Atari Jaguar

[eager vine]

okay. i did read that and delete cd_bios and still got crashes but I believe my boot0 is one i put there before it was in update all

[mental briar]

what kind of power brick are you using for your tink?

[eager vine]

a big meanwell that was recommended by someone here or maybe misteraddons? i can't remember

3A i think.

no hrd drives hooked up to it. everything on sd. sd card is pretty new and quality i just upgraded the storage of that

only thing additional plugged in is wifi/bluetooth and a wireless keyboard dongle

only really recent changes is adding the second ram stick today. my mister has been so super solid for years

[mental briar]

no for the tink, not the mister

[eager vine]

oh sorry i misread.

uhh anker 60w usb

[mental briar]

can you record the "crash" with your phone or something? I'm wondering if something obvious is happening that would be easier to diagnose by looking at it

[eager vine]

I am not in front of it right now but I will shortly

[mental briar]

yup, take your time

[eager vine]

Also currently swapping for htgdb

The set that WAS just on there was no-intro j64 set so if this fixes it now we know

[queen tendon]

I can confirm DV works without issues with the Morph4k

[eager vine]

@mental briar well... the good news is the problem seems to have resolved. So it was an issue with whatever early bios I used or the no-intro j64 romset or both.

I'm gonna guess the bios I was using. But strange that the issue only happened on dual rework version not the single rework.

Thank you for working through all of that with me for sanity check.

[mental briar]

just glad it's working

[eager vine]

meeeeee too

[ashen spoke]

I’m not

We could’ve saved another soul from this den of scum and villainy

[eager vine]

I love how awful it is. I only knew one dude growing up who had a Jaguar and when I saw it I was the most excited to play it. He only had Cybermorph, Trevor McFur, and Kasumi Ninja. We played each game about 5 minutes each and after seeing how awful it was I hooked my Playstation back up and I never ever played Jaguar again until this core.

Tempest 2K is as good as all the magazines said it was back in the day. I'd like to play AvP but I'm not gonna eff with that unless Jaguar SNAC becomes a thing and i'll buy an OG controller to deal with the buttons.

[gentle bobcat]

One strategy quite a few folks have done using dual-stick USB controllers is to assign different stick positions to the keypad numbers. It works ok.

[eager vine]

I didn't even think of that. Good idea, thanks for sharing.

Core doesn't support CHD, correct? Is there a recommended disc set? I seem to recall redump was a no go when cd core first appeared but unsure if that has changed.

[slender valley]

I am confused with the bios situation, I ran update_all a few days ago and it said it wanted to replace boot.rom but one already existed, so I tried removing it and running it again... and it just did not download anything, I put it back and ran it again and... it did not complain that it's a different version

[gentle bobcat]

@slender valley - I believe that is a known issue related to how update_all caches stuff.

[warm oasis]

Hmm, I thought that issue was fixed

[gentle bobcat]

@eager vine - Yes, the Jaguar CD uses a very weird format... that is basically audio tracks... and less or no redundancy for 790MB storage capacity. .chd doesn't support multi-track or something like that.

@warm oasis - I think there are settings where you can change its behavior (I think).

[warm oasis]

As an aside I do wonder if it would be better if BIOS DB was enabled by default in update all, and people could turn it off rather than turn it on

[slender valley]

What do I do about it?

[eager vine]

Yeah I noticed update all does not grab jag bios. I deleted mine and ran it and no bios downloaded. I just manually put in the ones from TJF

[slender valley]

I assume anything that could be copyright is disabled by default in update_all?

[slender valley]

Pretty sure it did at one point grab the bioses for me, but yeah, it seems to mostly miss them

[warm oasis]

Mame getter is on by default isn't it?

[slender valley]

I don't remember, I thought it was not

[gentle bobcat]

So, what remains for the Jaguar Core to be put in update_all? It would be nice if there were three load options... Load Cart, Load Game CD and Load Audio CD and whenever one of those is selected, it toggles all of the needed settings so those just work as expected. How hard will that be to implement I wonder? (speaking as a non-developer)

[warm oasis]

I am pretty sure it is. It is kind of the point of update all, to do the things that update can't do for copyright reasons

[gentle bobcat]

dowdle notes that dowdle hasn't watched a Super Bowl since like 1978.

[slender valley]

Well, the UI would definitely need to be revised

Right now loading a CD is still very clearly designed with dev/debugging in mind

[warm oasis]

Does it need a separate option for audio CD? I assume just Insert Disc would take care of whatever valid disc is loaded

[slender valley]

All the options and settings you have to set to load a cd, when generally on most cores it's "load cd image"

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - You think it should probe the .cdi and determine if it is audio or game? Is that possible?

[slender valley]

?

[warm oasis]

It is how every other CD based console works, you just load a disc and the core loads it appropriately

Pretty much all of them also support CD discs

[gentle bobcat]

I've not used an audio CD in any other core... and I'm not even sure what format it would be in? .iso?

[slender valley]

There is no specific audio cd format

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - Yes, but other CD drives for other consoles aren't as weird as the JagCD.

[slender valley]

It could be iso, bin, cdi, whatever

Why specifically do you want to load audio cds in the jaguar core though?

[gentle bobcat]

@slender valley - Because the VLM, DUH!

I'm more likely to load an audio CD rather than a Game CD. 🙂

[slender valley]

Well, IIRC right now the Jaguar core supports images in bin/cue and cdi format, though it's possible bin/cue will be removed in the future since apparently due to the weird formatting of Jaguar CDs the CDI format is needed

Shame that CHD is not possible

[gentle bobcat]

We'll have to see how Jaguar game and audio CDs pan out on the Retro Remake SupserStation One dock. It would be awesome if optical media could play directly... mainly so I don't have to convert a ton of audio CDs to .cdi format. I've already done about 35. The game CD supply is very limited and a known quantity so not as important to me.

[slender valley]

Can jaguar CDs be read in a standard CD-ROM drive or no?

[gentle bobcat]

I think so but I haven't verified. I don't currently have any to test. Even though their max storage capacity was upped to 790MB max, the retail library... I think the largest CD takes up less than 600MB.

I'm guessing someone bought the JagCD unit MiSTer Addons had as it isn't listed any more.

[slender valley]

So they made it infamously fragile and finicky just to add an addtional amount of space they never used... great

[gentle bobcat]

They were throwing a lot of spaghetti at the wall hoping something would stick, to keep them from going bankrupt, but alas, nothing worked. They did have a ton of plans and software titles that were never released. From their first press conference in 1993, they had a Jaguar with the CD option there... and said the CD option would be released "eventually" so they had that planned pretty much from the beginning, but didn't release it until sometime in 1995.

Even in that first press conference, they showed an MPEG cartridge that was going to allow the JagCD to play VCDs, but again, it never came out... although they showed it in operation at a few CES shows.

It would be amazing if that Curt Vendel Atari collection that was recently announced that has been preserved by the Strong Museum (or whatever it is) had a prototype cart of that MPEG cart.

Supposedly a Jaguar III prototype is in that collection.

https://www.museumofplay.org/press-release/the-strong-national-museum-of-play-acquires-atari-home-computer-and-console-division-collection/

https://atarimuseum.ctrl-alt-rees.com/videogames/consoles/jaguar/jag2.html

I think the only difference between the Jaguar II and III was that the later was going to include the CD drive built-in.

BBL, time for a 16 mile bike ride.

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, I made it back alive.

[eager vine]

Is it still recommended to disable CD to play carts?

[mental briar]

I think it defaults to it being disbaled

seems to work ok with it enabled

[silver vault]

I have a question, does VLM mode only work on dual RAM configurations? I'm on single RAM and when I load an audio .cdi file I only get the Jaguar CD splash screen but the VLM interface doesn't launch. Thanks

[gentle bobcat]

It works on both.

@silver vault - See the "Loading Audio CDs" section in the text available in the pinned items.

@silver vault - What audio CD file(s) are you trying?

@silver vault - After loading the audio .cdi file you have to reset the core or it doesn't work.

[silver vault]

Thanks for the reply, I followed the procedure and I also watched your video on youtube where you talk about the VLM and show how it works, but unfortunately every time I start a .cdi audio file (taken from the archive, there are two sets (VLM jaguar .cdi format) I took both, but all I get is only the startup screen but the interface that shows the player does not start.

[gentle bobcat]

@silver vault - After selecting the .cdi file, did you restart the core (not the MiSTer but the Jaguar core)?

Oh, and before you do that, maybe save the settings so the ones you had before resetting the core are the same ones you have after the reset.

[silver vault]

ok I understood why it didn't work I have to disable "quick cd" in the OSD if set to "yes" it doesn't work, thanks for the help and congratulations for your videos on VLM

[gentle bobcat]

Glad you got it working.

[silver vault]

Thanks again, I'm happy because VLM is everything I want from Jaguar 😄

[stone vault]

For anyone who may be intersted, Songbird Productions actually got back to me about Towers II Enhanced Edition being sold digitally. They said it's actually something they're looking into doing in the near future! So perhaps with a bit of luck, us Mister owners will be able to get ahold of this game and try it out!

[gentle bobcat]

Good to hear. If it is $25 or less, I might buy it but they need to also provide a PDF of the manual.

[stone vault]

Seeing as a physical is like $100 I bet a digital copy would sell for $50

[stone vault]

I also mentioned there are plenty of us Mister owners who don't own a Jaguar who would love to have the opportunity to play it.

[ashen spoke]

The moment he sells a rom, that game is getting pirated.

[stiff pebble]

It's not already being pirated?

[mental briar]

no

cart is copy protected

[stiff pebble]

Oh interesting, I wonder how many sales they actually made, I sorta assumed they'd released it on pc along side the jaguar release until I just looked into it

[radiant cradle]

i think a good solution is to not sell the game at all, if nobody has the game nobody can pirate it

[stiff pebble]

I'd be curious to know how many people bought it and actually played it and didn't just put it on the shelf for display

[ashen spoke]

By this point I just assume the majority

[stiff pebble]

I can't find any info about anyone actually playing it so safe that's a good assumption

[ashen spoke]

I’ve done that with the Namco collection for PS1.

[stiff pebble]

All my physical copies live in boxes these days and I can imagine the majority of people buying new retro games these days are the type to keep them sealed

[slender valley]

Not me. though I just bought the loose cart versions

[stiff pebble]

That's acceptable, I'd play them too at least once if they just loose carts

[slender valley]

Eh, I would probably play them if it was in a case too

I don't really think most random homebrew games would become something rare and expensive

Two of them were just games I backed on Kickstarter, Xenocrisis and Tanglewood

[stiff pebble]

Probably not but maybe in 50 years they'd be worth something 😛

[uneven cobalt]

There are a few posts about people playing it on Atari age and a few playthroughs on YouTube. I think it is probably one of their more popular releases as there aren’t really any other games in that style on the Jaguar.

[stiff pebble]

It looks neat but I don't have a jaguar so i'll never play it unless I can emulate it

[stone vault]

Sure, But there's gonna come a point (if it isn't there already) where you aren't gonna sell another physical copy for such a niche title on a niche platform, so if you can rake in a few extra sales at the end via some digital sales, why not?

[gentle bobcat]

It is "the only RPG on the Jaguar".

