I had to purchase them new at the time but now it’s easier to just appreciate the game itself.

[fresh urchin]

So, I got it brand new- one of the first revisions that had trouble booting games- sent it in for warranty, then got delayed return due to the San Francisco earthquake. When i did finally get it back, it still had trouble booting games.

When I say the jaguar makes me see red, I mean that I have to try like 6 time to get a game to boot 😆

[mental briar]

The mister was my first experience playing jaguar games for any real length. And the majority of that has been “they expected people to give them money in exchange for this?”

I do love me some AVP tho

[fresh urchin]

Yeah, as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted

[dusk slate]

The Virtual Boy made me see red. 🥁

[fresh urchin]

Sadly I wasn’t fool enough to buy one of those

[dusk slate]

I...did buy one. On launch day.

$180 💸

[fresh urchin]

Got rid of it while they were worthless?

[dusk slate]

Nah, I still have it.

[fresh urchin]

Hah, between the two of us, pretty sure you have the better zombie system 😄

[gentle bobcat]

After having discovered that Jaguar Game by Game podcast today, I've been listening to several episodes... and yes, there is a mixture of love and hate... but believe me, there are plenty of people who actually like a significant chunk of the Jaguar library. I'm one of those. I don't expect anyone to agree with me. @fresh urchin - Sorry you got a lemon Jaguar. You are the first person I've encountered that had that loading issue... but I did read long ago that it did exist. I did have a T2K cart go bad where all I would get was the Red Screen of Death... but I replaced that cart long ago.

We had two places in Great Falls, Montana that rented Jaguar games... and Blockbuster for a third place but I never went there... and I'd always rent something to check it out before I'd consider buying it. So, I always knew what I was getting.

I think I have about 18 carts.

[fresh urchin]

It was 30 years ago, any real anger is long gone. Only real downside is I have the pack in (cybernorph) and doom. Never bought another game.

I did, however buy the cd add on when they were on closeout for $20 at maison Blanche. Since I didn’t care to actually play the jag, it is still new in its dusty box after all these years 😆

[gentle bobcat]

So, did the JagCD plugin and work ok (no RSoD?) and if so, then carts plugged into it worked ok?

[fresh urchin]

No idea. The box is still sealed

So most likely it is dead.

[gentle bobcat]

As you likely know, those (JagCD units) go for a small fortune these days.

[fresh urchin]

Yeah, but I can’t really bring myself to part with it. I plan to unbox and get it working one day.

[gentle bobcat]

I have a JagCD box but no unit to go with it.

[fresh urchin]

Was hoping the mister could keep me satiated for a while, I think I am more afraid to open it and find out it is broken or my jag is too broken to work with it.

[gentle bobcat]

Several years ago (5+?) there were still a few hundred new-old-stock sealed-in-box Jaguars that were sold on eBay (and controllers too) but they eventually ran out. Prices started fairly reasonable but got higher and higher as the stock disappeared. I think one shows up every once in a while but they want way too much for them.

Which is why I'm so glad the Jag core exists and CD/VLM support has been added. There were only 20,000 JagCD units made, and how many of them still exist and of those, still work? The Jag core just gave more people access to the CD stuff than even possible before.

Of course there is BigPEmu too.

[ashen spoke]

I think what’s crazy ti me is that they made and released the Jaguar CD drive. I assume might as well release it and get some profit instead of canceling it and getting none?

[glossy iron]

Yeah they had invested in game development for the cd since it's announcement I'm late 1993 and maybe couldn't get out of manufacturing co tract with Philips so they released it in late 95 to get some bucks back and had something "new" the same time the playstation released in the us

[livid laurel]

question, given how odd the jaguar controller is, how hard is it to remap for use with a normal controller?

[mental briar]

it's not terrible, but you need 18 buttons + d pad. So like... I think the 8bit pro 2 can do it (4 face + 8 directions on sticks + 2 bumpers + start and select)

[gentle bobcat]

I need this tee-shirt.

[mental briar]

oh right, 17. I count good

[near aurora]

madness

[gentle bobcat]

I guess the Jaguar controller is BA rather than AB. I saw that as a poll question in the news channel... but I wasn't sure what that meant. Is my assessment of the Jag controller correct?

[mental briar]

Yeah, that's right. nintendo did BA, master system did AB.

I dunno if anyone dared to do CBA aside from Jag

Especially since it's basically a BA controller mapped like an AB controller. On nintendo and master system, 'A' is always 'Ok' or 'Select' regardless of position - on the jag controller, `C' (and sometimes 'B') is 'OK' or 'Select'. So even though it's a BA controller, they map it like an AB one.

What a weird system

[glossy iron]

Default for select on the Jag is mostly B. C mostly cancels as well as A. But, of course there are exceptions like SUper Burnout which confirms with A

[mental briar]

AVP confirms with b or c iirc

[tall musk]

Jaguar is an agent of chaos

[glossy iron]

Sometimes all buttons confirm 😅

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/bXkxr.gif

[sterile moss]

Would you like to play again?
Y / Y

[half cove]

Master System was "1 Start" and "2". Some controllers are 1 and 2.

[mental briar]

yeah, but it was AB, no? You didn't select things with 2

[gentle bobcat]

Is that, "Hellmo"?

[sterile moss]

elmo rise has many names, that's one

[mental briar]

New single just dropped

Attack of the mutant penguins still crashing for me after character select

[dreamy hinge]

seems to work here. boot core, set fastram1 to 0, fastram2 to 1, load rom.

[mental briar]

oh weird, I had 1 and 7 respectively. with those settings it works fine 🙂

[tropic rock]

Must be 1 that is critical for it. The order of the two does not matter. You specify 2 of 8 sections of the sdram to cover. Which is which is not important.

The single SDRAM is fast enough to cover 1MB of the 2MB of the SDRAM. FastRAM is using BRAM to cover another 2/8 of the remaining 1MB of SDRAM. The setting picks which 2 segments to cover (0-7).

[uncut atlas]

We could add hints based on game internals I suppose for an auto option

[fallow salmon]

there's few enough jaguar games you could use a little db like how n64 knows what savemem to use etc

[uncut atlas]

That's what I mean

[fallow salmon]

do jaguar games have a gameid or anything like that

[uncut atlas]

I can't remember but we can use CRC if we need

[fallow salmon]

yeah true, maybe tricky for cds tho

[uncut atlas]

CDs definitely have a unique id

[fallow salmon]

looks like it yeah, redump has serials for them

[uncut atlas]

Not every game likely needs an entry

Just a few

[tropic rock]

It is also possible that one combination will work for all. Say 1 and something else. We might also be able to get another 1 or 2 segments. Move the Bios out of BRAM opens up another and there might be enough room to just add another. That would mean 4. It might be possible to squeeze one more clock out of the predictive address code and then the SDRAM could cover the rest.

Another possibility is to use the DDRAM. It wouldn't be consistent but you could use it for the times it is fast enough and fall back on the SDRAM when it is too slow. (always write to both SDRAM and DDRAM and use whichever is faster on read.)

The current default of 0 and 7 was based on my thinking that typical RAM allocation grows from the start and the end (for stack). It would not surprise me that a different combination will work better.

[gentle bobcat]

I'm sure a lot of folks are already familiar with this project but just wanted to mention it here. Tru Fun Games is a YouTuber with a Patreon who has been developing a homebrew version of Mortal Kombat for the Jaguar for quite some time now. https://www.youtube.com/@TruFunGames/videos He had a Patreon post today about a pending release (v0.2.2) that adds Goro and also signals that he is probably in the final stretch of development. He will likely have a YT video posted shortly. Anyhoo, wanting this to be playable on the MiSTer FPGA but so far he has limited it to physical Jaguars with the Gamedrive cart.

