Atari Jaguar

[mental briar]

God the atari age forums never disappoint

(͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[uncut atlas]

sometimes you hear a sound and you just cannot figure out what it goes with

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/HjHv.gif

[gentle bobcat]

That is the sound of all but 12 people on Earth communicating with each other as the Plur1bus hivemind broadcasting on the frequency Manousos discovered.

Is that Jay-Z?

[mild karma]

yes

[timid snow]

The Nuon is pretty much The official Jaguar 2 since it was created by former Jaguar devs that created the company VM Labs and even has Tempest 3000 and Iron Soldier 3

But as far as the development board for the original Jaguar 2, it’s believed to be about as powerful as the Sega Model 2 or the 3DO M2

[tropic rock]

I mentioned this earlier but I bought a Karaoke CD off ebay for less than $4 shipped (cheapest CD+G they had). I am not sure if Kitrinx used this when she happenned to mention Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, though, as that is the first track on the CD. It is not hard to use tools to make your own cdi from a CDG, which is what I used to take the screenshot.

[uncut atlas]

it's just the first thing that came to my mind when I thought of karaoke

not that I have anything against Cyndi Lauper, she's the GOAT

[uncut atlas]

atari people are a different breed

[tropic rock]

I did some more digging. The comment suggests that the code originally did support CD+EG as memory control is indeed a cd+EG specific setting. However there is nothing in the code to actually set or apply it. My guess is they originally had support for some or all of cd+EG before removing it (maybe struggled with part of it or needed a license or who knows why). I will say it appears that most hardware that supports CD+G probably could support CD+EG if implemented in software. They use the exact same methods of using subcodes for commands and it does not require faster read speed or anything. The only noticeable additions appear to be more memory (something like 2x as much I would guess) and probably slightly more CPU time. If CD+G works on a given piece of hardware it probably has enough to spare for the additions.

CD+G list of commands

[uncut atlas]

one of us could probably spend a lot of time trying to make the vlm work with it, which by the way, is extremely nontrivial

[tropic rock]

The additional commands for CD+EG

[uncut atlas]

the vlm payload has very strict memory pointer constraints which are a nightmare to tamper with

even though I have the entire cd bios buildable from real source and not binary blobs, it's still very un-fun to go chasing down hard coded memory addresses and offsets

the 4.05 is the version retail uses btw

I managed to build a binary identical one with it

[tropic rock]

I don't see myself finding the motivation to do it either. CD+G is supported by the original so it creates a slight itch to get 100% support for original hardware. CD+EG doesn't do the same

[uncut atlas]

fair, though I think even cd+g is pretty niche

it does feel bad to have a dead button

all things considered this is probably the most hardware accurate jaguar emulator there is

at least with dual ram

[mild karma]

Dual ram wins again!

[mental briar]

BigKemu

[sacred blade]

The invocation of the DualRam man.

[gentle bobcat]

BigKGRemu

[glossy iron]

It is by a mile! BigPEmu is great but has clearly not cycle accurate functions. Battlemorph has speed issues with hugely varying speed, not on real hardware.
It has slowdowns on single ram not on real hardware but runs way more accurate

[timid snow]

BigPEmu is also closed source so it loses on those grounds automatically

But it’s good to know that it’s also less accurate

MiSTer wins again

[mental briar]

ahem

dual ram mister

[high token]

Part of why I love Chappell Roan so much. She reminds me a lot of Cyndi mixed with a bit of Stevie Nicks.

[uncut atlas]

I could do Pink Pony Club all day long

[high token]

Especially that third part of Good Luck Babe, she breaks out that Stevie voice. I have that part as my ringtone and it ends with “and when you think about me….”

[mental briar]

I am a The Giver fan myself

[slender valley]

Is that an exposed eeprom? Isn't exposing them to sunlight how you erase them?

[gentle bobcat]

He tried.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c35Lh4-nxU

He said I might find the video to be "cringe".

[livid shore]

Which update is he testing here?

[gentle bobcat]

The one from the 28th. (I think)

[glossy iron]

@uncut atlas Here is the video. After saving to memory track and opening OSD to perform autosave to SD the osd nearly freezes, no inputs are taken and game starts to stutter with audio stutter. You can see this how slow the scrolling text on bottom of odd scrolls. At the end of the video it can be seen when saving is done and osd recovers

It's the same behaviour with every CD game. Single Ram Core

[gentle bobcat]

I meant to check that last night to see if I could duplicate but was tired and didn't turn the MiSTer on at all. Can anyone else duplicate? I think TJF mentioned it?

[mental briar]

i have something set up incorrectly because I couldn't get the save to pop at all

[uncut atlas]

usually it's too fast to really see

[gentle bobcat]

I have seen when the OSD comes up "autosaving" or whatever it says... and other times, it didn't say that. I don't bring up the OSD during gameplay very often. Usually after I'm done with a good session of T2K where I got to enter myself into the hi-scores... then I'll bring it up.

Ah, so when you didn't see it, it was just too fast to be seen.

[warm oasis]

Was just having a look at the old open issues, is this still a thing JF?
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/Jaguar_MiSTer/issues/8

[mental briar]

Nope, I was going to go through those this week

[tropic rock]

I am reasonably certain the rom is not correctly signed and would fail if put into a standard ROM cart on real hardware in the same way. The core is currently patching out checksum fails so you never get a red screen.

[warm oasis]

Maybe someone with a rom cart can chuck it on and see if it works on original hardware

[mental briar]

I have cleaned up my issues (in the atari jaguar repo, not in general)

[dreamy hinge]

imagine how much you'd have to sell to clean up your issues

[mental briar]

the body can only take so much

[visual tiger]

Excuse me, is this the latest Dual Ram build?

[uncut atlas]

I think so

[tropic rock]

I am referring to a regular cart. Flash carts can change their contents during boot to pass the checksum.

[uncut atlas]

fwiw it's pretty trivial to repair and resign roms now

i've been doing it all day

jaguar homebrew is very very messy

[gentle bobcat]

Yes... in the pinned items.

[teal knot]

I cant see the link

[ashen spoke]

pins updated

[teal knot]

Thanks!!! I will play Total Carnage right now

[ashen spoke]

what do we rename this to?

[uncut atlas]

why do you ahve to rename it?

also you should use the v0.02

[ashen spoke]

oh for the boot1.rom stuff

[uncut atlas]

boot2

[ashen spoke]

thank you, and i found your latest and pinned that one

whats the difference betweem the memtrack bios and this cd bios?

[uncut atlas]

one is for the jaguar cd and one is for the memory track

[ashen spoke]

ok so one does not replace the other gotcha

and that cd bios is boot1.rom

[mental briar]

Kit do we still need both of these or just blank eeprom?