[mental briar]

, he said, waiting for applause

https://tenor.com/HoUr.gif

[wintry lynx]

Hey, just curious if anyone has gotten anywhere on the "connecting a Jag controller to the Mister" front? Is the only option still Reflex Adapt? Is SNAC 100% impossible due to the number of pins? Recently built a T2K Rotary Jag controller, and would love to be able to use it with my Mister. 🙂

[ashen spoke]

Nothing is 100% impossible when it comes to MiSTer but yeah, you need an adapter if you want to use a Jaguar controller on this core.

don’t expect that to change either

[mental briar]

Yeah, I think reflex (or maybe daemonbite) are going to be the only solutions here. Too many pins

reflex works great for original pads. the SNES NTT controller is also perfect for jaguar

[ashen spoke]

if you’re a mad lad, sure!!

[mental briar]

NTTs are pretty cheap still (I think)? You get a better controller for sure

[wintry lynx]

Modified Genesis controller could also work for Tempest 2000 specifically as it doesn’t need all of the buttons.

[mental briar]

yup yup

[wintry lynx]

But then I’d have to build one 😛

Might just do it with a Genesis mini controller that’s already got the USB wiring. Haven’t seen anyone rotary mod one of those, but I think it should work.

[mental briar]

if you have a 3D printer, you can just grab the GRS rotary controller and print an enclosure for it

Works good with t2k

[wintry lynx]

I do not have one currently. Really need to.

[mental briar]

my library will also print stuff, so that may be something worth looking at

[wintry lynx]

Another random q I had: so the Superstation One is able to read from discs. What are the chances of the Jaguar core being updated for that to work with VLM?

Have always wanted to properly play with Jag VLM, with real discs, but the prices for the Jag CD have gotten so insane. I’d consider one for $600 maybe, but $1300+++ is just a bit too steep. Haha. I did recently pay $350 for a fully working Atari Video Music tho 😛

I’d probably call an FPGA solution “good enough” if it could read physical discs.

[mental briar]

That's up to Taki. The MiSTer project, as a whole, isn't really interested in physical media as it is a bad preservation medium. But the core is open source, so Taki can write an update to support his super station dock - but he would need to be the one to do it.

You'd have to confirm with @gentle bobcat but I believe you can use cdi rips of your discs with VLM

[wintry lynx]

Makes sense. I agree that physical media is a bad preservation medium, but kinda make an exception on niche things like Jag VLM, as the whole deal there really is the experience of putting in a disc and seeing a light show.

Yeah, I think I’ve tried that. Seemed a bit finicky and didn’t have a ton of success. I’ll give it another shot at some point.

[mental briar]

oh totally. I'm not saying it's not worth doing, it's just not the thrust of the project

[wintry lynx]

100%

[mental briar]

@gentle bobcat is our resident VLM expert. I dunno if you have talked to them about it yet, but if not, they can probably straighten you out

[wintry lynx]

Meantime, I’ll continue my search for a mythical “for parts” Jag CD that I can fix up 😬😭

Recently got a for parts Sega CDX at an incredible deal, so you never know. Anything is possible.

[mental briar]

oh man, that's a good nab

I still can't believe jaguar stuff is as expensive as it is

it's like these people have never played jaguar before

[wintry lynx]

It’s just the rarity + YouTuber collector inflation.

I paid wayyyy too much for the Jag I currently have, but also didn’t flinch because T2K is my favorite game of all time.

[hidden siren]

Didnt know the Atari Video Music existed. Now we need an FPGA interpretation of it 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

In theory, someone could design and make a repro JagCD and get a reasonable return I'd expect. Then that'd help drop the prices of the dwendling original JagCD supply.

According to Taki, they haven't made any changes to the any of the cores to get physical CD playback to work. It is some Linux device manipulation or something. I don't know the specifics of it... but in theory, whatever it is, should work with Jaguar as well... to the best of my knowledge. Only Taki and his developer(s) can say for sure.

But yes, audio .cdi files work fine... and I have produced about 30 or so. DM me if you want samples.

[warm oasis]

What is Atari Video Music? Is that just the VLM player?

[wintry lynx]

I had no idea the Atari Video Music existed until I bumped into one for sale on FB Marketplace. Travelled several towns over to get it. It’s very cool, considering when it was made.

[wintry lynx]

To my knowledge, Atari Video Music is the first VLM ever. Was released I. 1977, exclusive to Sears I think. You plug audio through it, and it gives some neat visual feedback. Very primitive, but cool as hell. Pretty sure it was using essentially a 2600 chip to create visuals.

[warm oasis]

Oh, this thing, I forgot about this

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Video_Music

I wonder what the tech specs are, we may have all the parts.

[wintry lynx]

Yep! I keep mine connected to a little 9” Panasonic CRT that’s RF only.

[warm oasis]

That would be a really fun core if someone were to take it on, and it was well documented and doable, which presumably it is

Being from 1977 it can't be too complex under the hood

[wintry lynx]

Would be amazing if someone built an FPGA core for it. Seems like it wouldn’t be too hard. Just don’t think there is a ton of interest. About as obscure as it gets!

[warm oasis]

Kitrinx loves all things Jaguar and has run out of systems to make cores for

[wintry lynx]

If I had the means or know how, I would absolutely try to get a Jag CD repro into production. If you have any ideas on that front, let me know 😉

[warm oasis]

She will be very excited to read all about this system

[uncut atlas]

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

that said

[warm oasis]

"Custom IC: The "magic" happens on a custom chip designed by Atari and manufactured by American Microsystems, utilizing N-Type Metal Oxide Semiconductor (NMOS) logic."

Hmm, wonder if this chip is dumped/emulated/well documented

[wintry lynx]

https://ctrl-alt-rees.com/2020-11-26-pixelmusic-3000-modern-atari-video-music-clone-parallax.html

Was going to build one of these, but then decided to bite the bullet and just buy the one I found on Marketplace 😝

[warm oasis]

For what it is worth, AI suggesting that the custom Lucy chip is not dumped or die shotted or reverse engineered and remains a black box, and the emulators out there recreate the behaviour but aren't faithful/cycle accurate emulations of the chip and system. That is a shame nobody has cracked this Lucy chip.

[uncut atlas]

that's the name of the chip? Lucy?

[wintry lynx]

Interesting! Would someone need to donate an Atari Video Music to the cause? Or can the chip be sourced another way?

[warm oasis]

Apparently so

Which is pretty cute

How much do these things go for on eBay now? I suspect like everything else from that era, not long ago you could find them by the side of the road but now they go for an eye watering amount

[wintry lynx]

I paid $350 for mine by talking the guy who had it down from $450. Generally $450-whatever ridiculous prices is what they run.

[warm oasis]

That is a shame, but it could be worse. It isn't like trying to get any vintage Roland synth or drum machine

[wintry lynx]

I’d be willing to donate $ to the cause of getting one to be reverse engineered by someone. I’d chip in at least $100.

[warm oasis]

Maybe a dead unit could be got cheap and the chip sent off to be decapped if there was a genuine interest in getting this thing properly documented

Maybe keep an eye out for a dead unit, and see if Furrtek has any interest in decapping it (although not sure if he is out the game or not, messaging from him seems mixed there)

[uncut atlas]

buy a broken one and get furrtek to decap it or something

[hidden siren]

I can't find (yet) a refrence to that lucy name, so that could be ai halucynating, but I did find the OG manual here, which also includes a schematic. https://forums.atariage.com/topic/331279-atari-video-music-c-240/?do=findComment&comment=5026157

[wintry lynx]

I’ll start keeping an eye out.

[warm oasis]

Fucking AI...

[wintry lynx]

Anywhere that would be a good place to put the word out that we’re looking for one? Maybe someone would be willing to donate theirs. If mine didn’t work, I would in a heartbeat.

[dreamy hinge]

I've reached the point where I see 'moondandy + 'I asked AI' and i just go 'that's probably not correct'. AI enjoys lying to you it seems

[hidden siren]

Just disable it and only use it when you need a story generated with no relevance to truth ;p

[warm oasis]

It really does, it is depressing at this point

I thought they had got a handle on the hallucinations, but Grok just straight made up the chip being called Lucy, which is bizarre

It does sound like something Atari would do as well

[uncut atlas]

moondandy's custom prompt is probably "Keep me guessing, mate"

[dreamy hinge]

grok is this true

[hidden siren]

...which is why AI came up with it. ask a question, it looks at an answer with a high probability based on the input words. Its a RNG with a big table with probabilities , at it's core.

[uncut atlas]

why don't we just make it real

the c010280 is now named Lucy

[hidden siren]

retconned it 🙂

[warm oasis]

"Grok, I want to copy and paste something that makes me look stupid on the internet: give me the technical spec for...."

[uncut atlas]

but yes the behavior of lucy is only understood at a fairly high level. People emulate it decently but there's no netlist or schematic

also it's a useless piece of atari crap

[warm oasis]

I was going to suggest we just call it Lucy now as well, so this retconned origin story gets my vote

[uncut atlas]

a complete commercial failure

[hidden siren]

so you're saying you're attracted to this project, I see.

[warm oasis]

It was used in Devo and Daft Punk music videos

[hidden siren]

or... was it? :p

[warm oasis]

Hah!

[uncut atlas]

do not impugn my taste

[hidden siren]

I wasnt passing judgement, I was observing

[wintry lynx]

It was also used in an X-Files episode for one shot. Randomly saw it when I was rewatching the first season.

Can’t remember which episode it was, but I took a video. I was like “ok it’s apparently fate that I need to go get this thing.”

[hidden siren]

The diamond pattern visuals from Video Music appeared in an episode of The X-Files (Season 1 Episode 7, "Ghost in the Machine") as part of a video surveillance system.
according to wikipedia

[wintry lynx]

Ahh that’s right! I just knew the look immediately. Had been contemplating buying the Atari Video Music, was rewatching X-Files on a CRT, and saw those 1977 light machine visuals. It was the nudge I needed to go get it haha

[gentle bobcat]

I think it was made before Warner's bought Atari from Nolan.

It was like an analog huge pixel VLM

I watched Reese's video on it when it came out a while ago.

[wintry lynx]

There’s mine. Really need to get her set up again.

[hidden siren]

love the plexiglass for your mister. reminds me a bit of a high-end vinyl player or something 🙂

[wintry lynx]

Thanks! I got the idea from MachoNacho’s channel.

[tropic rock]

I make no promises but I did order a SS1 and dock.

[wintry lynx]

If VLM ever works with the Superstation 1 and dock, I’ll order one without question.

[gentle bobcat]

And now it's time for... crazy nonsense:
So, the Jaguar had one or two hardware bugs that really handycapped devleopers and reduced the performance of the Jaguar by ~20%... and (one of) the reason(s) the full potential of the Jaguar was never reached. Imagine a version of the Jag core that removes those bugs and then the software that exists, and source code for most Atari released games is available, being modified to eliminate the bug work-arounds and future homebrew games not having to bother with the bug stuff anymore.

[gentle bobcat]

@tropic rock - What color did you order? I have to wonder if they are going to have a preference/hierarchy when manufacturing the dock cases? "Oh, we are shipping the transparent blue dock... and later the black doc... but you'll have to wait for the grey one".

me is a grey case purchaser

[sacred blade]

Yeah, we are the unlucky ones, it seems

[tropic rock]

Despite having nothing to do with my nick, it matches my order.

[pure bridge]

Not crazy at all. I'd love to see a 'fixed' version of the chipset, if only to validate the Flare team's promises. There's something unpleasant about the "Atari lied about what the Jaguar could do" narrative.

[ashen spoke]

It’ll fix poor performance but it won’t fix bad design.