[humble bluff]

This weekend, I added Team Tap support and cheat code support to the core. Here is a build with both features, in case anyone wants to test the cheats and ensure there are no negative impacts when disabled. There aren't many cheats, but most of the ones I tried worked.

[warm oasis]

Oh, wow, that's neat. Is it using these cheats here? https://gamehacking.org/system/jag

What is Team Tap support?

[humble bluff]

Yes

Team Tap is Jaguar multitap

[warm oasis]

Oh cool

Although I thought we had multi tap already

[humble bluff]

Not in the Jaguar core

[warm oasis]

Have you been working off Grey Rogue's most recent fork?

[humble bluff]

It's off the MiSTer repo; Grey's repo has a few commits not in this one.

[tropic rock]

I need to push my latest changes to official soon...

[uncut atlas]

it would be good for both of you to PR with master in mister-devel

[humble bluff]

I have been 🙂

Grey has been merging

[uncut atlas]

oh, huh it didnt even notify me

thx github

[warm oasis]

Worth someone adding the option for Zakk's bob deinterlacing, assuming .sys is up to date and it isn't already in there?

[uncut atlas]

sys probably needs an update soon

when grey's stuff is merged would be a good time

[uncut atlas]

@mild sapphire I dunno if you still look here but I guess we'll need a pack for jag

[mild sapphire]

Cool, I’ll get on it maybe tonight

[uncut atlas]

always appreciated

[humble bluff]

Here is a new build with a fix from Kitrinx and all cheats.

[stoic jewel]

This one is for Dual Ram?

[humble bluff]

Correct

Single Ram Version

[stoic jewel]

Thanks!

[warm oasis]

Many thanks for adding cheats @humble bluff , much appreciated. I don't know if you are interested in adding them elsewhere but a few cores don't have support yet, although they are more obscure and or likely more complex to support, offhand: 32x, CDi, MSX, Saturn

[stone vault]

Saturn cheats would be so amazing

But regardless, thanks for taking the time to add cheats for Jaguar!

[ashen spoke]

@humble bluff thank you for adding cheats so they get soft from using them, then I can destroy them in MP.

[dusk slate]

You'd destroy most of us with those guns anyway. 💪

[mild sapphire]

Here's the initial gamehacking.org cheat pack. It should be added to update_all soon. I've put out a plea for more jaguar cheats over in my server so hopefully we'll get some more added soon.

[mild sapphire]

I can add the packs if devs choose to add support

[warm oasis]

Thanks mate 🙂

[mental briar]

@tropic rock do you want me to do a sys update? or did you want to handle that?

[tropic rock]

Feel free

[humble bluff]

Still learning, and contributing where I can 🙂

[mental briar]

flip out boots without avp? what is this witchcraft?

[humble bluff]

Grey fixed that

[mental briar]

i saw he mentioned that he found the reason. nice to see it in there 🙂

core's feeeeeeeeling preeeety gooooood

[tropic rock]

Flip Out appears to be using a simple form of copy protection that should be fixed.

[warm oasis]

Looks like cheat pack is live, update grabbed I think 7 cheats? I thought there would have been more, but maybe not many for the system

Here we are:

Alien vs Predator (World) [DC187F82].zip
Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales (World) [2E17D5DA].zip
Dragon - The Bruce Lee Story (World) [8FEA5AB0].zip
Rayman (World) [A9F8A00E].zip
Total Carnage (World) [C654681B].zip
Ultra Vortek (World) [0F6A1C2C].zip
Zool 2 (World) [8975F48B].zip

Ah, 7 games I guess

[uncut atlas]

tbf it's not like jaguar has that many

(especially not ones people actually play)

[warm oasis]

Yeah, and each of these will have multiple cheats for them

[ashen spoke]

I’d like cheats for the best game on the Jaguar,

||# Club Drive||

[stone vault]

Is there a cheat to make that game good? 😂

[gentle bobcat]

Alllll Riiiight.

[warm oasis]

Might be worth testing for which cheats work and which (if any) don't. Some may need to be tweaked and updated.

[ashen spoke]

No matter how times I look in this thread, it keeps telling me there’s a new post lol

[gentle bobcat]

MARK AS READ

[radiant cradle]

there is a secret ghostly jaguar poster

[warm oasis]

I have had the same thing over the last day on a few threads, must be some weird bug

[mental briar]

Someone keeps deleting all these steam gift card deals before I can take advantage of them!

[dreamy hinge]

is someone reacting to old messages? sometimes that does it I think

[dusk slate]

It's clearly Kitrinx playing a year-long April Fools joke on Robby.

[uncut atlas]

Tee hee

[ashen spoke]

SERIOUS

LMAO

holy shit I was going crazy

Oh my god you got me so good

[fallow salmon]

is this core coming close to release? loads of activity lately

[mental briar]

grey says that dual ram is basically as accurate as real hardware. Here is what he has listed as "left" ```Remaining tasks (No guarantees to complete)

Data streaming through MiSTer Main (seems functional - needs more testing)
Opening OSD can crash data streaming (bigger cache might help)
Memory Track not working (probably commercial BIOS does not support Romulator/Alpine - need to switch to AMD or Atmel)
Weird timing display in VLM. Drops digits
CD-G support
DSP sometimes does not come up correctly even after reboot
Quality of life improvements like boot rom loading of CD BIOS (and memory track ROM)
Other CD formats beside cdi (cue/bin, chd - not sure if this is possible as it requires multi-session)
Single RAM improvement? Not sure if further improvement possible
Re-add turbo support? Not sure if possible with nuked 68k
Clean-up?

In summary: Getting close. lol (updates GreyRogue)```

[warm oasis]

How are we looking with the various homebrew these days?

[ashen spoke]

I am a CHD super fan but I don’t think id give a shit if this core doesn’t support it.

Just need that bolded in the readme since all the other cores that load discs support it.

[dreamy hinge]

it wouldnt' be difficult to have a script that added some session metadata to the chd. then again it's like 30 discs so whatever

[gentle bobcat]

I haven't tried any homebrew yet.

I have seen JagCD images in .chd format but I wonder who uses them and with what?!?

[dreamy hinge]

no one uses them, I think they all basically came from one archive and I'm not sure that person even realized that chd doesn't contain the metadata for sessions

[fallow salmon]

readme could definitely use a bit of a makeover, its more of a stream of conciousness/devlog right now

it also says stuff i'm pretty sure is wrong like 2p doesn't work

[copper creek]

I haven’t played around with the Jag CD portion yet, but I am curious if I can play music CDs on it for use with the VLM?

[ashen spoke]

@gentle bobcat I think did quite a bit?

[mental briar]

yeah, dowdle was lost in the VLM sauce

[copper creek]

What format does the audio cds need to be ripped to?

[sterile moss]

.cdi, discjuggler

Grey posted a tool to convert from bin/cue

#1055574003810578503 message

[dense ravine]

https://tenor.com/view/starwars-obi-wan-now-thats-a-name-ive-not-heard-in-along-time-gif-11814407

[sterile moss]

lol, yeah I tested it with an old xp laptop that actually has an optical drive 🙂

[midnight robin]

That was... 2000 or 2001. I used to download DreamCast games everyday, dated new girls every week... oh man, how time flies.

[dense ravine]

Thems was the days

[radiant cradle]

used to date new dreamcast games every week and downloaded new girls every day... time does not fly its not a bird

[tropic rock]

If anyone knows of non-working homebrew (cd or cart) please let me know.