[uncut atlas]

both

unless something changed im unaware of

[mental briar]

Ok, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong with memory track saving. I will figure it out

[uncut atlas]

1. make sure you have a bios
2. select the blank memory card from the menu
3. it just does it's thing for cd's

it has to be enabled when you start the game unfortunately, because of how it works (it installs junk in memory on boot)

[sterile moss]

memtrack bios, set in 'assign bios files': #1055574003810578503 message
blank memtrack file to select from OSD 'memorytrack save *.jmc' (also has the blank_eeprom.jce, bootrom and cd bios to set in 'assign bios files'): #1055574003810578503 message
@mental briar

[mental briar]

Ok, I think I have it now

I cannot reproduce the pause on saving that cd-i was having.

[sterile moss]

For the 4 items in 'ASSIGN BIOS FILES' menu, does the core auto load them if named boot.rom, boot2.rom etc or need to be manually assigned in OSD currently?

[mental briar]

I didn’t assign those. I assigned the last option

[sterile moss]

easy to set, just wondering for bios db getting them all

last options as in memtrack and cd eeprom?

[mental briar]

Cd eeprom. And then .ice file from the main menu

[sterile moss]

cool so others still auto load, wondering if can get them all auto mounted/in bios DB

[mental briar]

I renamed the two kit bioses to boot1 and boot2 (for cd and mentrack respectively)

I think they are in there?

@warm oasis do you know bioses are in there?

[warm oasis]

Do we need to remove the official ones and replace them?

[mental briar]

Well I think kit is still working on memtrack?

[uncut atlas]

nah

im done with my bioses

[sterile moss]

it grabs boot.rom, boot1.rom, boot2.rom

[uncut atlas]

unless there is a problem

[sterile moss]

yeah would be cool to use kits new ones

[uncut atlas]

cd bios and memtrack bios v0.02 is the latest

[mental briar]

Ok, I’ll send you the rightly named bioses in a bit dandy (if no one else does)

[sterile moss]

and then if possible get/mount blank_eeprom.jce too. ie boot3.rom

[mental briar]

I think those are either going in the repo

Or Zakk is going to make main create them

[sterile moss]

not sure about the blank_memorytrack.jmc, ppl probably want to name that themselves

[supple finch]

Will this disable the bootup animation (spinning cube)? How can I preserve that?

[sterile moss]

bios DB only gets files if they dont exist

so if you have your preferred one set it wont replace it

[uncut atlas]

you can just mount them from the menu too

[mental briar]

You can use the real cart bios still, I think. Unless there is a reason to use kit’s

[sterile moss]

I like the fast booting but also liked colourful misterkun 🙂

[mental briar]

Did we get colorful misterkun on bios M or whatever?

[uncut atlas]

mine is faster and skips authentication

that's the only benefit

and doesnt look like shitty homebrew

[mental briar]

Nice try. This is the jaguar.

[sterile moss]

nah the hex edited ones of mine were all K based

kit did it properly 🙂

they seem to work OK under the recent builds tho

have been using kit's ones for recent testing

[uncut atlas]

the system is actually M based

[mental briar]

Wait, did kit do a pride kun boot? I needs

[uncut atlas]

I didnt

[mental briar]

I still needs

[sterile moss]

the K ones used to work stably but in a fairly recent build of GR's they started needing reboots to make games load

but then with the more recent builds they seemed OK again

nah I meant kit's fast booting one

[mental briar]

We can put it in the bios database in June 🤭

[sterile moss]

'it makes jerks nope out' was an appealing motivation :p

[warm oasis]

Sounds good, just ping me over the files needed in a zip and I can get them added tomorrow

[sterile moss]

if good folks add it to bios DB, does the core need to be updated to auto mount the cd eeprom save file?

[warm oasis]

We could probably do with new version in the WIP DB as well

[uncut atlas]

you have to select it from the menu

it's like a memory card

it doesn't get auto mounted until you choose it

[sterile moss]

ahh ok, makes sense
bios DB has bios/cd bios/memtrack bios covered
possibly worth moving the eeprom option to main menu next to the memcard one? keep the manually loaded items together

[deep granite]

I need to know what do those Mister themed boot roms actually do

i still don’t know what their purpose is

[sterile moss]

They just replace the jag image with a custom one

purpose was #1055574003810578503 message 🙂

[tropic rock]

#1055574003810578503 message

[deep granite]

the ones downloaded from update all

[tropic rock]

Summation. Bios from a long time ago was typically the original K model BIOS. There is also an M model that Atari released with a slightly newer BIOS. These are not always swappable between all hardware versions. ElectronAsh created a BIOS patch that continued to boot the cart if it failed the checksum. This patch is not correct for M BIOS. When I switched to M BIOS, this patch broke. I have since modified the core to check whether a K or M BIOS is being used and use the correct patch. There were modified BIOSes (not sure if they were based on K or M) that changed the rotating graphic from a Jaguar to MiSTerkun. Recently Kitrinx modified the source code for the M BIOS to completely remove the checksum. Any one of these bioses can be used as boot0.rom. When I added support for the CD, I used the standard CD BIOS released by Atari (separate from the normal BIOS). There is also a dev version of the CD BIOS. Kitrinx started with the standard CD BIOS (I think) and modified it to remove CD checksums, added features to the vlm like making it easier to modify the different vlm effects and being able to save and load them. Any of these CD BIOSes can be used as boot1.rom. The memtrack was the save device created by Atari for saving game data for CDs. It has ROM data in it that handles saving/loading data. I started with this one. Kitrinx has modified this one to add more functions like copying files. Any of these can be used as boot2.rom. The actual memtrack storage for the save data is in the .jmc file. You need a blank file to start with which will be filled with save data. The CD hardware also had a very tiny 128 byte eeprom which stored the last used vlm effect and volume, plus a number used for generating random seeds. This is stored in the jce file.

[uncut atlas]

there's some cd games that need the dev bios to boot

[tropic rock]

There are also separate save files created for the eeproms used in carts.

Did your modified CD BIOS remove the CD checksums, allowing it to work with those cd games that needed the dev bios?

[uncut atlas]

yes

it doesn't waste the time on it either so it boots a lot faster

[sterile moss]

The modified BIOS with different images on the cube were K based

[uncut atlas]

the graphics ones

[high token]

So it’s the M model that has better compatibility with the CD unit while the K ones aren’t so much? I always get the two confused. I know later on, Atari just built units with what they had on hand, so it’s not uncommon to say get a K bios in an M shell. That was actually the last one I had that I sold.

[stone vault]

Outta curiousity, what is the core i should be using? I've seen different ones posted here from time to time, that Im assuming aren't in the pins? Wanna make sure I am up to date.

[sterile moss]

The pinned cores are the latest: #1055574003810578503 message

update_all gets the official BIOS, cd BIOS and memtrack BIOS
You can instead use Kitrinx's new customised BIOS here: #1055574003810578503 message and check the pins for the latest custom cd BIOS/memtrack BIOS files

Kitrinx's custom ones boot faster and have other improvements

[stone vault]

Sweet.

Thank you.