[pure bridge]

Which parts of the design were bad?

[ashen spoke]

Trevor McFur

like all of it lol

[pure bridge]

Ah, okay. Bad design of the games. You're right there.

[ashen spoke]

Yeah I don’t know anything about the hardware

Honestly didn’t even know it had issues

just seemed like an early 3D console and the perf was about expected imo

[slender valley]

Not even the names of it's two coprocessors?

[ashen spoke]

Abbott and Costello

Sorry it’s a cartoon, I forgot

Itchy and Scratchy

[radiant cradle]

yeah they're named after the famous cartoon characters

[ashen spoke]

is that from Fallout?

[radiant cradle]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKzpIgqzVrk

its a real 1930s series of cartoons

[slender valley]

What is wrong with that guy's eyes at 2:00?

[radiant cradle]

its an animation effect invented by drunk animators

it appears quite frequently in the output of the van beuren studio

you see you can do this because this is an animated cartoon where you can do effects like this because its not real life

[slender valley]

I meant is that even supposed to be on purpose, looks like some kind of animation mistake or something

[radiant cradle]

its on purpose yes

[gentle bobcat]

If you like that cartoon, you'll like the film, "100 Beavers" I think it is. That movie is a trip.

Err... make that "Hundreds of Beavers":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h4P-26kHAw&pp=ygUTMTAwIGJlYXZlcnMgdHJhaWxlcg%3D%3D

It was totally made with Jaguars. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[frosty oracle]

I really do not like how the Atari Jaguar doesn’t have a dust protector for its cartridge slot.

I had to do some dusting the other day

Won’t be a problem soon as it will be in storage

[gentle bobcat]

What? You don't have a dust cover for your whole Jaguar unit? j/k I occasionally see faculty who put those plastic form fitting tent like see through covers on their monitor and keyboards.

IBM didn' t know how to make dust covers.

[uneven cobalt]

Yeah, at least there are a ton of third party options. I used one from Stone Age gamers before I got my JagCD. Now I keep the memorytrak in the slot since it is super finicky to get it to read once you mess with it.

[frosty oracle]

It will be going into a tub at some point.

Unfortunately it doesn’t get used at all. And if I wanted to play some JAG, I’d go with the mister

[gentle bobcat]

Mortal Kombat from Tru Fun Games has been updated to Beta v1.1 and which provides the fix for PAL users.

@shadow topaz - You be testing, you be testing, yeah.

[gentle bobcat]

@shadow topaz - Well, he only mentions fixing the placement on the screen where in PAL mode the bottom 24 pixels were chopped off. He totally has that fixed, so I mentioned the issue with the opponents not facing the right way (in some later levels) and Goro not being pulled by the rope and referred him to your video. Maybe Goro is so strong he just isn't pullable?

[plain rivet]

Wasn't sure where to post this, but this page was suggested... I have a SuoerStation One (Black), and am going through the cores one by one.... Everythingvworks great, except that all Atari systems, even up to Jaguar, only appear as black and white through the analog outputs... Literally the only cores I can observe this issue with... Highly doubt anyone can help... Just thought it should be known... 👍

[tranquil cape]

Jag core worked fine for me on my CRT with the Super Station. Did you run update_all?

I streamed it a little yesterday too:

[ashen spoke]

It could be your TV or whatever device/cable you’re using to hook up via CRT. Either way it sounds like a hardware issue. RetroRemake can only solve that for you.

[gentle bobcat]

@plain rivet - So some other cores, without changing anything, are coming out properly in color?

[mental briar]

@plain rivet How are you hooked up?

[tranquil cape]

Can confirm that the 2600/7800 and 5200 cores have no color with the Super Station over YC. For the Super Station, it could have something to do with the "vga_mode=subcarrier" for the 7800 core. 5200 has no analog color on my other MiSTers either though over YC, so there could be issue with YC on that core.

Component video DOES output color for these cores on the Super Station.

Jaguar works fine for me no matter the output.

[mental briar]

Rgb should work on those cores too with subcarrier

[tranquil cape]

okie dokie - we can move that conversation to the right spot then.
Not sure about his jaguar issue though.

[mental briar]

Thanks for testing so much today.

[sour pawn]

for those of you that already have your superstation did it come with the console mode script that he showed on his youtube channel if so could someone send it to me I have yet to receive mine but would like to try it out on my out mister

[mental briar]

it has not shipped yet

[hidden siren]

I have a vague recollection from back in the days that ntsc on pal crts which don't support it or the other way around could result in BW pictures, but I don't know if there's any truth to that memory and if it is relevant here

[gentle bobcat]

Speaking of NTSC and PAL, the video Tru Fun Games did showing the PAL fixes for the Mortal Kombat beta v1.1 has been publicly released on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oqaL4g7GHM

Here's a guy that recently got his SuperStation One and he unboxes it and supposedly will be showing the out-of-box experience with the microSD card they ship. Does it have the Jaguar core preloaded???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuoOBbe_wco

He gets it onscreen at 16:45

And no, the Jaguar core is not pre-installed... I assume because it is still w-i-p and not provided by the stock update script.

[keen zealot]

Yep.

[slender valley]

I am guessing that fancy new UI is going to take a while to be released?

[ashen spoke]

[stiff pebble]

When mars comes out

Was the fancy UI just proof of concept when it was teased? It looked ready to go from what I could tell

[gentle bobcat]

Interview with the founder of Songbird Productions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzMAeNrDg8A

[frosty oracle]

@slender valley (Replying to you both). It seems like Taki's Console Mode UI is currently being beta tested by users. Taki asked in his discord for people to beta test, and i guess they are doing that now?

[ashen spoke]

https://tenor.com/view/llamas-with-hats-carl-gif-11198275

[shadow topaz]

hehe, Goro is strong but not strong enough.
It was Beta 1.1 that I tested, the video from Tru Fun Games came later.
I presume he wanted to see the first impressions from the PAL console owners for the screen fix.

[gentle bobcat]

@Robby - I prefer The Walking Dead compilation of Rick Grimes saying, "Carl".

[queen jetty]

Are you supposed to get a red screen when launching the core?

https://images.archbee.com/9EnOacbhz7Zqgrsars4GT/gtZ-GpdkWJJJFv2to51xw_jaguar-rsb.jpg?format=webp

Can’t seem to launch any games, I have the correct bios files and the most up to date core

[mental briar]

yes, the red screen is normal

what happens when you try to launch a game?

[queen jetty]

The bios screen just repeats

I could only find rom files, idk if you need jag or something else

[warm oasis]

Did you use the update all with the BIOS DB to grab the required BIOS files? Do you know what ROM set you are trying, and what .rbf are you using?

[queen jetty]

Used a zip someone posted in the pins for the BIOS files

Jaguar_ReworkDual_20251215.rbf

I get my ROMs from Myrient, usually. Does a specific romset need to be used?

[mental briar]

on myrient, search for htgdb

and use those roms

[warm oasis]

Do you definitely have a dual ram set up?

[queen jetty]

Ah, I got the bios files from you, haha, didn't notice

[queen jetty]

yeah

[warm oasis]

Cool, it is likely the ROMs then. Grab the HTGDB pack and you should (hopefully) be fine

[queen jetty]

gotcha

[warm oasis]

They should be on a certain well known archive site

[queen jetty]

Downloading the zip now

[warm oasis]

I would unzip everything if they are zipped to be on the safe side

[queen jetty]

Didn't know you could even launch from zip

I remember having issues with PS1 chd files, so that must be similar

[mental briar]

cd files you cannot launch from zip, but roms you can

[queen jetty]

Yep, it was definitely the rom

Works now, thx

[gentle bobcat]

Looking Back at the Jaguar CD:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gjSJxpB6PE

[ancient thistle]

Controller acquired. Got some of those inserts on recommendation, too.

Anyone know how often MiSTer Addons restocks? The Reflex Adapt is out of stock which is the last holdup to playing some Jaguar games.

[mental briar]

I have it on good authority that it's soon

he just posted about v2 features in the discord

[ancient thistle]

🙏

[ancient thistle]

Welp, bad news, the A button sticks on this controller. Likely the membrane has been eaten through.

[mental briar]

like physically? it may just need to be cleaned

[ancient thistle]

Yeah, if I press it in it just sinks into the controller casing and doesn't spring back out.

[mental briar]

could just be sticky. I'd open it up. Was it from ebay?

NOS?

[ancient thistle]

Ebay. interestingly, got it open now and it seems clean

membrane isn't chewed through

[mental briar]

cleaning solution making it tacky maybe?

[ancient thistle]

maybe, gonna clean it here and see if it helps

might've been something on the button itself

clicks in fine now, though not quite as good as B and C. Should work though. Weird. Usually when I've had that happen it's been a pad that's been cut from overuse. Which would suck because I'm not really finding any replacement membranes online (niche system and all, suppose that's natural.)

Anyway, at least I'm familiar with the innards of a Jag controller now... and it's unique scent. Ah... that musty old electronics smell...

[mental briar]

my NTT data controllers smell faintly of cigarettes

just as tokyo intended

[dusk slate]

He said the other day that Reflex Adapts should be back in stock in a few weeks.

#1056040100141735986 message

[high venture]

New and improved V2 seems great. No more limits on controller profiles and auto-detect. Only problem is if I buy if I'm gonna hoard more controllers. Version 1 with a limit might be better for me. 😂

[mental briar]

#1082669321555279952 message

I wonder if this forward will work

oh it does

computers....magic

[ancient thistle]

I'll admit, I haven't ventured much outside this channel and didn't realize they talked about it on the server already. Glad to hear it, though, especially that it will be a second version. Seems I picked a good time to start shopping for one.

[ancient thistle]

The white coloration of the boards makes these look really sleek.

[high venture]

Superstation showed the way ☺️

[ancient thistle]

For real, almost made me regret getting a grey over a blue lol

[high venture]

I struggled up until the very last second on what color to get. I was actually going to go grey too for that classic look but then when I was ordering I was like "you know what? Transparent blue is fun." I thought I had a matching Dual Shock somewhere in my closet but it has gone missing over the decades. Rats.

[gentle bobcat]

There were colors? Seriously though, from trying to get in on the MiSTer Pi orders I was suffering from shell shock... so I was just trying to order as fast as possible and whatever the default was is what I got. 🙂

[slender valley]

Yeah, same here after all the previous Pis sold out in minutes... but by the time I did my order it was in stock for almost a week

I also was rushing because it was the last model to have removable RAM, didn't like that it would be soldered in in the future

[gentle bobcat]

This thing looks sweet, but it remains to be seen if there are enough pins in the 50 pin connector to make a workable Jaguar cart adapter:

[ashen spoke]

It’s so wide, it’s like the MiSTerGrafx-16

[mental briar]

I'm going to hold (all of) your hand(s) when I say this: we need to be done with physical media. It's not great for preservation. Stop fetishizing and just download the dang game

[ivory basin]

https://tenor.com/view/eric-andre-controversial-yet-so-brave-controversial-brave-gif-12046682

[ancient thistle]

I prefer a mix of both.

Punching carts into consoles and playing on CRTs won't last forever though so that's why I got a 4TB full of uh... games I definitely obtained legally!

[ashen spoke]

@mental briar is playing you fools like a fiddle. The long game is convincing all y’all to stop buying retro games so he can come in and scoop em all at a discount.

[ancient thistle]

... Now that's a Gribble of an idea.