[tropic rock]

Currently looking at this one. -Quality of life improvements like boot rom loading of CD BIOS (and memory track ROM)- I coded it but it was not working and I was trying to signaltap it with my MiSTer Pi as I don't have my regular with me. As noted in the tech-dev thread I got my knockoff usb blaster to work enough to figure out why it is not working.

[tropic rock]

I probably should have done it in python instead to make it easier for most people. Anyone want to translate it?

[warm oasis]

Just thinking in terms of logistics, are you and Kitrinx fine with having the boot1/2/3 ROMs in the release folder when the core goes live or will they need to sit elsewhere (i.e. BIOS DB)?

[tropic rock]

I am paranoid so I will not be uploading them myself. Kitrinx is less worried about it, so I do not know if someone else will upload them.

The only info I found about making things public was a brief news article that was not clear to me how much was being made public domain.

https://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/archives/HasbroRights.html

I would probably read the first line to include the BIOS and CD BIOS and maybe the Memtrack BIOS, but it would be nice to have the full statement directly from Hasbro instead of a news article interpretation...I might be over cautious in my stated paranoia.

[mental briar]

We live in the worst timeline - I think being super cautious is the best move here

[warm oasis]

That's fine, most people use the BIOS DB anyway so they can just be part of that and sit outside the main project if that is the decision

[ashen spoke]

I think it was all considered public domain, we had this convo a bit ago and that’s what was dug up

[mental briar]

Yeah, but it’s like the no one lives forever rights. Activision assumes they own it because they bought vivendi, so they agreed to let night dive do a remaster, but when night dive went to sign paperwork, no one could figure out who owned the rights.

Luckily we have Lance Charlson who has sorted out all the rights issues for us

[ashen spoke]

Who’s that

[dreamy hinge]

are you a cop? why would you ask that

[ashen spoke]

That’s ridiculous, I refuse to answer that

[dreamy hinge]

back in the peak internet days, there was a twitter account named 'NotACop' with a profile picture of a typical cop dude with the cop mustache etc

and it would post things like ANYONE DOING ANY CRIMES THIS WEEKEND?

oh sorry, @NotAPoliceman

[radiant cradle]

do you have a lisence for those roms on your MiSTers SD card?!?

[midnight robin]

Robbycop

[uncut atlas]

if we've misinterpreted hasbro's message about public domain, we would simply comply when they gave us notification

we're not doing financial damage to them

[gentle bobcat]

My lawyer, Dr. Vinny Boombatz said it was fine.

[mental briar]

The Atari Jaguar Will Remember That

[warm oasis]

I played some AVP yesterday (Colonial Marine), is playing great. Anyone got any tips on how to change your weapon using an SN30 controller? I assume on an actual Jag controller you use the number pad. Are people mapping numbers to buttons?

[dreamy hinge]

"hey guys, remember the intellivision? let's do something like that"

[mental briar]

1, 2, 3, and 4 on your controller, of course

[tropic rock]

So buttons 1-4 are weapons for marine. Note you must pick up both ammo and the weapon before you can select it.

You can define the buttons as you like when setting up your jag controller.

[warm oasis]

Yeah think I will have to find where to map 1-4 if not do the full 10. I do wish we had a solution for having buttons split across two controllers, so on systems that had a number pad you could use the number pad on a keyboard for those and regular buttons on your controller

[dreamy hinge]

you can, but you have to do ini trickery

you can force a particular usb port/controller to be assigned as player 1

[tropic rock]

We could probably combine them in the core...

[warm oasis]

Ah, well a more user-friendly way of doing it would be nice. There are a few systems where it would be beneficial

[mental briar]

If you would prefer something more ergonomic

[dreamy hinge]

a long time ago I tried a PR that let you assign controllers to player slots in the menu

but Sorg didn't want it

[warm oasis]

As an aside, It would be good to get scans of all those different game pad overlays and have them available as the core "help" pages in that format that Alan made that is used in various computer cores, where you press a button and it brings it up on screen

[mental briar]

I think they are on atari age

lemme look

[tropic rock]

Might not be a complete set

[mental briar]

https://consolemods.org/wiki/Jaguar:Controller_Overlays

the towers 2 overlay is my favorite

[warm oasis]

Nice, looks like that is probably all of them

Is there a guide on how to make the help manual? I can't even remember what the proper name for the feature is now or the button to press to bring them up...

".pdf guide" I think is the official name

[dreamy hinge]

it's just a document viewer, accessible via 'help' in the osd

[warm oasis]

@plucky wharf is there a guide on how to create a .pdf guide for a core? Was thinking if would be a good idea to turn the Jag controller overlays into one

[dreamy hinge]

it can be a pdf, a txt file, a .md

just make a pdf, it will view it

[warm oasis]

Ah OK, does it need to be a set resolution and ratio?

I.e. can it be 16:9 1080p, or does it need to be something lower and 4:3?

[dreamy hinge]

I think the existing ones are like half 1080p size

[warm oasis]

As in half of them are 16:9 1080p, so that is fine for the format, or the resolution is half that is 1080p?

[dreamy hinge]

half of 1080p. so l ike 540xsomethingican'tremember

[warm oasis]

Got you

I should probably just try find where these files are on the SD and see what is going on

[dreamy hinge]

/media/fat/docs

[warm oasis]

Right guys, here we go. Works fine on my MiSTer (16:9, 1080p HDMI). Images a bit low res, but that's largely down to the source and it's readable. If you make a "Jaguar" folder in /media/fat/docs and drop that in, then when the core is loaded select Help and you can select the file and load it

If anyone wants the files I used to make this then let me know, I grabbed them off the site about and resized and rendered out in GIMP and tried a few free online pdf mergers until I got one that didn't bork the aspect ratio. Ah fuck. It did screw the resolution now I check...

I'll try again and reupload

Right there we go, converted using python script, seems all fine now

[supple finch]

It's wonderful information! But I did get a segmentation fault when I tried to scroll back to the beginning (Jaguar_Rework_dualram_20250710.rbf)

[warm oasis]

Is this using the one I just uploaded now that's 351.11kb or the one I deleted?

I am able to go up and down through the images fine

[supple finch]

It was the earlier copy. I just put the newer one out there and can scroll without issue (not a huge sample set, but I did go end to end at various speeds half a dozen times without a problem)

[warm oasis]

Nice one

If someone wants to try make something better then they are welcome to, but the quality of the source files on that site isn't great. This one does the job anyway

If someone is able try it on a crt that might be good to confirm it works fine, but I think it should

[supple finch]

I'm temporarily using my computer screen and it doesn't "announce" the screen resolution like my TV does, so I'm not certain what it's running in (I commented out video_mode for auto-detect while I was going back and forth between various TVs and screens)

[warm oasis]

Although I should have actually named the file properly, it should be Atari Jaguar Controller Overlays

[supple finch]

Thank you very much for doing this.

[warm oasis]

No worries, wasn't difficult

What is the process for getting this added to the docs folder for when the core goes live?

[ashen spoke]

That’s awesome dude. In the interim of it getting added to the docs folder I’ll link to it in the pins.

[warm oasis]

Good thinking

I wonder if there are any other cases a bit like this where a simple pdf could be useful to add to a core's doc folder

[ashen spoke]

These instructions still valid?

[mental briar]

yep

[gentle bobcat]

Currently, since the cd bios isn't automatically being loaded, it doesn't have to be renamed, although ending in .rom is probably a good idea.

[gentle bobcat]

Hmm, the core dated 7/28 "Cheats" seems to be broken for CD stuff. Or at least I didn't see a load CDi file option... and there was a load bin/cdi option and it used the old loading method that fills in the squares and takes a considerable amount of time. Anyone duplicate? I'll check again.