[ashen spoke]

I AM PEENOR THE PIN MASTER, DO YOU DARE QUESTION MY PEENS??

[stone vault]

I just noticed other cores posted in chat that were newer. Just trying to stay on top of things O great Robby! 😆 KEEPER OF THE PINS

[ashen spoke]

Ok so what file is needed for the memory track? A blank save file? Can someone upload it here?

[mental briar]

you pinned it

wait, I thought you did

hrm

[ashen spoke]

I did but I removed it lol

because I like living life in the fast lane

[mental briar]

it's here: #1055574003810578503 message

[mental briar]

I'd upload mine but I dunno if it's blank or whatever

[ashen spoke]

Blank memorytrack file attached to this post.

How to enable:

1. Make sure you have the Memtrack bios
2. Select the blank memory card from the menu
3. It has to be enabled when you start the game unfortunately, because of how it works (it installs junk in memory on boot)

[dense ravine]

Don’t you need to rename them all to various bootN.rom or whatever?

[uncut atlas]

you dont need to, you can just select them from the menu too

it remembers your selection

[dense ravine]

I practically live on this discord and I find it pretty hard to follow what’s happening on this core tbh

[uncut atlas]

you dont have to worry about it really, you can just wait for it to get released

I just toss things out there for the enthusiasts to smoke test for me

it's for me, more than you

[dense ravine]

Oh, sure - I’m just saying that it might limit testing feedback, that’s all

But you don’t need to change anything

[mental briar]

not as much as the jaguar library limits feedback

[warm oasis]

OK, Hag BIOS updated in the BIOS DB, you will need to delete the old boot1 and boot2 before the new ones will download though

[mental briar]

or if you have file_checking = 'exhaustive' set in your downloader.ini, it will check and replace them

[warm oasis]

You presumably have the new ones on there already?

It grabbed them for me just now having deleted the old ones

[mental briar]

yeah, I had the new ones already. I'm just saying that it checked them

without deleting, and I think that's that file_checking setting

[gentle bobcat]

So what are the provided-by-update_all BIOSes being updated to? or they aren't being updated?

What is "Hag"?

[mental briar]

It's just the last kit cd and memory track bios versions. the cart version is still vanilla

[uncut atlas]

I wonder if it's better to just disable automatic bios loading from boot roms

maybe it's better to require people to just set them from the menu

it seems to confuse people too much to use boot roms

[dreamy hinge]

I think it more confuses the people who put them in databases

[ashen spoke]

I think it’s fine as is currently. If you name them correctly for auto loading, it works, which is consistent behavior with other cores.

[mental briar]

I think keeping them consistent with other systems is best. They are in the bios database and named correctly, it shouldn’t be confusing.

If we require folks to select specific bioses, people are going to wander in here confused like it’s the MSX core

[warm oasis]

Yeah, definitely don't want people to have to select BIOS from OSD before loading, they aren't going to know to do that and everyone using a console expects to just copy over their games and load them from the OSD with no other steps

[dense ravine]

The only point of confusion, imo, is when it’s not documented on the readme on the main page (not that anyone ever reads them…)

[mental briar]

I’ll do a pass on the read me when the core is released

that’s a good shout

[undone roost]

I read them!

[sterile moss]

Yeah that's why I was asking about the eeprom file yesterday, have it all auto loaded for folks 🙂
I doubt most ppl would be swapping eeprom save files.

Could maybe distribute the blank memcard file too, ready for ppl to select? Perhaps rename it, as it won't be blank for long once selected in osd

[uncut atlas]

eeprom its really unlikely

i'd love it if someone just made that automatic in main

you never really need to swap it but it has to exist

otherwise you lose vlm settings

theres more of an argument to swap memory track

you could do it in real life

[sterile moss]

yeah being able to swap memcard jmc definitely makes sense

all the cd games with issues are now loading OK here with 'Atari Jaguar CD Bios (Kitrinx v0.02).rom', and update_all is getting that and 'Memory Track BIOS (Kitrinx, v0.02).rom' as boot1.rom/boot2.rom now

thanks folks 👍

[uncut atlas]

good 🙂

[sterile moss]

@ashen spoke you can remove the 'When playing Cart based games, make sure to set CD Enabled to No, otherwise the games will not load.' note from #1055574003810578503 message, the core automatically loads both Cart/CD now

[uncut atlas]

the v1 was my fault, I moved the location of some memory stuff as I was experimenting with save/load and forgot to revert it

I think cd's are pretty easy to deal with now

[sterile moss]

gotta make folks testing feel useful now and then :p

yeah if you have the bios files it 'just works'

[ashen spoke]

That’s great!

[sterile moss]

oh and the reference to me at the end too, we have kit's better BIOS now

[uncut atlas]

I better get to work on CD+EGG or whatever

[sterile moss]

easter CDs

[mental briar]

Finally, back to what matters

[uncut atlas]

april fools was distracting

[mental briar]

every year I tell myself I'm not gonna get caught up in it

[dreamy hinge]

I can probably neglect work soon

[glossy iron]

Played through Myst today. Latest single ram core. No glitch, no freeze, not a single graphical error. Memory track worked great, too.

Only long freezing when opening OSD with autosave active like reported earlier.
Great state of the core!

[uncut atlas]

well you can manually trigger the saves if you want

[mental briar]

I really wish I could reproduce that. When I was using my slower NAS, and I was on wifi, it could sometimes take 10 seconds for the autosave dialog to go away

but that was a network thing

[glossy iron]

Yes thats what I did later

[ashen spoke]

@uncut atlas what's the latest cart bios you posted?

[uncut atlas]

system bootrom - v0.01
cd bios - v0.02
memtrack bios - v0.02

you know what

that's the altest version of all three

[ashen spoke]

ok awesome, thank you. pins updated with latest and greatest!

[gentle bobcat]

I like the Easter Egg BIOS as a novelty, not as an everyday driver.

[uncut atlas]

it was really just made for the novelty of actually seeing it

it's very hard to excute on the real bios

[gentle bobcat]

I'm glad you left plenty of room for revisions with your version numbering scheme. 🙂

[spiral patrol]

do the need to be renamed as describe by the core github?

[uncut atlas]

if you want them to autoload, you can also set them from the menu and it will remember

[wintry lynx]

https://ebay.us/m/w8qyje

This might be a good candidate for decap…

[warm oasis]

Candidate to be bought by someone and sent off for a decap?

[wintry lynx]

Yeah, lowest price I’ve ever seen for one.

[mental briar]

if you know of someone who will decap it, I will buy it and have it shipped to them

[gentle bobcat]

The NTT controller arrived. It is so uncomfortable.

[wintry lynx]

Do we know anyone? Haha. I’m pretty new here. Maybe @gentle bobcat or @uncut atlas would know

[uncut atlas]

yes, I know

it's been talked about several times

[mental briar]

how dare you

[gentle bobcat]

How? It was easy.

[warm oasis]

Is Furrtek still in business?