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - I agree. I have absolutely no plans of buying additional physical media... but I have quite a bit of GB, GBC, and GBA carts my son bought back in the day when they were new... and of course, I have about 18 Jaguar carts. And since everyone agrees with you, they won't buy them from me if I try to sell them. I guess I could put them all in a landfill. 🙂

Except for, perhaps... any physical media that isn't currently available as ROM files... with the purpose of getting it ripped.

Except of course that we are all 100% totally legit and we only play rom files that we have physical media of.

[ancient thistle]

No it's fine, all these ROMs fell off the back of a truck.

[gentle bobcat]

I often buy a lot of things I don't use. I mean, I have the analog Multisystem 2 and I don't have any analog displays handy.

[ancient thistle]

I agree though, digital backups (and piracy, frankly) is a central pillar to preservation. I think there's value in keeping the original media going as long as possible but that's all gonna rot one day. I will too, because I'm also not built to last, so I just stick to what I enjoy the most, personally.

[ashen spoke]

I’m reporting y’all

[ancient thistle]

shit, scramble!

[gentle bobcat]

I'm waiting for A.I. and robots to be able to suck my personality and memory into a digital repository and preserve me. I don't care too much about my body. And then, hopefully they can upload me into a body replacement of some sort.

[ancient thistle]

Buying a real Jag in the future and cratering my bank account so much I don't get in on the digital Noah's Ark that keeps humanity going.

[ashen spoke]

It’s funny that a non-insignificant part of a lot of game companies revenue stream these days is selling old games. Which was made possible because of piracy and software emulation.

[gentle bobcat]

Here here.

I want my Multisystem 2 to have so much expansion, that it can be a drydock aircraft carrier.

[ashen spoke]

I don’t dislike it lol. It’s kinda cool.

[ancient thistle]

I've been thinking about completing the Tower of Power so I get it.

If only the Power Base Mini worked with the 32X, I could build something truly obscene.

[shut night]

And more connections than a tower of power too

[slender valley]

It's like upgrading your ship in a SHMUP

I do wish it was more common for people to put that screen on their misters though, almost no setup supports it even as an option. I think it would be cool to be able to display coverart of the currently running game and/or stats on it

[ashen spoke]

Most people aren’t interested in it because of what I assume to be a lot of manual labor setting it up to display the correct images.

I think the core stuff can be automated but not the games

[slender valley]

I can't imagine it would be too hard to automate that, just about any ODE has a database of cover/disk art that you can automate the downloading of, many times from the ODE itself if the console had online connectability

[ashen spoke]

You’re an ODE

[slender valley]

To Joy

[ashen spoke]

damn well played lol

[gentle bobcat]

Is there a difference between a "SNAC" port and a "SNAC / User Port"... or are they the same thing?

Anyone familiar with this? https://bliss-box.com/products/gamer-pro-advanced and if it'll work with a Jaguar controller? I have someone asking me who would prefer to get a Reflex Adapt but was scared away by the "Out of stock" label... but I mentioned they should be restocked fairly soon with a "Reflex Adapt 2" which is improved.

[mental briar]

it looks like reflex adapts are imminent. RA2s can support dual jaguar controllers

Pork posted a picture of a stack of RA2 PCBs - waiting to be cased and listed. I think the last hurdle is firmware

[gentle bobcat]

Asking for a friend. 🙂

Seriously though, I've been emailing with Shinto from the Jaguar Game by Game podcast and I'm going to send him a single-RAM MiSTer and a dual-RAM MiSTer... with the goal being him setting those both of those up next to a real Jaguar w/gamedrive (and probably also BigPEmu) to put everything through the paces... and make a podcast episode about it. No real timetable on that but probably several months. He says he has communicated with quite a few listeners who used to have Jaguars but are now wanting them back again... who want to avoid the vastly overpriced used Jaguar hardware situation hoping that the MiSTer is a suitable substitute. I think it is.

He also believes that being able to use an original Jaguar controller is a must... so that part of the cost is unavoidable. I think a RA2 with dual-jag controller support is a significant plus.

Lets hope the Jaguar adapter supply for the RA doesn't dry up quickly.

I currently only have one... and yes, you don't have to remind me you (TheJesusFish) have two.

[mental briar]

In case I make a friend

[slender valley]

If I'm understanding right, reflex adapters are a very low-latency sort of modular/universal USB controller adapters right? But they are not SNAC and still essentially a USB adapter?

[gentle bobcat]

Yes. It also works with Windows and maybe Linux?

In the case of the Jaguar controller, that can't do SNAC because it has too many pins... and the Reflex Adapt is the best way I know of to make it work.

[mental briar]

yeah. they are basically classic > usb and with mister's 1000hz polling, they are like 1.5ms of latency?

[slender valley]

Jaguar can't do SNAC at all? Not even just 1 player?

[gentle bobcat]

That is correct.

[slender valley]

Hmm.... trying to find a pinout of jaguar controllers, seems like not all the pins were used? Espcially with standard controllers?

[gentle bobcat]

Kitrinx and GreyRogue doth declare it is impossible... and they know what they are talkng about.

[slender valley]

... did you just thumbs up yourself?

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, by accident. I'm layig in bed and typing sideways and couldn't figure out how to delete it.

[slender valley]

Man, why is it so hard to find pinouts of things

[low dome]

Wished the new beta (v1.1) of Mortal Kombat works on this core, apperantly the author of the rom only makes it work on gamedrive. 😞

[gentle bobcat]

@low dome - It also works on BigPEmu. Tru Fun Games says they'll open it up to everything once it is done. I too have asked him to let it work on the MiSTer but he has kept saying no. I'm hoping it is released publicly in the not-too-distant-future aka real-soon-now so this problem will go away.

[tropic rock]

I did not remember ruling it out before, but (not including vcc and gnd) it definitely requires 9 pins (10 if you want to pause).

[gentle bobcat]

@tropic rock - I got the Jaguar-cant-do-SNAC tatoo like 14 months ago. What are you talking about you never ruled it out?!?

[tropic rock]

I said I did not remember. That does not mean I did not do it.

The way they are spread out makes it impossible to even just skip the numpad to get a reduced functionality version with fewer pins.

[gentle bobcat]

As a fellow person with a bad memory, I understand.

[slender valley]

I used to have bad memory too, I got G.Skill to replace it since it was still under warranty

[gentle bobcat]

Ho hum, all the "Cybers" have been telling me that.

[mental briar]

How many pins can snac do?

Because pausing is for cowards, let's go

[tropic rock]

It maxes at genesis if I remember correctly, which is 7 not including vcc and gnd.

[slender valley]

I thought it was 9?

Oh, not including vcc and gorund, nevermind

[mental briar]

ok, no pause, and I'm willing to give up * and #as well. Desperate times

[slender valley]

Hmm, are the vcc and ground required to be connected to the fpga? Could one make a SNAC adapter that uses all 9 pins for data and a second normal usb port for power?

[mental briar]

oh wait, the keypad is one pin

[tropic rock]

You could always do it with unused alt-sd card pins but nothing standard MiSTer supports. I guess you might be able to do it with a mux chip as well. ie Assume only one of b0,b1,j8,j9,j10,j11 is active at a time and use three lines to generate those 6. Not sure that would work in all cases. Edit: I have this backwards. Those 6 are inputs. The other 4 are selects.

[slender valley]

I remember suggesting those pins could be repurposed but was rebuked that the second sd slot must not be removed... even though almost nothing uses it and iirc nothing NEEDS it anymore

My Mister Pi dosen't even have those pins populated with a microsd slot, nor does the casing have a cutout for it

[mental briar]

I guess you will not be able to take advantage of Puu's latest PC88 core which they just added 2nd SDCard support to......in 2026

[slender valley]

.. what does it do?

I thought the point of that slot was back when some PC cores needed to directly access it as a raw storage device for hdds, but that pretty much all of them support hdd images now?

[mental briar]

Puu kind of colors outside the lines. They don't use github, they don't upstream community changes. They just...do

So I have no idea why they added 2nd SDCard support to the PC88 core (PC98? one of those), but here we are

[slender valley]

Does it need the slot for anything it can't do any other way? Or is it just a second way of doing something?

How many pins are even used in the second sd slot? I know it was not all of them, I think it was like 4-5?

[tropic rock]

Best I can see to get down to 7 would be to drop j3 and b0 and maybe you could nand j0 and j1 to generate j2. That would lose pause, option, 3, 6, 9 and '#'

or maybe mux 2 lines to get j0-j3. That would just lose pause.

[gentle bobcat]

I used the word "impossible" and I take it, ya'll don't like that word. 🙂

[low dome]

I recently tried it on BigPEmu, it just gives me a black screen

[gentle bobcat]

Worked for me.

Although I think it was Beta 1.0 but I don't know why that would matter.

[low dome]

did you do anything different? I just load up beta 1.1.....ok, let me try that version

[gentle bobcat]

Anything different? I'd love to.

[low dome]

Beta 1.0 shows black screen for me

I'm on BigPEmu v1.21

[warm oasis]

It is his FM Towns core he did that to, thankfully PC-88 was long ago ported over to Main by Alan and other sane people, so it is free of 2nd SD card nonsense

[shadow topaz]

You need to enable Gamedrive emulation
System - Settings - force JGD emulation

[mental briar]

oh right right.

[slender valley]

That word used to be thrown around a lot in regards to Gen 5 systems on the mister

[cold idol]

ok dumb question time

is there an easy way to determine from a physical inspection whether my MiSTer is the single or dual SDRAM model? I have an SDRAM module plugged in on top, and am not aware of a second place to attach a second module.

on my particular stack

[gentle bobcat]

@cold idol - So, there are a row of pins on both sides of the DE10-Nano (or clone) board. One side is typically used for the RAM and the other to attach an I/O board. If you have an I/O board plugged in, then you can't have dual-RAM. If you don't and you have a RAM board plugged into both sices, it's dual RAM.

[cold idol]

OK then, I think I have the I/O board attached

I'll check real quick. Thanks.

[gentle bobcat]

MiSTer Pi has a split I/O board where you can remove the smaller piece of it to expose those pins and plug in a second RAM board. You have a three board sandwich? Or something else.

[cold idol]

Yes I have the I/O board, so single-SDRAM is my option

I have a three board sandwich, yes

[gentle bobcat]

Yep.

[cold idol]

with the analog board

I have a standard MiSTer FPGA, unfortunately not a MiSTer Pi. I'm gonna be recommending the MPi to my friends, though. 🙂

Thanks for helping me check this!

I want to try out the Jaguar core. I have a Jaguar, but some games are just so bloody hard to obtain physically now

some games are down right unobtanium

[gentle bobcat]

I feel you there.

[cold idol]

two games I really want but never have been able to afford

Tempest 2000 and the Rayman release for Jaguar

[gentle bobcat]

It it isn't a newer game currently in the retail pipeline, in my opinion, no one gets hurt by using downloaded ROM files.

[cold idol]

I just wish I could get some real money to the original developers in exchange. Too bad that's impossible now.

[gentle bobcat]

I have both of the carts you mentioned among the 18 or so I bought back in the day.

No original box nor manuals though.

[cold idol]

too bad my finances wouldn't allow me to buy them from you.

[gentle bobcat]

They aren't really for sale but I don't think I'd miss them a whole lot since I primarily use the MiSTer these days... and I also have a GameDrive cart.

[cold idol]

that point as well.