[dreamy hinge]

that one wasn't built from the jagcd supporting codebase

[gentle bobcat]

@Zakk - That makes sense then.

Yeah, the one dated 7/24 (I"m talking about single ram one here, at home I have my dual-ram setup) has 6 LOAD options and 7/28 only has 5.

[warm oasis]

There's newer builds with CD stuff, cheats, sys updates

I added them to the WIP DB if you use that

[gentle bobcat]

How does one use the WIP DB?

[mental briar]

I didn't post them here because I wasn't sure what folks had. But yeah, I built these a couple of days ago when I did the sys update. They don't have the mouse fixes that just got PRed, but they should have everything before that

that's cheats + CD

[ashen spoke]

To use it simply copy and paste the below to the bottom of your downloader.ini file (found at: /media/fat/downloader.ini )

db_url = https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajgowans/wip/db/db.json.zip```

[ashen spoke]

Oh damn I had no idea, thank you!

[gentle bobcat]

If someone can update the pinn'ed links, that would be great. Or maybe they already did. It wasn't that way before TJF provided updated links.

[fallow salmon]

the pdf viewer is so cool

has anyone ever tried using it to do game guides?

[warm oasis]

That could be a nice use for them. It's a cool feature, but it's not well known. Alan did some system overview ones for some of the computer cores but as a wider project to do it for all the systems it never picked up steam

If anyone made useful documents I am sure it would be easy to get them added

I was thinking when we get full DVC support for the CDi then a one sheet with the passcodes to access the games that need them to play would be useful one

There are three that need codes to get in if I remember

Stuff like that could be useful

[supple finch]

I have a couple short documents, like how to run a TRS-80 program (cassette, disk, basic, etc.) and how to get the Atari 800 to run a disk and what the START SELECT and OPTION equivalents are. Now that I know about the PDF reader, I'll put those in the appropriate docs directories.

[warm oasis]

Things like that would be cool to get formatted (if needed) and could likely be added to Main so everyone gets them

[supple finch]

What formatting would a normal letter-sized PDF require to be viewable in MiSTer?

[warm oasis]

It may be fine TBH, give them a check your end. I guess smaller file size the better

[warm oasis]

I went and chucked the overlay in the WIP DB for now, so anyone using that will get it down next update all run

[ashen spoke]

Yah updated them to point to his post. 🍻

[sterile moss]

Tbh you don't need to rename the BIOS, was just to keep it consistent 🙂

[sterile moss]

The c compiles for windows/wsl and runs fine under both, sees the right number of tracks in my bin/cue (once I removed the cd text stuff), but I dont think it likes the bin/cue that imgburn created, plays as noise
will mess with it some more

[tropic rock]

Might be byte swapped

Or rather, might not be byte swapped. Remove this section of code and try it

       {
         char tmp=buff[i];
         buff[i]=buff[i+1];
         buff[i+1]=tmp;
       }```

Could add an option to skip it if it works.

[sterile moss]

Works, thank you 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

For some reason, I'm having a bit of trouble with the most recent core. Some disparity with the BIOS file. Can't seem to switch between cart games and VLM/CD games. Will have to futz with it some more.

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, it just acts a little differently than I was expecting. When I load the JagCD BIOS it doesn't immediately show the Jag logo and some effect behind it... but once I load a .cdi file, it seems to come to life.

[warm oasis]

Anyone know what happens on actual hardware if you boot up Jag CD with no CD in the tray?

Does it boot the CD BIOS or only do that on game launch?

[glossy iron]

It boots the CD bios and shows an image of a CD with a "?"

[warm oasis]

Ah, so not replicating actual hardware

[sterile moss]

it does if you set 'cd inserted' to no

[ashen spoke]

that’s neat

[sterile moss]

yeah the cd bios is way prettier than the regular one

[glossy iron]

Yes! Way better. Only disadvantage is that it takes slightly longer to boot. If you can't get fast enough into your checkered flag playing session

[radiant cradle]

we're out there playing club drive

i love driving around a house collecting orbs

[sterile moss]

sure beats walking

[radiant cradle]

in club drive i can experience american life by driving to the bathroom in a mcmansion

its these unique experiences whic make jaguar worth playing

[sterile moss]

as long as your lift is car sized

[ashen spoke]

I fucking said “AWWWRIGHT” in the same voice yesterday when I found something I was looking for at the grocery store. I am so ashamed of myself.

Wasn’t on purpose, just did it.

[radiant cradle]

club drives biggest fan exposed himself.... tragedy ensues

[tropic rock]

You can also get an error telling you to plug in power to the CD Unit, but I didn't think an OSD option was needed for it.

I broke the butch code to make it do that. If someone really wanted to see it, a cheat code could be made.

Just needs to fail this section of the CD Bios:

chkCDpow:
    move.l    (a0),d0
    andi.w    #$2000,d0
    bne.s    powok
    dbra    d1,chkCDpow
;
;  timed out..
;
powBAD:

[warm oasis]

Fun use of the cheat system!

[ashen spoke]

@dreamy hinge damn this is so cool, a Jamba harness for a Jaguar - https://ebay.us/m/rGHXJ4

[dreamy hinge]

a what harness

[mental briar]

that’s what they make with shrimp and andouille sausage I think

[ashen spoke]

Hanna

Jamma

My autocorrect doesn’t know jamma

[stiff pebble]

https://tenor.com/view/jumba-jookiba-evil-laugh-lilo-and-stitch-david-ogden-stiers-green-light-gif-10918485267951329236

o hanna jamba

[grizzled bloom]

@ashen spoke’s been hitting the jamba juice

[half cove]

You can add it to the dictionary, it will stop autocorrecting.

[ashen spoke]

** 𝐉𝐚𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫 𝐂𝐃 𝐒𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐩 **

[IMPORTANT] - When playing Cart based games, make sure to set CD Enabled to No, otherwise the games will not load!

Jaguar Bios explanations:

• boot.rom - cartridge bios; needed to play carts
• boot1.rom - CD bios; needed to play CDs
• boot2.rom - CD save cart memtrack; needed to save CD games

Loading Jaguar CD Games:

1. Rename Jag CD BIOS (CRC32: 687068D5) to boot1.rom and copy to \games\Jaguar
2. Copy Jag CD games (in .cdi format) to \games\Jaguar
3. Load latest core from the pins, open OSD, set:
   -CD Sessions: 2
   -CD Enabled: Yes
   -CD Inserted: Yes
4. Load CD *.CDI and load a game

Loading Audio CDs:

1. Use the same format as above to load the Audio CD (in .cdi format)
2. Set CD Sessions to 1
3. If it doesn't play and shows a time of -0:01, reset the core via the OSD
4. The VLM will display if done correctly.

(thanks to @sterile moss for writing the guide above and to @mental briar for explaining what each bios does)

[warm oasis]

Does Jag core have the fast ROM loading that other cores with larger ROM sizes, like Neo Geo, have?

[gentle bobcat]

I don't know if it is the same has the Neo Geo or not, but they do load pretty darn fast. There are some specific ROMs that seem to take longer to come up after booting... and I think it is because they used a higher compression ratio... and have more effort decompressing.

[dreamy hinge]

it does not. support would need to be added to main. I don't think 'normal' cores have a way to signal they want fast ddr loading

[warm oasis]

Ah, was support added to Main for the other cores that do this?

[dreamy hinge]

I'm not sure how many consoles actually have it? neogeo and what else?

[fallow salmon]

n64

gba?

[dreamy hinge]

neogeo is always an exception, main builds the rom manually

[warm oasis]

I think all of Roberts ones

[dreamy hinge]

oh wait, maybe you can do it generically, I made the mistake of looking at NG first

[warm oasis]

N64, GBA, WonderSwan, Lynx

I think anyway

Maybe 32x?