[gentle bobcat]

It's so wide and my palms just fall into a void.

[stiff pebble]

Appears so?

[warm oasis]

Is he still accepting things to dump and decap though?

[mental briar]

no

[wintry lynx]

I imagine the list of people who do that sort of thing is pretty small?

[warm oasis]

Yeah, although maybe there is still someone

[dreamy hinge]

more options open up if you have money

[wintry lynx]

How much do folks charge for that sorta thing?

[ashen spoke]

Imagine needing to convert MVS to AES, couldn’t be me!

[wintry lynx]

@mental briar did you buy it? Looks like it’s gone…

[mental briar]

i did not

[wintry lynx]

😭

Maybe there will be a core. One day. Haha.

[uncut atlas]

probably not

it's mostly analog behavior

vlm seems cooler anyway

if you really need something like that

[broken ice]

Jaguar_Rework.rbf - for Dual SDRAM build?

[ashen spoke]

Whatever is in the pins

that’s the latest

but before you download it, you must post

“I like P33NZ”

[mental briar]

I hope you're happy, Robby. Mom went out to get milk and left us for the virtual boy core

[ashen spoke]

I AM HAPOY

HAPPY

[broken ice]

I like P33NZ

[mental briar]

there goes robby abusing his mod powers again

[dim sundial]

Must be a day of the week ending in Y

[ashen spoke]

I like P33NZ!

[gentle bobcat]

I'm sure you do.

I heard someone else say that they like big butts... and they can not lie.

[dreamy hinge]

I think that was George Washington

[mental briar]

washing-ton

[uncut atlas]

historically he was very fond of saying

“Everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and have big butts unto their own
And no one shall make them afraid.”

[mental briar]

Right to bear buttz

[gentle bobcat]

bare

[warm oasis]

Do you fancy having a look at some manuals on the core and see how you find them and the packs? If you just download this and chuck the two .ini files in your /media/fat then they should download when you run update script. This is new functionality for DBs, so you would be kicking the tires on that as well for us

[gentle bobcat]

I'm not at home at the moment but I hope to get a lot of stuff done this weekend.

[gentle bobcat]

I'll try that out ASAP.

[timid snow]

Keep in mind that the MiSTer PDF manual viewer is very glitchy and unstable. A good recommendation is when you open a manual wait for about 15-30 seconds before moving to the next pages as the PDF viewer can crash

[warm oasis]

Hopefully you get a kick out of it

up and down move forward and back between pages

Hopefully left and right can be added at some point, I raised a ticket for it

[gentle bobcat]

I have a book I need to get to you for scanning.

[warm oasis]

That book is for @obsidian python if you guys want to link up 🙂

[timid snow]

Yeah FYI, the manuals here all are double paged, meaning it reads digitally like a real physical manual with 2 pages, and they're also compressed but very legible. For the games that include overlays, I've included the overlays as the first page. Also, the owner's manuals are included for both the Jaguar and Jaguar CD. Enjoy

[warm oasis]

Anyone else interested in trying this out then give it a go and let us know how you find it

[gentle bobcat]

Thanks

[brittle zinc]

This was me 12 years ago: https://youtu.be/jDm_25la-FM?si=GNgjNL0l7Bw0J5hI

[gentle bobcat]

@warm oasis - I tried the Jaguar documentation package and it worked great.

[warm oasis]

Nice one

What sort of screen you use?

[gentle bobcat]

A Raspberry Pi portable monitor.

[warm oasis]

Oh, neat

How did the pdf viewer hold up for you? many crashes?

[gentle bobcat]

I loaded about 5 or 6 manuals. The AvP crashed on me once... well, the screen just went blank and I had to power cycle. The other ones I tried worked well. I like how they are two pages wide. Dino Dudes, Vid Grid, and a few others.

For the text files, they seem to have a bigger font although maybe I imagined that.

I did clean my glasses. 🙂

[warm oasis]

Your mean loading the readme?

That's part of the core, not this DB, but that shouldn't have changed...

[gentle bobcat]

Stuff in the Jaguar CD FAQs... and Jaguar FAQs.

[warm oasis]

Hmm, not sure there, maybe @timid snow knows

Any other systems where you would be especially keen to be able to load manuals like this?

[timid snow]

All the manuals are PDFs so there shouldn't be any text files

[gentle bobcat]

The FAQs directory contains quite a bit of text material.

[timid snow]

FAQs directory?

[gentle bobcat]

Yes, I have four directories:
Jaguar CD FAQs
Jaguar CD Manuals
Jaguar FAQs
Jaguar Manuals

pdfs are in the Manuals directories and text files are in the FAQs directories

[warm oasis]

Did you add those yourself awhile ago and forgot?

[timid snow]

Oh I only did work on the Jaguar and Jaguar CD manual directories

[warm oasis]

Those aren't part of these packs

[gentle bobcat]

Nope. I had some docs in there but I created a directory named "personal" and moved everything in there.

[timid snow]

But, the PDF game manuals look good on your end @gentle bobcat ?

[gentle bobcat]

Yes... except for the one crash I had.

I can clear it all out and do another update.

[timid snow]

Yeah AVP probably crashes bc the overlays are page 1 and the MiSTer PDF viewer is super unstable

Does the 2 page layout look good on your TV set?

[gentle bobcat]

Yes it does.

Just loaded AvP manual again and the first thing that comes up is all three overlays.

[timid snow]

Glad to hear. I worked hard on that set

[gentle bobcat]

Deleted the contents of the jaguar docs dir and will run update_all again.

Yes, those FAQ dirs are coming with the download.

[timid snow]

Yeah, one recommendation is that since the MiSTer PDF viewer is pretty unstable, you can upload the manuals to a Google Drive account or some other online cloud storage system and download the Google Drive app or a similar PDF viewing app for smartphones or tablets. I don't have a tablet, but it looks great on my iPhone. It'd look incredible on an iPad

[dim sundial]

I am not getting any FAQ dirs with the downloader ini provided by moondandy, just ran update all with them present and only got pdf manuals.

[gentle bobcat]

Well, I had run update_all several times... then deleted the contents of the Jaguar docs dir... and ran update_all and saw it download that stuff. Maybe I already had some ini that does that but if so... I don't recall anything about it.

[tropic rock]

Optional replace the pdf with a qr code?

[timid snow]

That's above my paygrade lol but it sounds cool. How do you do that?

[tropic rock]

qr code can just contain a url. The rest is as you described

[timid snow]

That might be worth looking into. I'll have to get with @warm oasis on that idea ^^

[warm oasis]

That is a nice idea, once we have more packs made up will try that as a POC, but will take some clever automation on creating them and how to manage all these codes and images. Will require some thought on the logistics side, but brilliant idea

[gentle bobcat]

Ok, I ran the docs .ini files on another MiSTer and did NOT get the text FAQ folders/files.