[grizzled mantle]

I bought both of those new at KB Toys for $5.00 USD each back in 1997. Kept them in mint condition till 2018ish. Sold off most of my collection right before the bit Covid Price surges. sigh

[gentle bobcat]

TheJesusFish was sort of ranting yesterday about how the pursuit of physical media was stupid. I paraphrase.

[grizzled mantle]

Was a good year, you could get a complete NEW Jag for $29.99 and all games were $5 each at KB in upstate new york. Same time frame I got a 3DO for $99 and several games for $5 each at a Walmart in the same area.

Having a Physical collection was amazing, until it was time to move.

[cold idol]

Yeah, I hear ya there. Especially with computers that have specialized monitors or peripherals.

Especially when things like the specialized monitors are downright impossible to locate in real life, let alone purchase.

I am still salty at my dad for not letting me retrieve a big haul of big box PC games I acquired at a used electronics store in Virginia just before I moved away and had stored at my local hackerspace

[grizzled mantle]

Yeah, I sold everthing, then discovered MiSTer and developed a bad Controller and CRT habit. You think you're free and then it sucks you back in.

[grizzled mantle]

I'm still salty at an EX-wife that insisted we get rid of the 36" VGA monitor in favor of a LCD tv.

[cold idol]

That you can replace easier.

[grizzled mantle]

LOL

[cold idol]

Was yours a SOG SGI monitor?

I had the same thing happen to a 21" SGI SoG CRT monitor

that came with an SGI Indigo2 IMPACT

[grizzled mantle]

No, crappy Gateway 2000 Destination monitor. Had to have it repaired within 3 years of purchase, but when it worked it was beauiful, especially with Neo Geo (via NeoRageX emulation back in the day)

[cold idol]

and an Amiga 1084 monitor

now the Amiga monitor I can't find a replacement

[grizzled mantle]

Ooh, yeah SGI stuff was nice. I had a couple Indy's I picked up an auction and used them on a NeXT monitor for a short while.

[cold idol]

luckily i was able to purchase an OSSC and wing an alternative

[gentle bobcat]

Hey, it's "Liberation Day". Supreme Court said no to tariffs. In theory, we'll all get our money back for any tariffs we've paid.

[cold idol]

Good luck on that.

I don't want to make this server political, but I have some words. I just won't share them right now.

[gentle bobcat]

Feel free to PM me. 😉

[uncut atlas]

this is a jaguar game that only runs on two closed source emulators?

[warm oasis]

Yeah, he added some DRM thing for the flashcard that emulators had to implement to play. Apparently he will remove it from the ROM at some point in the future.

I still think it is pretty rum to add drm to a port of a copyrighted game, it isn't like it is his own intellectual property.

[low dome]

It works on the emulator BigPEmu, as long as Force JDG Emulation is Enabled.

[uncut atlas]

GD is what?

[low dome]

Game Drive:

[uncut atlas]

I thought the core supported gdlock

maybe im confused

where does one get this MK beta?

[mental briar]

Kit smells a challenge

[low dome]

https://www.patreon.com/c/TRUFUNGames/home?vanity=TRUFUNGames

[uncut atlas]

I'm not paying for an atari game 😐

[gentle bobcat]

I can post it somewhere for you. Just a sec.

[sterile moss]

Cheers 👍

[warm oasis]

Would be funny if we also just implement what is needed to bypass this drm

[slender valley]

GameDrive is basically an Everdrive for the Jaguar right? So it's checking for something in it's hardware that would not be present on a "normal" cart if loaded as a rom?

I really don't get what the point of this DRM even is. So it's specifically designed TO be used with Everdrive-like carts (Usually a homebrew would attempt to prevent itself from working on those) AND it was even supported in pretty much the only viable current Jaguar emulator... but locks out mister? Why?

That's like if you intentionally made a PC game that will only run if it detects it's on a HDD or SDD, but refuse to run on a ramdrive.

[mental briar]

they may have wanted to make sure it worked on real hardware and didn't want bug reports from emulators and mister users

[slender valley]

Again, it works on emulators

[mental briar]

Yes, but because the emulators are emulating a chip on the game drive, not the jaguar

[slender valley]

Yes I know, but my point is it's pretty silly protection since it's pretty much not protecting it from the two most common ways people would play it

[mental briar]

You pull the levers you have.

[warm oasis]

At this point what can you not play it on? If I understand right you can play it on real hardware using the only flash drive. You can play it on two software emulator? So is MiSTer core the only thing it doesn't work on?

In which case, what is the point of him adding this "DRM" that he plans to remove anyway?

[mental briar]

You pull the levers you have. Just because it can be circumvented doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. I have no idea why he implemented it, but if it was because he wanted to limit bug reports to real hardware, he pulled the lever he had

iirc, that restriction only exists for the beta. I believe the plan is to remove it eventually

Dowdle can correct me on that

[warm oasis]

I suppose at the time he implemented it, it didn't run on software emulators so presumably that was his intention there, but it was quickly circumvented

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, when it is "done" the limit will be removed and it will be freely released.

Jut got a Patreon email from him today. Let's see what it says.

He made a mock-up trailer of screenshots saying Mortal Kombat II was coming in 2028.

So, he said while there is still plenty do do with the beta, What's Next? MKII.

[warm oasis]

Wait, he needs two more years to get what he has releasable?

[mental briar]

No, I think mk2 is the next project

[warm oasis]

Oh sorry, I thought this was MKII he had done already

[mental briar]

Hopefully it means mk1 is close to done. Did they give any indication as to how close it was @gentle bobcat ?

Other than “plenty still to do”?

[gentle bobcat]

Not really. It is "real close" I guess. But I get the feeling that he wants to drag it out as long as possible for the Patreon money. I don't really have any data to support that. He probably just has a much higher quality standard than I do.

I'll ask and see if he responds as to when the target done date might be.

[slender valley]

https://tenor.com/view/emperors-new-groove-why-lever-complaining-gif-3500175

I mean. It doesn't protect against using it in a software emulator, it doesn't protect against using it in a flashcart.... does what it "protect"? People using it on MiSTer has got to be the smallest market out of anyone who would play it

[slender valley]

IIRC, the MiSTer core and I guess if you were to burn your own ROM chips to make your own cart? That's about it. (I think the dev even said what software emulators would need to do to add compatibility)

And yeah, it's supposedly getting removed when it's public, but my question is why even have it when it dosen't do anything.

[mental briar]

I think you’re missing the point. It protects against everything until the emulation is implemented. It wouldn’t protect against mister either if grey or kit were interested in implementing the emulation.

But it’s the lever they had to pull to minimize the reports coming from non hardware folks (assuming that was the goal).

[slender valley]

... but woulden't they still get software emulator reports then?

[mental briar]

Ok, let me try it this way: if you wanted to limit the reports you got from non-hardware users, what would you do?

[dreamy hinge]

license my code under CC-ND and then throw shitfits on the internet when I got too many bug reports from emulators

[mental briar]

That’s a lever

[slender valley]

Multiple ways:

1. Have a disclaimer on the bug report forum that you are only accepting reports from people who played it on real hardware
2. Instead of #1 have a mandatory field where you list what you played it on, without telling people why, and just silently ignore reports that were not played on a GameDrive?
3. Not tell software emulators EXACTLY how to make the game work on the emulator any bypass the check????

[mental briar]

Well I guess you should build software then.

They chose a different lever, it would seem

[slender valley]

https://tenor.com/view/mash-button-buttonmash-spaceman-orange-panic-gif-19351939

Me programming on FPGA...

[gentle bobcat]

As previously mentioned, when the limit was added (I believe this to be true), it didn't work in emulators... until later when those emulators added the thing that satisfied the limit... so it was more restrictive when it first came out. I don't think it was bug reports he was trying to avoid... but for whatever reason, he was trying to reward those using original Jaguar hardware. If the Jaguar core was marked as done and everyone got it with update_all... I think that in one week, the number of MiSTer users with the Jaguar core would surpass the number of users still using original Jaguar hardware. I don't know how many users BigPEmu has but I'd be surprised if it surpased the number of MiSTer owners.

How may MiSTer FPGA owners are there? Anyone care to guess? Maybe web server logs from update_all (when it upgrades itself) could give a good idea of how many there are. My guess is 200,000.

I'd like us to get a plan together to see what needs to be done for the Jaguar core to be done... and everyone help out in whatever way they can... with the bulk of the burden obviously being on GreyRogue... but there have been a few people who have patched it to eliminate some extraneous menu options.

[mental briar]

Art is never finished, only abandoned

[gentle bobcat]

By finished I mean, part of update_all. What would that status be?

(where you don't have to manually download it from a pinned item link in Discord)

There were somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 Jaguars manufactured. I've seen both numbers so I'm not sure which is correct. I think about 150,000 of them sold at Atari dictated MSRP... and then the remaining stock (50,000) sold at close-out discounts which some have said were as low as $10 or $5. There were only 20,000 JagCDs made. I'm of a mind that there are more MiSTer systems in the world today than Jaguars in its heyday (if it even had one).

And anyone wanting to acquire a Jaguar now, would be best served by getting a MiSTer. I wonder how many of those folks there might be? A few hundred? But then again, most people who want the original hardware, likely want it for putting on a shelf or behind glass... rather than actually using it and playing games.

[gentle bobcat]

I asked if Mortal Kombat was "days, weeks or months" away, and the answer was:
"Months, but I’ll have periodic releases along the way as we get closer and closer to being done"

[tropic rock]

I would assume a primary goal of adding drm would be to prevent bootleggers from making carts with beta code.

As far as official builds it could probably be done now. It seems I am forever one or two features away from what I want. I am fairly pessimistic I can improve single ram much more on the current hardware.

I also have not found frequent combinations of time and motivation to make progress with the current improvement. (which no one will probably use anyway - CD-G support is mostly coded now...)

[humble bluff]

@tropic rock Did you finish up Memtrack saving and loading from SD?

[gentle bobcat]

@tropic rock - "could probably be done now". Glad to hear you feel that way. Make it so number 1. Anything else you want to add can just be an update. I think more folks, who might not come here to get it, wanna try it out. That's just my opinion, so feel free to ignore me if desired.

[tropic rock]

No.

[stone vault]

That's kinda skeezy I think. To milk people for Patreon money to port a game that other people made. That's a hell of a legal grey area I would imagine

[gentle bobcat]

@stone vault - The final game is free-for-all.

[stone vault]

Yes because he can't legally sell it

So the Patreon while it's in development is the loophole to that

[warm oasis]

It would be really nice to get to a point where it was releasable, if more fixes and improvements could come later. Kconger has his PR that needs to be merged in and Kitrinx has some clean up and things she wants to do when the code is ready. Will be exciting to see this go live after all these years. 🙂

[uncut atlas]

I'm sort of waiting for @tropic rock to give me the thumbs up to do any major cleanup and tidying and simplification of options for a proper release

[warm oasis]

That would be nice to see

For the CD+G work you were going GR, are there dumps in the wild with subdata included you have been using, or is it your own dumps?

The one thing I really wish we had was a collection of all CD+G discs in a unified format, which I don't think exists. It is really annoying Redump doesn't support the subdata.

[dreamy hinge]

the whole CD+G thing is a mess. there are basically two dump formats and they're hard to get in general

[warm oasis]

It does feel like someone needs to pick a standard, emulators support it, and people with the discs dump them the right way and a pack is made. I don't get why seemingly every other format of disc media has this sorted but not CD+G. It is really odd.