Maybe need @warped basalt to clarify, and give overview of how it works in his cores that have the fast ROM loading

[dreamy hinge]

nah, I see it now. it's not that complicated

[warm oasis]

That's cool, would be a nice QOL if it could speed up loading a bit. Is this something that could be used on arcade cores? Might be good on the 90s ones with big roms like S-TV

[dreamy hinge]

most of them already do it

[warm oasis]

Ah cool

[dreamy hinge]

well, all the 'big' ones

ST-V does

[warm oasis]

Guessing 32x does as well then

Probably all of srg320s ROM bases systems

[stoic jewel]

Soccer Kid doesn’t load for me. Is it a know issue or do I have a bad dump?

[mental briar]

swap the cart checksum option and it should boot

the beta boots as well

it's a known issue

[ashen spoke]

@tropic rock do you know if it’s possible to load the cdrom bios from an MGL?

[dreamy hinge]

try index 3

[pallid gulch]

it is possible to use mgl for jagcd setname and put cd_bios.rom renamed boot.rom on jagcd directory

[humble bluff]

I use a mgl that loads the bioses and memory track. Works well.

[ashen spoke]

Ohhhh can you post it here?

[humble bluff]

Sure one sec

[ashen spoke]

what's the mem_track.rom

[humble bluff]

For CD saves, it's not working yet

[ashen spoke]

ok cool, thanks for the info

ALSO thank you and @dreamy hinge , it was indeed index 3!

[ashen spoke]

Ok so this MGL format works for me 100% of the time to load a Jaguar CD game:

    <rbf>_Console/Jaguar</rbf>
    <file delay="0" type="f" index="3" path="/media/fat/games/Jaguar/cd_bios.rom"/>
    <file delay="0" type="s" index="1" path="/media/fat/games/Jaguar/Jaguar CD/game_name/game_name.cdi"/>
    <reset delay="1"/>
</mistergamedescription>```

[stone vault]

Thank you for this.

[warm oasis]

Keep in mind the bios format isn't final so you will have to do these again once the core moves to a series of 3 boot roms

[leaden spire]

What screen resolutions does the Jaguar output?

Are they particularly god-hating ones?

[gentle bobcat]

I believe 320x240 but I could be wrong. There is a optional dialog that shows when you load a game or the core... or at some point. Maybe you have that turned off or it is shown and gone before your screen syncs the display?

640x480?

Make sure you have the correct setting between NTSC/PAL.

[tranquil cape]

NTSC bios screen reads 705x238 at 15khz in the MiSTer OSD
Several games read the same
So hi-res 240p (I guess?)

[gentle bobcat]

Hmm, supposedly there is a port of Contiki OS available for the Jaguar. That sounds interesting... but I'll believe it when I see it.

[humble bluff]

It exists and runs along with JagOS.

[leaden spire]

I haven’t launched the core with my Morph-4K hooked up yet tbh.

I was more so wondering if the Jaguar continued the trend of being Not-Normal.

[mental briar]

As long as your profile database is up to date, it should be fine

[gentle bobcat]

@humble bluff - What, pray tell, is JagOS? Have you used Contiki OS? On the Jag?

Ah, THIS JagOS - http://laurent68k.free.fr/Site/Jaguar.html

[humble bluff]

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/22358-contiki-coming-to-the-jaguar/page/2/#findComment-303744

[gentle bobcat]

Cool. Thanks Robby.

Only question about that is the pinned item says the latest cores are dated today but they are 7/30. Likely a inconsistency because this is the first time.

[ashen spoke]

Yeah, I just did that as a blanket date for every pin. Moving forward when I update it I’ll add the core date.

[gentle bobcat]

Hmm, Heber says they have started shipping the Multisystem 2 a little early of their August 10th goal. I hope mine is in that batch... if they are shipping more than just domestic.

https://bsky.app/profile/multisystemfpga.bsky.social/post/3lvsrabjtrk2o

Multisystem (@multisystemfpga.bsky.social)

Multisystem2 has started shipping to customers, ahead of our planned Aug 10th estimate.

Thank you and Enjoy 👍

-# Heber Ltd. (@heber-limited.bsky.social)
Boxes are being made up, stamps are being stamped and stickers are being stuck. We’re ready for shipping! Thank you for all your amazing support of the Multisystem2!

Bluesky · Aug 7, 2025, 12:43 PM

[gentle bobcat]

I'm also curious how the US tariff will be processed? Do I get a notice of money due... and I can't get my package until that is paid?!?

[dreamy hinge]

you'll probably owe whoever the domestic shipper is

[gentle bobcat]

And the Jaguar tie in... I'll be testing out the Jaguar single core on it ASAP.

[gentle bobcat]

I placed my order on May 5th and they opened up orders to the public on the 6th.

[mental briar]

Id buy one but I have no idea when they would ship so it's not super useful for doing support help with it. I asked Richard what the shipping window was looking like, but he didn't answer

[dreamy hinge]

why is it like 90% of the time someone mentions the mms1 or 2 it is in the context of not getting an answer to some question

[mental briar]

it's a good question

[gentle bobcat]

Well, I'm pretty sure their pre-orders are spread across 3 or 4 future batches by now... so yeah, I'd rather them say they don't know rather than guessing and being nowhere near close.

Or not answering... = don't know. :

(I'm a bit of an apologist)

That third-party site that is printing the parts in various colors with a visualizer is pretty darn cool. It's a bit pricey, especially with them also being in the UK and me not. I work for a University and we have a MakerSpace with a dozen or so 3D printers exactly the same model they use... so I'll get the print files and have a few different color parts printed.

(hunting down the link now)

This one is sweet but a bit out of my price range (with shipping added anyway):

[mental briar]

I’m honestly just looking for any kind of answer. Even if it’s “no idea, but probably not soon”

[gentle bobcat]

Using the five drop-downs at the top, design your own: https://multisystem.retrofied.uk/

[mental briar]

I’d just be buying one to help folks here anyway. Maybe it’s better that goes to someone who wants one to play regularly - rather than someone who will only fire it up if it’s needed for troubleshooting

[ashen spoke]

i like the design

[gentle bobcat]

Hmmm, which do I like better? Probably the one with the black main case as then the newly printed red parts would be less:

[ashen spoke]

left is bettter

black with red trim

makes it go faster

[mental briar]

super soaker A E S T H E T I C

[gentle bobcat]

U... G... L.... Y... they ain't got no alabi:

[strange drift]

I've seen and handled one of the premium case options that will be available and it didn't feel like a 3D printed product. It was absolutely incredible.

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, I think they basically made all of the pieces thicker.

[outer veldt]

My order number is 7005 despite ordering 2 minutes into the start of the preorder.

[gentle bobcat]

@outer veldt - I'm about 200 in front of you.

[mental briar]

yeah, doesn't seem like it makes any sense for me to buy one (I asked again and didn't hear back)

[outer veldt]

Starting to think some were allowed to pre order before the pre order - which is a little shitty.

[outer veldt]

I like the console aesthetic and it is a product that would seem to materialize before the Superstation. I have two FPGA stacks already but cosmetically they are a little utilitarian. That is mostly my reason for purchase.

[mental briar]

Oh I'm sorry, I don't think anyone needs to justify purchasing it. I bet they are going to be great. I was looking to get one to help folks here who had issues, but it doesn't seem like it would ship before the end of the year - which isn't helpful. That's why I'm not grabbing one

it does seem very cool and the shell being fully printable means I can do obscene things with color

[outer veldt]

Luckily (at least in this instance) I am in the UK, so I imagine when it's my turn, it should arrive quickly. I am sure any of us would be only too happy to help with testing or possible issues.