[warm oasis]

No, that is definitely not from us, thanks for confirming. Was worried something very odd had happened

[sterile moss]

looks like the FAQ docs are from https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ajgowans/faqs/db/db.json.zip
#1055574003810578503 message

[warm oasis]

Oh, did I share an old DB? That is an old test that isn't for wider usage, it is just a POC for what we are doing now

[south canyon]

Hey, testing latest version with single RAM + newest BIOS. Some *.cdi games boot to the music CD menu instead of the game, while others (Myst, Brain Dead 13, etc.) work fine.

Using jagcd.rom and modified Atari Jaguar CD Bios (Kitrinx v0.02), same behaviour. Could this be bad CDI dumps or a core limitation? All from the same collection.

Not a big deal, just curious.

Games as World Tour Racing and Vid Grid are a couple that boot to cd menu

[mental briar]

Probably bad cdi dumps because both of those work in the core - I played vid grid to completion in the single ram core

There is a pack on archive.org of known working dumps

[uncut atlas]

like jesus said, sounds like bad cdis

[gentle bobcat]

JAAAAG

[timid snow]

I think I found the right pack then dowdle 😉
BTW, is there a script for converting redump Jaguar CD games into cdi format?

[south canyon]

Thanks for the info. Iwas only to confirm if the game works. I will get new dumps and test

[mental briar]

And on the third day, he returned and said "ur dumps r bad"

[uncut atlas]

a little miralax does wonders

[mental briar]

This easter, practice good digestive hygiene and clean up your dumps

[uncut atlas]

oh it's easter! today we worship the rabbit gods, huzzah

[mental briar]

praise be the creepy bunny from donnie darko

[gentle bobcat]

I had been wondering about the origins of your handle.

[mental briar]

big bumper sticker fan

[gentle bobcat]

I saw a bumper sticker that said, "Hypocrites against Bumper Stickers".

I setup a new microSD card... and installed the Jaguar core... and it said it was saving cart saves but it wasn't. I had to create a saves directory named Jaguar... and I put a previous save file in there from my other microSD card and it worked. I'm guessing if the directory had been there, it would have worked... and that I didn't need to copy the save file there but I had it so I did. Would like to know if anyone else can duplicate that.

[uncut atlas]

that's kind of a thing Main does

it should make the folders for you

[gentle bobcat]

I might have been running it out of _Consoles (dual-SRAM) if that makes a difference?

[sacred blade]

Playing a bit of Bad News Baseball. With the rabbit umpires

[uncut atlas]

sounds very donnie darko

[sacred blade]

David Lynch's Inland Empire had very capable Rabbit gods

[mental briar]

Is your team name SparkleMotion

[uncut atlas]

And I find it kinda funny
I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which i'm dyin' are the best I've ever had

[gentle bobcat]

A Galaga-clone named XenoWings looks somewhat fun. I'm a Galaga arcade fan myself. Doesn't see to be a digital release available:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDeI_gY_44

I've seen the word "caravan" used in game titles and modes. What does that mean?

From context it seems to be a competitive timed mode where you are going for the highscore.

[glad flame]

In this context, it describes a score attack within a time limit in a STG, meant for a competition. There's a long history with STG titles having competitions involving getting the best score, like with Hudson Soft and Naxat Soft.

[high token]

By the by @mental briar, happy escaping death day

What are your plans now that you been resurrected?

[mental briar]

drinking, smoking, straight west coasting

[sterile moss]

Oh nah, your jag-manuals-inis.zip only has the manuals
Just figured that older link/DB was likely where the extra files dowdle has were coming from

[pure bridge]

@gentle bobcat In case you haven't already found it, they've released it as a free ROM. See the AtariAge thread for details: https://forums.atariage.com/topic/355685-xenowings/page/8/#findComment-5784254

[gentle bobcat]

Cool. Good find. Haven't tried it yet.

[gentle bobcat]

Works fine. Sweet.

[shadow topaz]

It only works fine with the dev version of BigPEmu (BigPEmu_v119-PAT-A-DEV)
Had a black screen when starting a game with BigPEmu v1.21

[gentle bobcat]

Make sure you turn on GameDrive support in BigPEmu in that dev version... and from what I've heard, it should work.

[shadow topaz]

It works on dev version without Gamedrive support.

[uncut atlas]

ooh what's this now

a game with drm?

the download link doesnt work for me

someone give me the rom?

https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=105600

I had to use internet explorer to get it

works fine in jaguar core

[gentle bobcat]

It is an http link rather than https... so some browsers have a fit about an unencrypted download.

In Firefox you can tell it to save it anyway... and I would assume Chrome as well?!?

[uncut atlas]

chrome says nope

[gentle bobcat]

Yes, it works great in the MiSTer core.

[uncut atlas]

internet explorer is paranoid about it but lets you

I guess the gamedrive support is adequate for that

ok back to my happy place

[gentle bobcat]

Hey, a system with less games than the Jaguar. 🙂 I downloaded the wip core and love your pallets.

[uncut atlas]

yes, but you know what VB has that Jaguar doesn't?

A logo that isn't Atari

[gentle bobcat]

I was going to say "legs".

[uncut atlas]

DO THE MATH

[gentle bobcat]

More power to you FPGA goddess.

[warm oasis]

Really nice to see Kitrinx working on Virtual Jaguar Boy

[gentle bobcat]

So, how does one pronounce Kitrinx? I was always saying Kit-rinx... but I think I heard VGE say Kitrin-x.

[dreamy hinge]

"#1 Atari fan"

[tranquil cape]

Waterworld on the VB is basically a Jag game

[gentle bobcat]

I didn't know this: "In 2018, hobbyist Furrtek released a board that replaces the display circuitry, allowing the Virtual Boy to be played on a VGA monitor or television set."

[mental briar]

yeah, the consolized VB

[supple finch]

Is there a subgenre term for "software released for a system after it was discontinued"? I've grouped them as "postmortem" but that's a bit bleak and I expect there is a proper term somewhere

[timid snow]

Aftermarket

[mental briar]

yeah, that

[uncut atlas]

ki-trinx

[uncut atlas]

homebrew clutter

[sage rune]

gesundheit

[uncut atlas]

like 25 years ago I was playing a game and used the name Trinx, and I made some race that was like a cat girl race, and so my boyfriend at the time suggested I use the name KiTrinx because it was a cat. And unfortunately that's the name that stuck.

[sage rune]

So that's what it was

[mental briar]

I named my computer TheJesusFish and went to a lan party. My gaming nick was Shizit and the people running the lan were like "I'm not calling you that - you're TheJesusFish now"

[sage rune]

It's fine if you're drunk.... "Thishizit !"

[mental briar]

Ive always been cringe

cant shake it

[gentle bobcat]

I received the Zaparoo cards (Reboot Games) from Australia today... and yes, they had a paper straw in the package. Those folks listen. 🙂

[slender valley]

I remember that, I think it waz called the Virtual Tap? IIRC even LLT showed it off once

[slender valley]

https://tenor.com/view/marina-mischief-makers-shake-shake-shake-gif-280947924756646014

Shake Shake!