[dreamy hinge]

the problem is the people with the discs probably don't have the hardware to reliably dump it

[uncut atlas]

I mean, can we just make up our own format where we use bin/cue and just throw the cd+g at the end and add it to the cue?

[dreamy hinge]

you'd still be relying on existing dumps which aren't consistent

[uncut atlas]

how many games could there possibly be for this

zakk I want you to make up a good format and implement it please and we'll get the people here to convert everything for us

[dreamy hinge]

there's a variety of 'is it all the subchannel data or just a subset' and interleaves vs not etc etc

and then the whole 'the dump is actually bullshit but there's no way to tell'

[uncut atlas]

I believe in you

[dreamy hinge]

if we were doing custom formats for the mister I'd have fixed the saturn index 02+ thing a year ago 😉

[uncut atlas]

we have an army of fans here

we can do it

[dreamy hinge]

I prefer an army of me

(if you complain once more....)

[tropic rock]

I bought the cheapest cdg on ebay I could find a couple weeks ago and dumped it.

[dreamy hinge]

proper subcode/channel dumps require multiple dumps possibly from multiple devices

[mental briar]

Someone said index 02 and I’m here

[warm oasis]

A lot of the more desirable discs are really cheap, like here is the Jimi Hendrix one and lots of copies for $5. There are other pressings as well in other countries of similar prices.

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/2081199

[uncut atlas]

if you make it, they will come

do it zakk

free us from this subchannel hell

[dreamy hinge]

'go find .sub files and make main read them' there I fixed it

[warm oasis]

If someone with the right drive got a few and dumped them a certain way and started the ball rolling, then I am sure others could join and people could mail discs to be dumped. I did this for Redump, all it cost me was a second class stamp there and one back.

Will cc in @sage rune who has a few and implemented it into PCE

[uncut atlas]

wait are there really only 13 jag cd games?

[warm oasis]

Srg320 also added support to Mega CD

[tropic rock]

Short explanation of formats and reasons: mp3+cdg keeps the cdg in a separate file. It also has the data not-interleaved to make processing it easier. The dump I did is the exact opposite. It is interspersed with the audio data and the data is interleaved as it is exactly how it appears on the disc. Note this is for cdg audio discs. There are no cdg games.

[warm oasis]

But for both cores that support CD+G I have no idea how to find any dumps that work

[tropic rock]

ie this is for vlm

[uncut atlas]

what is the cd+g for in the games?

[warm oasis]

It isn't a game format

[tropic rock]

there are no cdg games to my knowledge

[uncut atlas]

???

then how is this relevant?

[dreamy hinge]

it's basically 'drawing shitty graphics while audio cds play' thing

[tropic rock]

vlm is the visualizer for audio

[uncut atlas]

[tropic rock]

this is mainly karaoke support

[uncut atlas]

just use a regular computer

[warm oasis]

Another cheap one of a good album
https://www.discogs.com/release/497772-Lou-Reed-New-York?srsltid=AfmBOorlH8_TOM_9sVviwBYqAoQY_WYX-5qcudCdpFzv6biONlQYDQ0J

[tropic rock]

It really is not an important feature but I am finding fixes in the cd code by supporting it.

[uncut atlas]

grey im dissapointed you let moondandy's silver tounged whispers get to you

[warm oasis]

How can you if there is no standard format and no dumps as a result?

[dreamy hinge]

you've set back the score in software engineers vs project managers by decades!

[uncut atlas]

that, as they say, is not my problem

[tropic rock]

It is kind of the last thing that is not supported by the core so I could not help myself. (except jaglink I guess)

[uncut atlas]

so what state is the core in?

can I like merge everything down and clean up the files and menus and stuff?

[warm oasis]

I thought Kitrinx wired up Jaglink to the iO? Maybe I misunderstood that

[uncut atlas]

I dont think I did anything with jaglink ever

someone was working on it though

I guess you could link two misters

[dreamy hinge]

a feature for the rich, I see

[warm oasis]

Don't worry, we banned the poor who couldn't afford two MiSTers

Only the bourgeois here

[tropic rock]

Missing things: cd needs a bigger cache. Memtrack needs to save/load from sd card. Single ram does not work as well as dual (not sure how much can be improved--maybe find one more block of cache). Reload bioses if overwritten in sdram if large rom loaded in small 32mb ram. CDG support. Jaglink. Cleanup.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/bVy02oOjX7G.gif

[warm oasis]

JesusFish got a Birkin bag to keep all his MiSTers in

'Worth it."

[mental briar]

Anything we can do to help? Also, weren't you experimenting with moving stuff into BRAM for the single ram core?

[mental briar]

all my misters are red bottomed

[warm oasis]

You're so Kate.

That was my wittiest comeback of the year and nobody will get it, and nobody should. Anyways will stop being off topic...

Maybe I will make a MiSTer related CD+G channel, it is a niche non-game format but it touches a number of cores now and the whole lack of a unified dumping format is a mess. Maybe pulling resources can get that fixed.

[mental briar]

We need to quarantine it

[dreamy hinge]

I feel like me fixing up cd+g on the megacd core started something I would prefer to have not started

[mental briar]

I think it's a bummer that we don't have a more official dual ram solution for mister-devel. The dual ram core is pretty solid

[warm oasis]

Yeah, in the immediate term we can finally bite the bullet/suck it up and make a Dual Ram Cores DB and have that added to update all, but having to manually maintain that DB when new builds drop will be a drag

[mental briar]

I can do it. I don't mind

I can build them and post them. take a little valor here and there - you know, as a treat

[dreamy hinge]

you sure you can handle the burden of building 2 cores once every 6 months?

[warm oasis]

Well Saturn may be a lot more frequent, and PSX should also go in there

[dreamy hinge]

don't do that to poor robert

[warm oasis]

But yeah, go for it JF

[ashen spoke]

Yeah lol

There is that unreleased Robinson adventure game and a pretty good Klax homebrew port too

[mental briar]

@tropic rock this is still the latest code, yeah? https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/tree/CD_latest

[tropic rock]

yes

[sage rune]

Use CD Manipulator or CloneCD. It's pretty standard, and subcode is in a .sub file.

For Jaguar, I have no idea how the subcode data gets passed to the CPU

[uncut atlas]

the cd+g thing seems like it's pretty useless and delaying a proper release

it's not needed for games

I could not fathom why anyone would want to use mister to play an audio cd, given it has a ton of aliasing at that frequency

[ashen spoke]

RELEASE THE CORE!

[warm oasis]

We have a whole special chat about CD+G now so you can never read it and pretend it doesn't exist. I don't think it is holding up release.

[ashen spoke]

I read it and I appreciate that you immediately explain what it is because I had no clue.

[fallow salmon]

is this core really close to a 1.0?

i thought there was some showstopper and it'd always be kinda beta

[gentle bobcat]

@fallow salmon - My end-user assessment is that it is totally usable. The primary menu is a bit clunky and overloaded with some testing / troubleshooting options that can likely be removed, and regarding the CD support, there are too many options and that could stand to be simplified some. As is, without any changes to the pinned core, it is still quite serviceable. In the pinned items you can also find a testing spreadsheet to see what titles still have known issues. It is a pretty short list. One thing that confuses many new users is switching between cart, CD, and VLM... which is fairly well documented in the pinned items. Also new users sometimes have issues getting the three BIOS files although maybe update_all solves that. I've heard mixed reports. The dual-RAM build is supposedly more cycle accurate but the single-RAM build seems pretty good and is probably more widely used than the dual-RAM build simply because not a lot of people have a dual-RAM MiSTer system. One thing to note, is that when loading a cartridge file, CD game, or Audio CD with the VLM, it is quite common to need to restart the core for the media change to actually function.

Yesterday and today, I went through 4 MiSTer systems (two dual-RAM and two single-RAM) and using the last two core builds... and tested functionality... starting off with a core reset config... and if you follow the info in the pinned items, and don't forget to reboot, it works fairly reliably.

[fallow salmon]

Thanks for the detailed summary

[glad dome]

I think the core should be available as a stable release through update all. I have been using it for months now and have no real issues. Maybe the single/dual ram situation is holding it back.

[ancient thistle]

Want to add to this from my own experience, update_all did address the issues I had with the BIOS files not being the correct ones. I just had to delete the old ones and let the update script do its thing and everything worked after that.

Although I haven't tried to save any games using the save cart bios thing yet so idk how that'll all work out.

[glad dome]

Saves are functional. Been playing Rayman with them.

[slender valley]

(Cue the XKCD comic about standards)

Joking aside, what about that format that Dreamcast created?

[uncut atlas]

that's all well and good, but we aren't really trying to make a standard. Nothing suitable really exists so lets just make our own suitable format.

but it seems like that isn't really needed

[slender valley]

GDI would not work for this?

[uncut atlas]

I dunno. It turns out the games don't even need the stuff they are worrying about

it's just some moondandy nonsense

[slender valley]

So BIN/CUE would have been fine all along? Does that make CHD viable too or dod Jaguar games use features like Index 2+ that would not be compatible with CHD?

[uncut atlas]

@tropic rock

was the lower bit, handshake protocol is pretty simple. I use my own generated binary blob for funzies

seems like a perfectly dreadful game

are there any other gamedrive games?

is that the only one?

[gentle bobcat]

That's the only one I'm aware of.

[dreamy hinge]

CHD isn't viable because jag cds are multisession which isn't carried into chd metadata. to be fair in cue files it is indicated by a comment so lol

[gentle bobcat]

I think Kitrinx's comments about the CD format... was related to CD+G support... but so far as I know, the CD-Games need .cdi or bin/cue... but as implimented in the current core, .cdi. bin/cue support that was in the core was a proof-of-concept that worked but was very slow to load. (I'm sure Kit will correct me if I'm wrong)

I haven't tried bin/cue since I switched to .cdi

[ashen spoke]

RELEASE THE CORE!

[gentle bobcat]

RELEASE THE CORE! (build with GameDrive option)

@uncut atlas - Thanks for adding the GameDrive toggle.

[mental briar]

Guess I'm subbing to the patreon

[ashen spoke]

What’s the GameDrivr toggle do?

[gentle bobcat]

@Robby - See fine video posted by Kit. It allows the Mortal Kombat beta to run

[ashen spoke]

I don’t want to watch her video though, she’s got cooties

[timid snow]

So the core is about ready for the 1.0 release? Have Jaguar CD saves been implemented or is it still a WIP?

[gentle bobcat]

@timid snow - Unless I misunderstood GreyRouge, CD saves isn't fully implemented yet.

[uncut atlas]

enables emulation of the gamedrive cart

[ashen spoke]

Ah cooties!!!

[slender valley]

RELEASE THE C-wait, CORE? Oh, oops. Be right back, and on a totally unrelated note, if anybody sees a wild boar running around, can you let me know?

[uncut atlas]

someone tell me what Vint Fix and Auto EEPROM do?

[gentle bobcat]

Only the Shadow... errr.. GreyRogue knows.

moondandy?

[uncut atlas]

@warm oasis have you or someone else made a list of all the fastram configurations for each game?

[high venture]

Is MiSTer capable of doing overlays like Retroarch? Would be great if you could select the numpad buttons that way for systems that use them since there’s not many good solutions to a numpad controller out there. C’mon, 8bitdo… Jaguar replica!