[mental briar]

we will likely need it 🙂

[outer veldt]

I like that woodgrain

[gentle bobcat]

I wonder if my MakerSpace place knows how to do simulated wood grain?

[outer veldt]

If it does, you have a customer

[gentle bobcat]

Hmm, I wonder if there was even a prototype "MPEG cartridge"?

[grizzled bloom]

Can you imagine watching a video cd on the Atari toilet🚽

[gentle bobcat]

@grizzled bloom - The American Hero 3CD protoype is basically a movie. The version I found isn't censored.

[grizzled bloom]

I never thought I could feel so freeee

https://youtu.be/72MxOo5koto?si=qB-znzFXvQ3hq_jg

[gentle bobcat]

I don't think the Jaguar movie thing is the same thing.

Or maybe it is... but the uncensored one is not that guy... and not a prime time broadcast TV kinda thing.

Here's the footage from a different platform so much higher resolution/colors... and this is the sensored one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJIktZg1QNg So it is "American Hero" not "Greatest American Hero".

[deft spruce]

did anyone see this today?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/tempest-2000-136267013

I had no idea the jags stereo was flipped thats crazy

[gentle bobcat]

I had the mod files back in the day. They were released before the Audio CD was produced. I was playing them on my Atari ST.

Well, what they are offering for download are .flac files. The .mid files are much smaller.

[warm oasis]

This is an odd discovery:

Now for the side bonus for nerds: I also discovered emulators have been playing the mod tracks with channels flipped! That's right, just about every video you watch on YouTube featuring Tempest 2000, you can tell right away if they are using an emulator because the stereo music channels will be flipped. When you watch really old YouTube videos of Tempest 2000, the channels are in proper orientation because they just recorded from the console back then. This is the case because the Jaguar hardware itself flips MOD stereo on output. In order to be consistent with this behavior, I systematically flipped the stereo channels of every track. Now they all sound like they would have out of the console (albeit a heck of a lot cleaner and better quality).

Can someone confirm if the core has the stereo matching original hardware or what emulators are doing?

[gentle bobcat]

Err... here's a ZIP file of the mod files: http://www.mirsoft.info/wogm_download.php?data=YTozOntpOjA7czo1OiIxMzI0MyI7aToxO2k6MTc1NDk2ODU2NjtpOjI7aTozO30=

You need a mod file player.

Each mod file is less than 200k

There are a number of mod file players for Linux. Fedora has a few packaged. I just went with one called "dumb". dumpplay seems to work great.

But yeah, those are the same files I had on the Atari ST back in the mid-90s. Atari STs couldn't really play .mp3 files... but mod files, no problem.

mod files were very popular on the Aimga too.

I actually like the audio CD better... but they are fairly close.

Also, IMNSHO... the mod files are better than that person's conversion to .flac files.

[ashen spoke]

So are you the biggest Jaguar fan here

[gentle bobcat]

I weigh about 260lbs... so maybe. 🙂

[ashen spoke]

Nice, sounds like if someone else steps up you’ll be able to take ‘em anyways

[gentle bobcat]

I can sit on them.

[ashen spoke]

lol

Jaguar is cool

This core helped me appreciate it for what it is

[gentle bobcat]

It does have a very healthy homebrew scene with much of it commercialized... and people seem to be paying for new carts. Too rich for my blood. A few do sell ROM files... but those are fairly expensive too. I've seen them for like $24 a pop.

And of course, not to disparage them, but none of the newer stuff really compares to the complexity and length of most of the original games... mainly because most of the homebrew stuff has tiny teams or are single person efforts.

Hmm, can I post mod files here?

What mod file player to you guys use?

BTW, my copy of the Tempest 2000 Soundtrack CD is signed by a few on the team that made the game... but not Minter as he wasn't in the US when they signed them all.

[grizzled bloom]

A mistake 😝

[urban mango]

Can check hardware later in the week if no one else does sooner

[tacit thorn]

I just bought their ModulARC Neo arcade stick and only had to pay about £30 for shipping during checkout. It sat in customs for about 3 days but I wasn’t asked for additional payment. It just arrived this morning

[gentle bobcat]

@hard pulsar - Thanks for the data point. Maybe we can get some more.

Did you get any kind of shipping notice or tracking number?

[tacit thorn]

Yes it was shipped international tracked with RoyalMail. Same experience when I bought the MMS1 back in late 2022

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, I haven't gotten any shipping notice on the Multisystem2 so I assume it hasn't shipped yet. 🙁

[urban mango]

So managed to hook up hardware today:
Tested the Jaguar_Rework from 250710.
Tested Tempest 2000 music playback.
Can confirm the core left and right channels match hardware. Also matches FirebrandX’ FLACs as expected.

[warm oasis]

Great stuff, thanks for confirming

[uncut atlas]

the hardware uses standard I2S protocol. While it's possible I'm completely unable to read documents and wrote that code somewhat drunk (it helps numb the pain of working on atari systems), it's pretty hard to mess up which channel is the output

[ashen spoke]

So how did emulators get that wrong? lol

[uncut atlas]

humans

they probably dont emulate jerry correctly, or i2s correctly, or both

I doubt any emulator works at a low level hardware level

well, except mister's. I dunno about the closed source one

but the rest dont

granted our core is opaque mostly, just a bunch of black boxes that atari made themselves

the story of how the atari netlists materialized is a bit vauge, but it was from the designs they used to make the chips themselves

the differences are mostly electrical and transcription related

[warm oasis]

It is rather odd the emulators all do it wrong, you would think someone would have flagged it up long ago, and it would have been fixed. Either properly, or by lazily flipping the stereo channels.

[tropic rock]

I should point out someone should check the CD left/right matches hardware as well. It is very possible I messed something up there. I have a vague recollection that I had to swap something in that area when first coding the CD stuff.

[warm oasis]

As in audio CD channels?

[tropic rock]

yes

Can probably be tested by using the cd-player/vlm with one of the games that has audio tracks with separate stereo.

[warm oasis]

If someone has an image of an album they know then would be easy to check, i.e. drums or vocals mixed to one side.

Although would probably be useful more widely if someone is able to get a public domain stereo check disc as an image in the various formats, so this could be quickly used on any emulator to quickly check. I.e. the audio is "Left channel, right channel" mixed to the corresponding channel

[warm oasis]

Actually maybe I should just make this, I think have recordings of me saying left and right channel already as part of something I did awhile back for a film project

There doesn't seem to be what I am looking for out there that is easily findable, but I will need help turning the wave files into the different CD image formats: bin/cue, iso, CHD etc. what other formats are there that could be supported?

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - If you can point me to an audio source, I can make a cdi.

[warm oasis]

Let me go have a look and see if I can quickly make one, then I am happy for that to be free for anyone to use and there is zero copyright concerns

If we get it encoded in different formats I can chuck them all on GitHub and archive

This feels like a simple tool that could be handy for people testing emulators

[outer veldt]

Did you get the Jag CD VLM working for audio cd?

I know you had an interest in that

[gentle bobcat]

@outer veldt - Not for physical Audio CDs... but for audio .cdi files, yes.

I have a Super Station One ordered and hope to get the optical drive dock as well... and that may be able to play physical game CDs and audio CDs... although the Jaguar core I don't think is on Retro Remake's radar yet. I would imagine their changes will get submitted upstream?

[dreamy hinge]

I would not hold my breath for physical cdrom related changes to land upstream

[outer veldt]

The optical drive is an exciting feature. I hope the CD loading is extended to all FPGA projects. Still waiting to hear for my multistation 2

[gentle bobcat]

Zakk - Given that the SSO isn't even out yet, who would be holding their breath?