[gentle bobcat]

Thishizit... make no mistake where you are... thishizit... (Kenny Loggins)

[gentle bobcat]

@uncut atlas - So, what if anything is left to button up the Jaguar core so that it can be pushed to production? The sooner that is done, the sooner you get more of your life back. But seriously, I wouldn't dream of wanting it released before it is ready. I've only heard good things about the current dual-RAM build and the current single-RAM build... and my own testing has been great. It is just a bit of time has passed and my memory grows fainter.

[mental briar]

I think she wants to get the virtual boy core in a good place

then she was going to come back and button this up

[gentle bobcat]

moondandy and GreyRogue kinda brought back up the investigation into CD+G support so I thought maybe they were delaying for that... but I really don't think so. That is definitely a feature almost no one (cough moondandy cough) would miss and neither Kit nor Grey were interested in the laborious task. So maybe we are in good shape as is?

[sage rune]

It would make sense to deal with CD+G separately (if ever)

[upper lodge]

oh I haven't checked in for a while, single ram is stable now?

[gentle bobcat]

It definitely isn't perfect with regards to performance when compared to the dual-RAM core, but no extraordinary effort can change that. It is what it is. There are a small handful of games that have occasional performance issues but the vast majority of stuff runs fine. If you want the best Jaguar experience, get a dual-RAM system. Otherwise, the single-RAM core is stable from what I've seen in my not comprehensive testing.

[mental briar]

I wouldn't bet on there being no way to improve it - I just don't know if anyone has looked at it super deeply

[gentle bobcat]

Yes, it can always improve over time... but currently no additional effort is going to be put into it as that has never been the focus of development. It was pretty much a given that the dual-RAM system was the sane way and a single-RAM version would be provided if it wasn't too painful. That has been my perception and I may be wrong. I definitely don't speak for anyone.

I say, just try the current single-RAM build and I think you'll be happy... and most people won't consider getting a dual-RAM core just for the Jaguar core.... but there are three additional cores that offer dual-RAM builds.

If we intend to stay on the DE10-Nano for the foreseeable future, then dual-RAM is the crutch that will keep it hobbling along for a while longer. The DE25-Nano has DDR 4 so if we ever move to that, that will last, for some amount of time, and eliminate the need for dual-RAM on the current dual-RAM cores we have... with considerable work to move there obviously. Now is when everyone can tell me how wrong I am. 🙂

[uncut atlas]

there's technically a minor bug with highlander, zakk needs to add stuff to main

I think that's about it

[gentle bobcat]

@uncut atlas - Whatever Zakk needs to add, is that related to Highlander? Or is that for multi-memtrack support and unrelated to Highlander?

[mental briar]

unrelated. highlander just sucks

[gentle bobcat]

I was going to say that more people care about CD+G than Highandler... but I decided not to say that.

[mental briar]

citation needed

[gentle bobcat]

Thanks JesusFish-o-pedia.

[warm oasis]

If GR is still looking at CD+G I don't think that should hold up any potential release, that (presumably) can just be added after release, although GR to decide there obviously

It shouldn't come down a Scotsman to decide what is more important: CD+G or Highlander, especially if there can be only one...

[timid snow]

Highlander is more important. CD+G can be played on other platforms while the jankfest that is Highlander is exclusive to the Jaguar CD.

[mental briar]

he has a point

[glossy iron]

And highlander is just a product of its time. I thought it sucked for about 20 years after buying the CD in 1997. About 5 years ago I played through the original Alone in the dark trilogy which has exactly the same problems as Highlander. The menu and item system, and especially the controls are the same. After adapting while playing aitd I came back to Highlander and it was an ok experience, played the same as Aitd. Only difference is that aitd today is remembered as a classic, highlander as garbage. But they are exactly the same besides the setting and the release year.

[gentle bobcat]

Rabble, rabble, rabble.

[warm oasis]

The issue with Highlander, as I understand it is, is sometimes you need to reboot a couple of times before it boots, right?

[gentle bobcat]

I'm not sure... and I can't try it right now to see.

[undone roost]

@glossy iron I mean one helped create a genre in 1992 when 3d was not yet the standard and that type of game didn't exist. The other was 5 years later in 1997 and it's the same? Where's the 5 years of advancement? I think that's partly why it gets crapped on.

[gentle bobcat]

Was King's Quest really that different? It was much earlier and worked way better.... but maybe they aren't similar at all.

[timid snow]

The biggest problem with Highlander imo is that you get attacked immediately upon starting the game before you can get your bearings and figure out the controls

[undone roost]

I disagree that it's a product of its time. I think it's a product of poor programming and or poor direction. There were much better 3D games in 1997 or 96 whenever it came out

Oh okay, looks like it was 95. That starts to make a little more sense

[gentle bobcat]

That is a general trend though... people who don't look closely at all declare something sucks and that opinion becomes common knowledge... and those who examine the specifics find out otherwise.

[undone roost]

But still not a great game. And I agree that the original Alone in the Dark isn't stellar. But it's what it inspired that helps it's legacy.

I can see that point, but I also think some people get obsessed with a system or game and try to justify everything about it.

I think it's great for people just to enjoy things. And they don't have to justify why they enjoy these things.

But I won't pretend the Jaguar is just a misunderstood system. It failed for several reasons, part of it being the game library. But I think it's amazing there's a core and I'm happy for the people that are true fans. I like messing around with it.

[timid snow]

Highlander is kind of at the end of the primitive 3D era in console gaming (1993-1995) which makes it fascinating even though the game's not very good. 1993 was kind of the beginning of 3D in console gaming with Star Fox and the launch of the 3DO with Crash and Burn and the Jaguar with Cybermorph. The release of the PSX and Saturn was kind of the end of the primitive 3D era imo

[undone roost]

Yeah I definitely think it's super interesting to go back and look at this stuff.

[uneven cobalt]

I played through Highlander about five months ago. It’s bad but not terrible. The ability to save at anytime reduces a lot of potential frustration.

[undone roost]

Seeing the evolution of gaming is great. But Highlander is not even a blip on that evolution. It's just fun because it's janky I think.

Alone in the dark is a blip.

[glossy iron]

Exactly it was released in 1995, before resident evil which set the standards of the genre in regards of controls and game design.

[gentle bobcat]

Blip A detected.

[undone roost]

I started playing through some of the games on this core a few days ago. I hated this system when I was younger and I still don't like it, but I love having access to it and being able to mess with the games. I could probably pick out five decent games though.

Raiden was a better port than I thought it would be.

[uneven cobalt]

I didn’t really encounter any bugs or crashes either, which I found surprising considering I was playing on the Jaguar CD.

[undone roost]

I think most of the bugs are because of the hardware itself, right?

Like the connection issue between the CD and the cartridge port?

[gentle bobcat]

I think there are 30+ good games... but quite a few of them take effort to get into and most people aren't going to hunt down the manual and start reading.