[warm oasis]

Sorry, I am not sure what you mean by fastram configurations

[uncut atlas]

in single ram jaguar, I guess there's some reason to play with the two fastram settings

it seems like the kind of thing you would have made a big elaborate spreadsheet for

[tropic rock]

The only one I can think of is for Mutant penguins and I do not know if we found something that works for everything there.

[gentle bobcat]

@high venture - If you have a dual stick controller, you can map a stick position to a number pad number.

[warm oasis]

I completely missed there were (possibly) preferred settings for different games, if this is the case we should get this tested and documented

[high venture]

That should work for now! Thanks

[tropic rock]

This was briefly discussed here #1055574003810578503 message

I have a memory of someone saying those settings worked for the default character in Mutant Penguins but not another.

I have since added a third fastram cache with limited selectability.

[gentle bobcat]

Here's a quick suggestion illustration:

9 and 0 are clicking the stick in

[uncut atlas]

what is the NVME jaguar bios?

[uncut atlas]

so everything but mutant penguins works with the default?

[mental briar]

I can check, gimme a bit

[tropic rock]

The memtrack bios

[uncut atlas]

what is memtrack?

[mental briar]

the cd saving cartridge

for cd save games

[uncut atlas]

I see

[mental briar]

attack works with fastram2 set to 7 (not sure if that matters - I imagine it also works with 1 or whatever)

[high venture]

That’s exactly what I was thinking in my head! Haha

[mental briar]

Is Phase Zero working for anyone? I cannot get into game

I seem to remember there being something weird

oh wait, I see what I'm doing wrong

[mental briar]

@uncut atlas All carts boot and are "playable" (I checked if I could move around and then went to the next step) with Fastram2 set to 7 EXCEPT Zero 5, which does not work on single ram at all in my testing. no combo of settings would allow it to boot. Boots fine on dual ram

[uncut atlas]

ok

mutant penguins?

[mental briar]

yep, works fine with fastram2 at 7

[uncut atlas]

ok

[mental briar]

I didn't test any CD games, just retail carts

Oh wait, soccer kid also still doesn't boot - but there was known weirdness with that one

there is a github issue for it

[uncut atlas]

does it work with max compat on?

[mental briar]

nope, it used to work with the checksum patch

but it doesn't (on single ram at least). It's a red bios, so it doesn't even boot

[uncut atlas]

try using a K bios

[mental briar]

oh right, that is what would have changed

[sterile moss]

Now that M BIOS is the recommended one (pretty sure it still is), might be good to remove the pinned link to the modded K version to avoid new folks having issues
<#1055574003810578503 message>

[mental briar]

Did we determine that K bios doesn't work at all? I know grey mentioned he didn't think it did...but then it did?

[sterile moss]

I found I needed to reboot the system after loading a game more frequently with recent builds and the K BIOS

could just be on my end, seem to recall others reporting it too

both stock and modded BIOS, on older core versions K was stable but newer ones seem to prefer M

[tropic rock]

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/commit/02f4c23589841d196b13bd7f3e4f22667fdda921

[uncut atlas]

im cleaning up a lot of the warnings and things

after that's all settled ill reorg the files, then focus on some of the outstanding issues

two signals are being used as clocks that arent clocks

[dreamy hinge]

Ceci n'est pas une horloge

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/plPlhjprbcW.gif

[ashen spoke]

RELEASE THE CORE!

[slender valley]

Hmm, is this related to why update_all tried to warn that my Jaguar bios was incorrect about two weeks ago? It strangely would not re-download the bios if I ran it again after removing the bios files

[tropic rock]

I seem to recall that changing the creature to the second one (green?) would crash on single ram

[mental briar]

oh I thought it was both

let me try

[tropic rock]

#1055574003810578503 message

[mental briar]

yep, that's still accurate. @uncut atlas just fyi, attack of the mutant penguins crashes (even with fastram set to 2) if you change characters (works fine if you don't)

Easier for me to file it so it can be gotten to later?

[tropic rock]

I think we are to the point where issues should be created for anything that does not work. Feel free to create one.

It took me a while to find that comment.

[mental briar]

yeah, good catch

[uncut atlas]

I can't for the life of me get a cd to load from a cdi file

[mental briar]

oh

well

hold on, let me get the list of things that need to be enabled

[uncut atlas]

on the last pinned release can someone give me a step by step guide to the settings required to load, say, Antz from a CDI

[mental briar]

• CD Sessions: 2
• CD Enabled : Yes
• CD Inserted: Yes

Load a CD. If you get the "?", reset

I can't get antz to boot, but baldies does on single ram

[uncut atlas]

oh, antz doesn't work at all

load CD with Load CD or Load BIN/CDI

[mental briar]

Load CD *.CDI

and I believe antz works on dual ram

I'd have to check

[gentle bobcat]

Antz is listed on the testing spreadsheet as "inconsistent boot"

It is a post retail game.

[slender valley]

Just tried it, so far did not boot past the first splash screen the first time, but has booted every other time so far

Yeah, ants is buggy

BTW, same issues with Frogz 64, which seems to be a homebrew game by the same people who developed (or published at least?) Ants

[uncut atlas]

TYSM btw

[gentle bobcat]

All of the games that are listed as problematic on the testing spreadsheet are post-retail games and not part of the original 13 (or whatever it was) retail games from Atari.

VidGrid is listed as inconsistent but I haven't had any problems with it. I've completed the first level / wave of that (6 or 8 videos).

[tropic rock]

Those reboot loading cds used to boot consistently. I must have broken them while fixing something else.

[mental briar]

Vid Grid was an image issue I think.

it's been so long since i have been in there

[gentle bobcat]

I haven't really noticed any issues with any of the retail CD library but admittedly, I haven't gotten into much actual gameplay other than with VidGrid and Battlemorph.

[mental briar]

can't remember the minutia

[uncut atlas]

@tropic rock this is where im at so far

[gentle bobcat]

I believe Grey wanted to enlarge the stream buffer for CD media because it would sometimes artifact if the OSD was brought up.

[uncut atlas]

something not cleaning up or resetting after loading a cart

[tropic rock]

Yeah the cd has a cart passthrough and takes precendence over an inserted cd.

[uncut atlas]

how can we tell it to.. not

[gentle bobcat]

Enable the Memtrack which is basically replacing the existing inserted cart with the memtrack cart.

[uncut atlas]

hmmm, let me check my logic on that

oop yes, I forgot to force memtrak on when loading a cd

[slender valley]

So if the cart slot takes precidence and you can have a mem cart in that slot does it have a small rom to pass along execution to the cd or something, or does the jaguar just not try to boot from it?

[gentle bobcat]

I think you can run a CD without the memtrack cart inserted but not with a game cart inserted... but I'm not 100%.

[dusk slate]

Sorry, I'd rather shoot the core!

https://tenor.com/view/gradius-gradius-3-shoot-em-up-shmup-gif-23375822

[slender valley]

Wow, that guy on the right is really bad at this

[tall musk]

Seeing Kit trying to help an Atari console survive always does my head in.

[dreamy hinge]

#1 atari fan

[tropic rock]

The memtrack cart has a special code that the cd bios looks for. You can force it to run with a button combination but otherwise the cd bios will only load the memtrack routines for cds to use when saving, but does not boot into the save manager. If you plug the memtrack in without a cd drive the normal bios treats it like a normal cart.

[uncut atlas]

gosh I was wonder why I was getting like all these awful -25 second slacks in timing closures., and I guess someone added some division math in a wire heh

what lightgun games does jaguar have?

[mental briar]

Might be good for the inevitable cojag add on you’ll be guilted into adding

[ashen spoke]

None!

[uncut atlas]

really?

then why did someone add a lightgun to it?

[ashen spoke]

Homebrew?

[uncut atlas]

someone should tell me in the next 10 minutes or im ripping it out

because it's destroying the core timing

[ashen spoke]

I can’t even find light gun homebrew lol

[ashen spoke]

Yeah rip that shit out wtf

[gentle bobcat]

I'm not aware of a lightgun option for the Jaguar but I haven't really looked for one. The only lightgun type of game I'm aware of is a really horrible after-market Zombie game from a notorial developer. Anyone know of anything else?

https://wave1games.net/jagzombies-2

And it doesn't use a lightgun that I know of.

[ashen spoke]

That’s it

It’s the CoJag

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_CoJag

@uncut atlas it’s for the arcade board version of the Jaguar, Area 51 and Maximik Force are Ligjt-gun games

[uncut atlas]

we dont support those

[ashen spoke]

like morally or technically?

[low dome]

Atari Jaguar did not have any light gun games, a prototype gun known as the "Jaguar Lightgun" was developed but never officially released for the console. However, Songbird Productions announced plans for a 3D multi-directional shooter and a virtual cop-style shooter for the Jaguar.

[timid snow]

It’s probably best to rip out light gun support on the Jaguar and re-implement it if/when a separate Co-Jag arcade core is created

[uncut atlas]

I tried to rework it to use bit shifting and addition rather than 24 bit division but it's still using a lot of needless resources

[ashen spoke]

The light gun support is very important to me, can you please keep it

[dreamy hinge]

fyi, and also lol

[mental briar]

This is an important question

[ashen spoke]

I need light-gun support

Don’t remove it

[timid snow]

Yeah if it’s eating up valuable resources and affecting stability and functionality, I’d personally axe it, but that’s just my opinion. It could be added later if the core is further optimized or on a next gen FPGA

[uncut atlas]

my last build was a -25 second slack

[ashen spoke]

that’s tolerable

[uncut atlas]

I was wondering why they were all like -10

that's not tolerable

it couldn't even load games

[ashen spoke]

that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make

[gentle bobcat]

There you go. He said to sacrifice it.

[tropic rock]

This is the only one I could find https://forums.atariage.com/topic/17024-lightguns/page/3/

[gentle bobcat]

It's been 20 minutes.

[ashen spoke]

yeah and it’s been 10 minutes since you dismantled my carefully constructed argument

I’m still not over it

[fallow salmon]

i vote for someone can fix it later if cojag even becomes a thing - rip it out

that said those are some dope lightgun games if cojag is ever possible

[gentle bobcat]

Area 51

[uncut atlas]

cojag uses a different cpu and I think more ram

[wicked thorn]

Indeed. Either a 68020 or SGI R3000 for the CPU, and 4 or 6MB of RAM.

[warm oasis]

How much ram is in a regular Jaguar?

[tropic rock]

2MB

[warm oasis]

Ah, then going to 4mb or 6mb is a big jump

If down the road someone were to fork the Jag core and try make a Cojag core do you think that is likely too much ram for it to be viable on the DE-10 Nano?

[gentle bobcat]

Telly Savalas IS CoJag. (that really dates me)

[tropic rock]

2 vs 4 vs 6 is irrelevant on the current MiSTer. More important would be speed. If it is running at a faster speed it might cause issues. We currently need dual ram to get fast enough bandwidth on the core for Jag. CoJag using 4 or 6 does not affect that. It would slow down even more on single ram though as the cache would cover a smaller percentage.

[warm oasis]

Right, so whether this ram is faster or not is the big question mark

If it were identical type of ram then that would offer the most hope of one day it being doable to some extent, even if it requires dual ram on the DE-10 Nano

[ashen spoke]

Release the core!

[warm oasis]

We must be getting close now

[slender valley]

Oh look, it's the same publisher as that one that made all the Jaguar CD aftermarket games that have boot issues

[slender valley]

At this point Robby shouting this is like when Homer shouted to stop the presses
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccByiRfEHJk

[gentle bobcat]

Welcome Shinto.