@outer veldt - Me too. (Multisystem 2)

Which will arrive first? Seems like the M2 has pulled head but we shall see.

[outer veldt]

Preordered my Multisystem 2, 2 minutes in and yet somehow my order is 7005. I will probably stop complaining and all is forgiven when it lands on my doorstep.

[gentle bobcat]

I'm 6846.

[outer veldt]

20 seconds faster than me!

7000 consoles in 2 minutes. As far as demands for the new console, these guys could teach Sony a lesson.

[warm oasis]

I don't think there is any desire amongst MiSTer's Devs to try support non MiSTer hardware with optical media readers, for good reasons.

[outer veldt]

for what reasons?

[mental briar]

Because the whole point of mister was to get away from physical media

It’s a pain in the ass

Not the whole point, but a tenet for sure

[warm oasis]

And it would be extra bloat, which has a tangible cost, to support something that isn't part of the project and the board the project runs on

[outer veldt]

I thought it was to get away from shoddy emulation and dying original hardware

[warm oasis]

But not dying optical media?

[outer veldt]

Not mine. I have never seen disc rot

[mental briar]

Really, preservation is the point. And physical media is a terrible preservation medium

[ashen spoke]

I have over 450 PS1 games and I have zero desire to use them to load a game. It’s a fun novelty but the convenience of MiSTer far outweighs it.

So I am me physical media

[warm oasis]

Disc rot isn't much of a problem, but discs look fine and have died. I have tried playing a load of HD-DVDs I have recently, some still sealed, and many don't play or crash part way through, as the discs are already dying

[outer veldt]

We are really on a different page if you believe the future of gaming is paying for digital copies. I'm sure though Nintendo must love you.

[warm oasis]

Have seen similar issues with some DVDs that look perfectly fine

[gentle bobcat]

I know the SSO optical drive dock has a, one would assume, proprietary connector that attaches it to the SSO, but they say it can be hooked up to a computer (for faster ripping of optical disks)... and one would assume it can be hooked up to a regular MiSTer in the same way. Via USB, I'm guessing.

[ashen spoke]

Oh lol that’s already been decided my dude. I don’t like it either, but it’s a done deal.

I try to buy physical where I can though.

[warm oasis]

I buy physical media exclusively, but let's be honest, virtually no game has shipped complete in physical form for like 15+ years. They all have updates not on the disc

[ashen spoke]

Physical games will of course continue but it’s a boutique market from here on out. At least for the foreseeable future.

[gentle bobcat]

Drives themselves die 100x more than media... or at least that has been my experience.

[ashen spoke]

It’s funny that Nintendo is referenced and they’re the only major publisher who remains committed to physical media lol.

[mental briar]

I think if you’re under the impression that your retail CDs are going to last forever, you’re setting yourself up for wild disappointment

[ashen spoke]

Mine will last forever because they are my precious babies

[warm oasis]

And anyway, this argument is getting off point. Your discs games will not last forever, some may last a very long time, but not forever. Which is why it is great most things have been dumped and archived. That and MiSTer has no plans to support playing physical media. Never has, almost certainly never will.

[outer veldt]

All my Mega CD games work still

[mental briar]

I put mine in the Norwegian seed vault

[mental briar]

Today, yes

[gentle bobcat]

You can always burn new discs... assuming you have a burner... and working blank media. Not forever. Do they even sell blank media anymore? I haven't looked in some time.

[ashen spoke]

I asssume the stool so

I’m not fixing that

[outer veldt]

I burnt a copy of Snatcher last night. have a cd printer

[mental briar]

They do. But this is a silly argument because it doesn’t scale. Physical media is not preservation

[warm oasis]

That's great. Mine I think do as well. Let's check back in another ten years, and another ten years after that and compare notes.

[ashen spoke]

Jokes on all you, digital media is stored on physical media still.

[mental briar]

It’s cool that it works still. It’s cool that folks still sell it. But the only true preservation is going to come from piracy (same as it ever was)

[outer veldt]

Have done the same for every 10 years

[dreamy hinge]

the real issue is 1) the quality of cdrom/dvdrom drives varies wildly 2) the quality of every users "I swear it is in perfect condition" disc varies wildly

a company like RR can control for one of those by (hopefully) sourcing consistent quality drives

[warm oasis]

It is also getting increasingly difficult and expensive to get high quality, reliable CDRs and DVDRs, and burners. The discs are also getting more expensive. It may be incredibly hard and expensive to get them in the future as they will simple stop being made at anything close to the scale they are now.

[outer veldt]

I just bought another 100 of them

[gentle bobcat]

Same with MiSTer hardware (not lasting forever). I watched the Toki arcade dev give a presentation... and someone asked... you created an FPGA core for a 30 year old board. What happens when your FPGA board is 30 years old? He didn't answer because he didn't understand the question, but the answer is... the DE10-Nano will stop production at some point... and existing systems will eventually die... but the FPGA code... lives forever. While a specific commercial optical disc might not last for ever, it can be archived and reproduced... forever... as long as the hardware and media exist to do that. Carts a bit harder to do. 🙂

[ashen spoke]

FPGA code has to live somewhere and that somewhere is a hard drive which is physical media. Checkmates!

[unborn steeple]

GitHub is in the cloud, mang. I think it’s stored on raindrops or something

[ashen spoke]

oh

[gentle bobcat]

<@&1374161661333864478> - The Internet is our backup. 🙂 There'll only be, 16+ million copies of the code somewhere. Whiel they couldn't find every episode of Doctor Who on video tape, they found most of them.

[ashen spoke]

Who’s the doctor?

[gentle bobcat]

I think the doctor is on third base.

[unborn steeple]

Physical media is future junk. Physical optical drives and cartridge slots are future junk.

[gentle bobcat]

Human flesh is future junk. 🙁

[unborn steeple]

Digital representations are the longest potential storage method. But all data in fewer than three places is ephemeral.

[mental briar]

I still can’t believe this is an argument.

[unborn steeple]

Mine is already

[gentle bobcat]

I wish I could burn me a new body when this one gets too old.

[mental briar]

One day

[ashen spoke]

if Polymega kept their hardware as FPGA I probably would’ve been all about that, but they didn’t and I went with MiSTer and I haven’t touched my game collection in forever lol

[unborn steeple]

🦾

[mental briar]

The last thing this planet needs is people living longer than they already do

[unborn steeple]

Uploading ftw

[mental briar]

Producing endless plastic discs

[ashen spoke]

I feel like I’m probably going to be talking to a police officer about that statement in the future 👀

[dreamy hinge]

also every feature like this that gets added someone has to maintain it. and every core author now has to field bug reports where the eventual conclusion is 'your media or drive are too shitty to use' but that just wastes their time

[ashen spoke]

My vote is for Zakk to maintain it

[unborn steeple]

More like a large number of people in agreement, with one outlier

[mental briar]

Fair. Fair

[gentle bobcat]

I'll attempt to divert this conversation into the fact that some people like physical media... I mean... to me... those zapproo things are dumb... but a lot of people love them.

[ashen spoke]

and a chaos gremlin

[unborn steeple]

Shush you

[dreamy hinge]

yes, and those exist outside of the mainline project

[outer veldt]

Need more space for physical collection

[ashen spoke]

Zaparoo is a super smart application of addressing the heart of physical media attraction with a digital storage solution in a size that makes a ton of sense.

well I think so anyways

[gentle bobcat]

Well, I didn't mean to get anyone's panties in a bunch by suggesting that RetroRemake's code might go upstream. I recend that notion.