[timid snow]

Ahem

[undone roost]

I'll disagree with you on that @gentle bobcat but that's the good thing. We all have different things that we like and thanks to we can all enjoy them, jank and all.

[glad flame]

Oh yeah, the Jaguar CD in the core should break and it requires you to re-download the core to fix the problem. For that authentic hardware experience.

[gentle bobcat]

Are you a single-RAM core user? If so, how would you grade its usability? Did you even notice anything unexpected?

[undone roost]

No I'm dual ram. I did that because I wanted the Saturn to run better.

Worked out that it is better for the Jaguar core too

But I am curious, what are some of the great games you say are on the system? And I don't mean the obvious ones like Doom. What's some of the more maligned games that you think are good? I'm open to trying things that others say are bad.

[timid snow]

I watched some YouTube video years ago and apparently, the Atari Jaguar version of Rayman is way more playable than the PSX and Saturn version. The game was originally developed for the Jaguar and somehow the jumping angle was changed in the PSX and Saturn release which is why those versions have brutally difficult platforming sections, so technically the Jaguar version is the best version of Rayman, but it doesn't have the bells and whistles and the CD-based versions

[white hare]

just right click and save

[uncut atlas]

it wasn't having any of it, but I got it

[uneven cobalt]

I think some of it might be that. I know the CD is finicky. I just leave mine attached so I don’t have to keep reseating it trying to get it to read. It seems like a lot of CD games were rushed out to get to market before Atari killed the Jaguar though.

[gentle bobcat]

I haven't played 30 games myself so I can't speak from experience. When I bought the Jaguar when it originally came out, I could only afford a few games... but I did rent many more when renting games was a thing. Anyhoo, I'm just going by the reviews I've seen from people who had actually taken the time to figure them out and spend hours with them. There are only about 10 Jaguar games that I have a fondness for enough to come back to. My collection is 18 carts.... and several of those I never play.

[undone roost]

Yeah Rayman is fine. Missing some stuff compared to CD. I'm not sure if the jumping is that much worse on the CD systems though.

[timid snow]

Found the video I saw years ago (actually it was only a year ago). 9:00 mark talks about the jump arc. I'll let you come to your own conclusion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjJV0iOYASU

[glad flame]

Rayman is a weird game, because every version has differences, some major and some minor. Which is why its difficult to determine what is the definitive version.

[gentle bobcat]

If the Jaguar console had sold to Atari's projections, Rayman would have probably remained a Jaguar exclusive.

But maybe 25,000 copies of it were sold so porting became required.

[uncut atlas]

I like rayman, I turn on infinite jumping

[undone roost]

I'm just not sure how great a game can be if you have to spend the hours with it to finally see some potential. And even then it's only an average experience.

[gentle bobcat]

It's not that you have to play that long to see it is good... it is that it was actually good so that's why they spent some hours playing it.

My preference is arcade style games and there aren't a whole lot of them.

[undone roost]

Oh ok. I mean I've seen footage and read reviews on almost every Jaguar game and nothing seemed to strike me as amazing outside a few. I've tried quite a few of them. Could just be a difference of nostalgia and what you like. I'm not a fan of most Western developed games from the 80s and 90s and that's all Atari was.

[gentle bobcat]

There is a difference between good and amazing... and I used the word good.

[undone roost]

And even then, thanks to so many factors, the programmers didn't have all they needed to take advantage of the systems resources.

Yeah I meant to change my use of amazing

[glossy iron]

I played every commercial release and every homebrew, but would say there are not many great and good games, but definitely some interesting ones especially many are jaguar exclusive

[undone roost]

Like I can't stand almost any europlatformer. But I didn't necessarily think they are bad, just different experience and region growing up with games.

But I do think Zool is terrible. I hate that game.

I agree there is a difference between good and interesting. And I like interesting. I might not like playing it but I'm always interested in reading about it.

[glossy iron]

Interesting ones are the likes of Battlemorph, Iron Soldier, I-War, Zero 5, Towers II, World Tour Racing, Battlesphere, Super Burnout,

These are all above average exclusives

[undone roost]

Yeah good list. I do really want to play iron soldier and burnout more

Believe it or not I have to defend the Jaguar to my friends. I don't really like it much but there are some games I enjoy. They just straight disregard and hate it

[glossy iron]

Most people only know the obvious games and repeat everything the learned from the AVGN

[undone roost]

Yep. I love video game history and learning about stuff I didn't play or own so I'm always down to read books or watch videos to learn more before I judge.

[timid snow]

I think the Jaguar has less than 10 very good games: Tempest 2000, AvP, Battlemorph, Rayman, and maybe Iron Soldier/Iron Soldier 2, Defender 2000 and Super Burnout. Then there's a decent amount of games that could've been a lot better if they were in the oven longer like Atari Karts, Kasumi Ninja, Attack of the Mutant Penguins, Cybermorph and Ultra Vortek.

[gentle bobcat]

Cybermorph is actually a good game, expecially for its time, but when they moved it from a 2MB cart to a 1MB cart... getting way more "Where did you learn to fly" that became its inescapable meme.

[undone roost]

Oh man Kasumi Ninja.... We use that in our bad video game tournament

Yeah I agree that several games in general suffered due to corporate interference.

Cost cutting

I don't think any Western developer was capable of making a good fighting game in the 90s

[timid snow]

Yeah for 1993 Cybermorph was pretty impressive. It was like Star Fox, but with Star Fox 64's all range mode. The biggest issue was the draw distance, and the sequel Battlemorph basically improved on all its faults

[glossy iron]

Cybermorph is totally irrelevant today when you have access to Battlemorph

[timid snow]

The most rushed game was probably Trevor McFur. I can't believe they shipped that

[undone roost]

Ugh

I hate hate hate Trevor McFur

[glossy iron]

There is interesting history behind this. Atari was in need of release titles. Trevor MC für originally was a sprite scrolling demo. They just rushed that into a game and released it

[undone roost]

It shows. Lol.

[gentle bobcat]

(sounding like an idiot) When Trevor McFur came out... I was impressed by it... but I was a very basic gamer. Galaga and Galaxian were my standard.

[undone roost]

Not an idiot. Your experience at that point defined your expectations.

I really like Tempest 2k, wish I had a spinner

I like the Jaguar much more than the Lynx at any rate, lol.

[tropic rock]

Power Drive Rally seems well made from the little I played. NBA Jam is also good but not exclusive. I always liked how Primal Rage looked but have not actually played it for more than a few seconds.

[timid snow]

Yeah NBA Jam on the Jaguar could be the definitive version. The character models have a unique chibi design, it has in game music, a lot more announcer dialogue than the SNES/Genesis versions and none of the drawbacks of the slow loading times of the CD versions

There's also a great version of Wolfenstein, but the 3DO version is slightly better

[deep granite]

I think Jag has the best version of Wolf3D

[timid snow]

The 3DO has redbook CD audio, so that's why I'd give it the edge, but it's pretty negligable the difference

[glossy iron]

Jaguar has higher resolution on the other side. Both versions are really good. Jaguar port was done by John carmack himself

Oh I forgot to mention Skyhammer of the above average exclusives. It's probably the technically best jaguar game in regards of 3D

[timid snow]

I know John Carmack did the Doom port himself, but also the Wolfenstein port?