When I hear that name, I don't have much history with the word... and I think of... sorry to say... Ready Player One... but I doubt that's where you go it from. I guess it is also a religion?

[pallid gulch]

yes it is a japanese religion.

[tall musk]

So when can I play all these Jaguar lightgun games I have here?

[gentle bobcat]

No, you have had your time. The driver was already in there.

Just hang on to the current core and you'll be set. 🙂

[tall musk]

I demand a refund

[gentle bobcat]

It is included with your tariff refunds.

[slender valley]

What about adding heavygun support?

[gentle bobcat]

That is provided in the Alien vs. Predator game.

[warm oasis]

I had a look at the Jag CD files in the HTGDB Jaguar pack and looks like a load in the unlicensed and demo folder we don't all have in cdi format, worth getting these converted and trying them or did I miss that happening already?

4Play Demo.jcd
8Biteer (2013).jcd
American Hero 2.jcd
American Hero.jcd
Ants (USA) (Unl).jcd
Beebris SE (2010).jcd
Black Ice White Noise.jcd
Caves Of Fear 1.jcd
Caves Of Fear.jcd
Dance Dance Xirius Dance Party - AC2012.jcd
DEGZ (2012).jcd
Demolition Man.jcd
Downfall (2011).jcd
Expressway (2013).jcd
Fallen Angels.jcd
Fast Food 64 - Holiday Snacks (USA) (Unl).jcd
Frog Feast (USA) (Unl).jcd
Frogz 64 (USA) (Unl).jcd
GORF.jcd
HMS Raptor (2012).jcd
Invitro Silly Venture (2013).jcd
JagCode 500 (2007).jcd
JagMIND (2005).jcd
Jagtopia FreeBoot CD (2010).jcd
Jeff Minter Demos (2007-12-15).jcd
Kobayashi Maru (2011).jcd
Lost Treasures (2006).jcd
Mandelbrot Demo (2008).jcd
Native (2006).jcd
Ocean Depths (2004).jcd
Robinson's Requiem (USA) (Unl).jcd
Rocks Off (2013).jcd
Saucer Wars (USA) (Unl).jcd
Shoot'em Up (2012).jcd
Simone (Unl) Risc Games.jcd
Soulstar.jcd
SuperFly DX v1.1 (2010).jcd
Tube (2012).jcd
Varunasforces.jcd
Yopaz.jcd

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - Hmm, many of those I hadn't previously heard of... and my search-foo doesn't seem to be working very well. If I can eventually find them... AND... someone can explain how to convert .jcd to .cdi, I can do it.

[warm oasis]

If you look in the HTGDB Jaguar pack on archive then there is a big 5.6gb zip with them in a folder

[humble bluff]

A bunch of those are just ROMs converted to CD. You can just run the Cart version.

[mental briar]

the cdi images are the redump set

(according to people who have knowledge of the subject)

[dreamy hinge]

this is by far the messiest system I've seen for cd images, and it's all for like...20 games?

[mental briar]

is it that many?

[dreamy hinge]

I was being generous

[uncut atlas]

hey could some people vibe check this for me, tell me how they feel about the layout, stability, etc, and see how stable cd's are for them

[warm oasis]

The ones in HTGDB are all .jcd files which are new to me

[uncut atlas]

I rewrote the seek time to be algorithmic and made a much larger cd cache

known issue atm is the bios animation plays an extra time on cd discs and audio cd's have to have a console soft reset before they play

and obviously heavily reworked the menu and options

[warm oasis]

Ah, too late this end to test I am afraid. Did anything else get removed other than the lightgun thing? Cheats gone (for now)?

[mental briar]

no, cheats are there

[warm oasis]

Nice

[uncut atlas]

I left lightgun too

I just rewrote chunks of it

[gentle bobcat]

I'll check it out tonight when I get home from work. I had a MiSTer at work but not currently.

[dusk slate]

Kitrinx back in the Atari mines! Suffering, like G did!

[mental briar]

Do you want single core specific feedback? or just stuff that affects both?

[uncut atlas]

I'd like to get reassurances that it's behavior didnt get worse

I did a lot of stuff

[gentle bobcat]

Kitrinx - Thanks for the work you've put in thus far.

[dreamy hinge]

whoa. on mutant penguins if I set the first fastram option to 2 I don't black screen after switching characters and starting the game

[mental briar]

SAM has been running for close to an hour on single ram. No crashes, nothing failed to load

[gentle bobcat]

What is SAM?

[dreamy hinge]

a missile launcher

[gentle bobcat]

(maybe it is the name that has been given to a MiSTer system?)

Surface to Air Missile.

[supple finch]

(Could be. I named mine Benjamin)

[gentle bobcat]

From my Atari 8-bit days, S.A.M. was "Software Automatic Mouth".

[supple finch]

I remember that! Remember the thrill of making your computer say a badly-pronounced dirty word?

[gentle bobcat]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth

[mental briar]

https://github.com/mrchrisster/MiSTer_SAM

Painter doesn't seem to load for me. I need to check it on dual ram - pretty sure it's homebrew/unlicensed/slop

Viewgif 2 as well (no idea what that is)

[supple finch]

Yeah, but does it mispronounce swear words?

[mental briar]

no, i do that on my own

[humble bluff]

Are the Load/Save Backup RAM menu options supposed to be missing?

[uncut atlas]

yes, because I put them in advanced

[mental briar]

autosave default is on ❤️

[humble bluff]

Ah, missed them

[uncut atlas]

I figured nobody really ever needed to see those

[uncut atlas]

https://tenor.com/view/quantum-leap-oh-boy-serious-gif-12093664

[mental briar]

I know this may come as a disappointment but Fallen Angels Demo jiffi headerless doesn't seem to load on the core. Apologies to the jiffi heads out there

[uncut atlas]

the not-headerless one works

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - So you configured SAM to only play Jaguar games... and it loaded a random one every 3 minutes? (for an hour)

[mental briar]

correct, and is still loading them

you can do MiSTer_SAM_on.sh jaguar

i believe it uses the core in _Console but @plush holly would need to confirm

[plush holly]

Yuppers

[ashen spoke]

RELESE THE CO-OH SHIT!!!!

peeeeens

[uncut atlas]

im particularly interested in how well cd games work

like if they crash and mess up a lot, if you can take screenshots and whatnot without them breaking

[ashen spoke]

Klax worked for me and I don’t think it ever did before

Same with Gravitic Mines, never worked before

[uncut atlas]

I think streaming is stable enough to not need the load-to-ram stuff

[ashen spoke]

I’m bouncing around CD games

Everything looking good so far

I mean as good as Jaguar games can look

@uncut atlas Is Force Music CD defaulted to on?

[uncut atlas]

no

you probably saved your options that way

[ashen spoke]

Yeah it’s from the previous build

Highlander isn’t working for me. Gets in game just fine but when I try to start the game it gets stuck and displays the game logo on the bottom.

Oh, with Force Memory Track on its able to get past that.

[uncut atlas]

if you soft reset, does highlander work?

[ashen spoke]

It didn’t for me but I’ll try again. I use MGLs to load games so it’s a core reload effectively.

[uncut atlas]

please don't use mgls

[ashen spoke]

you’re not my mom!

Ok I won’t anymore lol

[dreamy hinge]

that much is obvious, if she were your mom you'd be better behaved

[ashen spoke]

OK so exiting back to main menu and loading the game it seems to be working correctly

Oh my god this game

This game seems to be very sensitive

I did a soft reset and I was able to get into the main menu just fine but when I skipped the intro cutscene it got stuck

Seems like on first core boot the game loads fine, but whenever I do a soft reset it starts getting stuck trying to load the game after the intro cutscene

Or when using MGLs to relaunch the core, it causes issues in that game too

[uncut atlas]

highlander seems sketchy in general

ill mark that one down

did it work well before?

[low dome]

love the menu cleanup!

[ashen spoke]

I don’t know, I don’t think I tried it

Robinson’s Requiem took a soft reboot to get working

Holy shit, this is a fully polygonal adventure game where you have to press menu buttons for every gameplay action

lol I crashed the game trying to punch an NPC

like not the core, no I got a bunch of debug print

[mental briar]

did you write it down so you can email it to the devs?

[ashen spoke]

No, I just sent the crash report to Microsoft so they can fix it

[warm oasis]

It might be worth converting these CD homebrew-ports to cdi just to really kick the tires on the core if everything weird seems to now be working

They were all suspiciously small filesize

[ashen spoke]

The ones I have are already cdi files

[warm oasis]

These ones:

#1055574003810578503 message

[ashen spoke]

Oh my god that’s a lot

[warm oasis]

Yeah

[ashen spoke]

I had no idea!

[warm oasis]

Must be new conversations as they weren't kicking about when we were looking at the testing sheet 6 months back

But yeah, it would be good to get them in .cdi format and then available somewhere so we can check what they are and if they work OK

Not that it should hold up the core launch but be good to check asap while eyes are on it

I have no idea how you convert these files to .cdi

[mental briar]

Are we sure that these aren't just converted roms? #1055574003810578503 message

I have no idea what (PD) signifies but it doesn't seem like the core can load any of them
Drumpad by Robert Jurziga (2002) (PD)
Hubble Nebula by Robert Jurziga (PD)
are two examples

[timid snow]

PD stands for public domain

[mental briar]

Well Robert Jurziga needs to get his shit together

[gentle bobcat]

(me eats dinner real quick before testing)

[warm oasis]

Some of them likely are, maybe most or even all of them, but if we operate under the assumption that they are in the HTGDB pack so should all work, it would be good if someone is up for it, to get them converted to .cdi and check they run on the core OK and find out what they are. They may flag up some obscure issue in the core if nothing else. More software to test is always helpful, and we don't exactly have a lot for the old Jag CD...

[tropic rock]

I believe these are all public domain ftp://ftp.untergrund.net/users/ggn/Jag PD collection/Robert Jurziga/

[warm oasis]

What is the process for converting them?

[tropic rock]

There are more up a level

Drumpad is available as both cdi and j64 (cart) there

As is Hubble Nebula

[warm oasis]

Are the cart and CD versions identical? Seems odd someone would do a straight conversion to CD

[tropic rock]

Not odd. You can burn them to CD and play them without a Gamedrive

All of the ULS (Klax, Frogz 64 etc) titles are the same size and identical except for audio track 2 which contains the entire game that is copied into the 2MB of DRAM.

It is just a cheap way to load games.

If you have a jagcd

[uncut atlas]

a silver lining to an otherwise unfortunate situation

[tropic rock]

It does not work for most commercial carts (even 2mb ones) as you are using a huge chunk of the DRAM to hold the "ROM"

[gentle bobcat]

I have basked in the glory of the updated cores. No issues noted... other than what has already been mentioned. I like you can switch between cartridge and CD game without doing anything other than load. Audio CDs are a tiny bit more effort but work fine. I couldn't ask for more.

Well, I've only done the dual-ram one. Let me try the single one now.

[tropic rock]

I can try and look at the jcd format. Does someone have a jcd copy of one of the PD games they can post. Downfall is in the PD ftp for example.

[gentle bobcat]

Single-RAM works gerrrr-ate.

GreyRogue - I don't.

[uncut atlas]

@gentle bobcat do you know if the two flakey JCD games are regressions?

streaming should be otherwise pretty stable now

[gentle bobcat]

I don't (currently) have any .jcd files. Were those supposed to work?