[ashen spoke]

too late

[unborn steeple]

I have a vast amount of physical media, and I do love it. I play all my games digitally though. Last time I actually used an optical disc was before the ps5/XboxX arrived

[mental briar]

I love Zaparoo. I love the fucking super station dock too. I think it’s cool someone is doing that

[ashen spoke]

I wish I could edit people’s comments

I’d remove “the”

[unborn steeple]

Spicy

[mental briar]

I thought you’d swap the o with an i

[unborn steeple]

Spocy?

[gentle bobcat]

Now we know how TJF's discs got all creamy.

[mental briar]

God, poor grey is going to come back to this channel and be like “what the fuck has happened here”

[unborn steeple]

One of my other discords we have a “.delete 200” bot 😄

[mental briar]

I’m sorry grey. Physical media gets me all worked up

[outer veldt]

a few

[ashen spoke]

Oh yeah you like the Mega CD

That’s pretty cool

[unborn steeple]

Someone’s gotta

It does have the redeeming feature of being one of the easiest libraries to 100%

Jag is up there too though

[outer veldt]

You have Snatcher?

[unborn steeple]

God no, I only ever had a Megadrive base unit

[ashen spoke]

Ok real talk, I didn’t have an appreciate for Mega CD until I played the core. What a cool console. Same with the Jaguar, thanks to this core I appreciate it too.

And people can enjoy Jaguar CD

[unborn steeple]

It’s pretty neat. A friend keeps trying to sell me his tower of power (and his Jag) and I just gesture towards the MiSTer vaguely and mutter nahhhh

[outer veldt]

only half of my mega CD collection. It was hidden behind my Dreamcast games

I have three towers of powers, will sell one

[ashen spoke]

Where’s your Jaguar CD games

[outer veldt]

I have neo geo CD and CDI games if you're interested in a steal

[gentle bobcat]

On Songbird's website.

[outer veldt]

Best game on Jag CD is Vid Grid. I worked to level two

[warm oasis]

Maybe someone can clear this up for me, am I right in thinking this Taki CD thing is going to dump the games to the drive, and then after that each time you put the CD in it will load up that previous dump?

[mental briar]

No, he says it reads them

No idea how it works yet

[outer veldt]

from what I have seen, it reads it from the disc

[unborn steeple]

That sounds like a disaster area then

Given how Robert’s explained the timing needs for reads

We’ll see.
It’s vapour at the moment

[warm oasis]

Everything about this sounds like a disaster in waiting. Even if it was dumping them, then you would be playing an unverified dump from a cheap drive that no dumper would touch with a barge pole. Reading it off the disc sounds like madness.

[gentle bobcat]

I really wouldn't want to play a Game CD... but Audio CDs, hell yes!

[warm oasis]

Unless you are wanting the graphics from the in-built player then MiSTer it a lousy CD solution, it doesn't even support 44.1khz

[outer veldt]

three Mega CD

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - It's for the VLM my friend.

[warm oasis]

But yeah, unless you are wanting the inbuilt core graphics then MiSTer is not going to be a good way to play CDs from an audiophile perspective. Pretty much any disc spinner in your local charity shop will massively beat it in terms of reproduction and sound quality.

[outer veldt]

Feel like a idiot. I don't imagine CD music discs but CD games loading into an FPGA with audio.

Who wouldn't love to play Ecco the Dolphin CD on a CD loading system?

[unborn steeple]

We’re all here for the MiSTer FPGA experience of digital game loads. Most of us also have a lot of original hardware. We all know what slapping a disc - or disk - in is like.

[outer veldt]

slapping your disc? oo-eh

[unborn steeple]

insert floppy disk now

[mental briar]

I have some physical media as well

[outer veldt]

Squints

[mental briar]

bottom 9 are all games

top 3 are systems

i should really label everything

[outer veldt]

I still have 5 storage boxes of vintage gaming to sell

[dreamy hinge]

"stuff 1" "stuff 2"

[mental briar]

Posted in the wrong channel. Anyway. These are both filled with PC games which holding on to feels real dumb

[gentle bobcat]

So, optical CD support might be fairly simple... if it is possible to do it right... like network-based storage of games. There could be a Linux service that presents the data to the cores... like network stuff does. Or does it? I haven't used network storage for games.

I guess we'll know more at some point AFTER the SSO is released, eh?

[outer veldt]

I know the Superstation does it. Hope it migrates to other MiSTer systems

The multisystem has an expansion for cartridge based games

[ivory basin]

Excuse me, but are you also a Haunted Mansion aficionado?

[dreamy hinge]

it's probably all done externally, you just have to generate an cue file for the mounted disc and maybe an mgl. then you get to discover how timing sensitive cores actually are

[mental briar]

I fucking love the haunted mansion.

[ivory basin]

A person of taste I see!

[gentle bobcat]

Egads, Hallmark orniments or some such. My wife has way too many of those.

[ivory basin]

Our Christmas tree is 1/3rd Haunted Mansion, 1/3rd Nightmare before Christmas and the last third is Disney park ornaments

[mental briar]

I can't fuck with nightmare before christmas, but I love the haunted mansion. I am not an ornament person but I had to have those (shit, I'm so sorry grey - I'll go now)

[gentle bobcat]

That's what they make a "Jump to present" button for.

[nova portal]

FYI, Attack of the mutant penguins (single RAM core) crashes even with those RAM parameters if you select the green character (works with the default red one though) 😔

[gentle bobcat]

Looks like this person got the first Multisystem 2: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uoEAm9ORKdE

[warm oasis]

Too bad they have no option to add in a second ram stick to fully enjoy the Jag core

[gentle bobcat]

I think I'd really have to run them side by side to see the difference between the dual and single ram builds... which I haven't done. Without having done so, they look the same to me.

I know I speakinze heresy.

[warm oasis]

Is Jag CD working OK on single ram now?

[shut night]

Tried it on my MMS1 yesterday, some things work, and some don't. Dragons Lair intro kinda pauses and pixelates in places (maybe that's normal), Myst ran a bit through the intro then jumped ahead, and things like Blue Lightning won't even boot. Maybe these are the same on dual ram? Not sure

[mental briar]

I think right now the single ram core is close, but there are still bugs and crashes not present on dual ram.

I need to look at this one because I closed that issue #1055574003810578503 message

[warm oasis]

Now the core is making great progress towards the finish line, I am trying to remember what was different between the Jag hardware and the Co-jag boards. Maybe there is a chance that could be supported one day. I know @thorny swift grabbed one awhile back to document and dig into

AI overview:

The main difference between the Atari Jaguar and the Atari CoJag hardware lies in their processors and RAM. The standard Jaguar used a Motorola 68000 CPU, while the CoJag replaced it with a faster Motorola 68020 or MIPS R3000 processor. The CoJag also included more RAM than the standard Jaguar, with some games utilizing 4MB or even 6MB, compared to the Jaguar's 2MB. Additionally, the CoJag featured a 64-bit ROM bus, while the Jaguar had a 32-bit one.

Not sure how complex going from 32 to 64 bit ROM bus is, but increasing the ram is likely trivial and we have battle tested 68020 core(s). Not sure if R3000 is needed, we may not have one of those that can be dropped into something else

[remote pecan]

By the way. Tried Dragon's Lair on Dual Ram 20250730 today, and it crashes for me soon after the game starts. After a couple of attempts, the system reports a bad medium.
Primal Rage got hung after a couple of attract mode cycles.
Not sure if all this is expected at the current core state. Or maybe the dumps are simply bad.

[dreamy hinge]

I thought the only 020 we have is tg68k?

[warm oasis]

I think AI has lied to me again, I thought F2 has 68020