[glossy iron]

Yes. He did most of it on a weekend before meeting Atari to get to learn the jaguar since Atari wanted to license Doom

After the meeting Atari asked him/ID to license them wolf 3d as well

[timid snow]

Good to know. He also mentioned that the Jaguar hardware was great and that if they made a few tweaks it could've come close to the PSX in terms of performance capability

[glossy iron]

Yes he mentioned that since he liked hardware which could be coded on the bare hardware itself without any OS or libraries

That's what most Devs demanded otherwise

[uneven cobalt]

This is how I feel about it as well. I would add Doom, NBA Jam, and Primal Rage personally. Thankfully the home-brew community keeps releasing cool games.

[upper lodge]

Ultra Vortek and the pinball game are legit good. UV does need the turbo mode code on to really shine though

[timid snow]

Yeah I heard Ultra Vortek is the best fighting game on Jaguar. I'll definitely check it out once the core goes live

[undone roost]

I guess I'll need to play Vortek more because I don't recall it being very good. Is it good like Tattoo Assassins is bad good or like Street Fighter II good?

[dim sundial]

It's good for a Jaguar game, quite different than just being good

[undone roost]

Lol. So that's the standard. Ok, that helps set my expectations. I'm check it out.

If it's bad good that's still a fun time. Just not complete crap like Fight for Life.

[gentle bobcat]

For any Jaguar fighting game, a move matrix is likely available as none of them use SF2-type controls... so know what's there before getting started.

[gentle bobcat]

I can't twist your arm, but get it from pinned items and go to town ASAP. Why wait?

[tacit eagle]

I'd add Pitfall: The Mayan adventure. I own it on cartridge and particularly liked that it added saves. I'm inept at fighting games so I never cared about those, but my great Jaguar disappointment was racing games. I never had the CD unit, World Tour Racing has been a nice surprise even if it isn't exactly Virtua Racing.

[gentle bobcat]

( I've installed the VirtualBoy w-i-p core as well as the 3D0 w-i-p core. Is the CD-i considered production now? Have a few different flavors of that also )

[timid snow]

I’m busy working on Atari 5200 manuals. I’ll go to town on Ultra Vortek soon enough though 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

As someone who personally will not likely ever actually play Highlander and am happy with one MemoryTrack cart file (although fell free to manually make all the copies you want and switch between them in the OSD), the current core is feature complete to me.

I haven't tried that MemoryTrack multiple file w/config switching to know if is a good idea... but just spitballing. It should work in theory.

I have to wonder how many physical JagCD owners have more than one MemoryTrack cartridge (that they actually use)?

[glossy iron]

I have two. Never used more than one since all games fit on one memory track.

Ultra Vortek is not good, but it does everything right kasumi ninja does wrong when trying to clone mortal Kombat. But since we got mortal Kombat on the jaguar now... Nah.

[undone roost]

Oh I didn't realize there was a port of MK on the Jag. What version does it compare to? Arcade or more SNES/MD?

[gentle bobcat]

Watch a video and decide for yourself. I don't think TheJesusFish liked it.

[mental briar]

it uses back+hk+lk for sub zero's slide

how can anyone have any respect for that

[gentle bobcat]

I think @shadow topaz must be a semi-Mortal Kombat expert because he made a video where he clears the whole Jaguar game without dying once... if I remember correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8MCjQ70UpA

[dim sundial]

If there's 1 character to do that with, it's scorpion.

[undone roost]

Thanks for the look. Man that runs poorly. I get it's just a homebrew port but looks fairly unplayable.

At least compared to the mega drive or even SNES ports.

Graphically it looks pretty good

Just looks janky

[gentle bobcat]

There are certain parts where it reveals some bugs. It isn't done yet... so it's in beta release with at least a few months left of development. I think he is attempting to add Red Book audio for the music.

[undone roost]

That's cool he's still working on it.

[gentle bobcat]

unplayable? The dude finished the whole game in that video. Perhaps a different word.

[undone roost]

Maybe not unplayable but it doesn't look pleasant to play.

I meant more unplayable in the competitive sense

But you mentioned beta so I'm sure it'll improve.

It's neat to see these types of projects.

[gentle bobcat]

If you care to comment to the developer with more concrete specifics on what you'd like to see improved, that could be helpful. I'm not a fighting games person. I just subscribed to his patreon to be supportive... and to mention MiSTer and making sure it'd work on MiSTer which Kitrinx already satisfied when she added the Homebrew toggle.

[uncut atlas]

I mean, I didn't make the game. It's not my problem if it's poorly made

if badly made games for the Jaguar was my responsibility, i'd be in a lot of trouble

[gentle bobcat]

Now why in the world would you need to even say that? Did anyone think you were responsible for Jaguar game quality in some way?

[undone roost]

I don't know enough about MK to offer advice on fixing it. I'm more a Street Fighter guy. But I played it enough back in the day to tell it needs smoothing out, which I'm sure is coming.

[timid snow]

Dang it. There goes our chances of Kitrinx making Fight for Life and Checkered Flag good

[uncut atlas]

oh it sounded like you wanted me to improve it somehow

I just made it run

[gentle bobcat]

The perception I have is that the folks who are his Patreon subs are happy with how it has been going.

[undone roost]

I think it's great to support this stuff if it's your thing. Helps motivate the programmer.

[uncut atlas]

im not entirely sure

some of it is DRM with the specific intent to make games less accessible

[undone roost]

It's it closed beta?

[uncut atlas]

I just don't really tolerate that kinda behavior in retro games, ill defeat DRM whenever I can

[gentle bobcat]

Yep... and I don't think he has any intention of open sourcing it but I don't recall. The primary reason for that DRM if you want to call it that... is he didn't want anybody to take it and produce a physical cart out of it trying to sell it.

[undone roost]

I can see people maybe gating their own original games for old consoles. But gating a port of an IP you don't own is sketchy. I see what his intention is but it gets dicey.

[gentle bobcat]

If other retro platforms have a problem with people making random games into carts and trying to sell them... I'm not aware of it. Reproduction ones trying to be passed off at legit, sure... but not very random stuff. That is a big problem with the Jaguar.

[undone roost]

I know that PC engine company ruined that for lots of people by selling fan translations and what not on physical media.

So yes some definitely do.

Vectrex is another one where people like to gate stuff.

[uncut atlas]

DRM directly opposes my primary goal in developing cores, which is to make console games more accessible to people

[gentle bobcat]

When it is out of beta, the DRM will be removed.

[undone roost]

That's good

[gentle bobcat]

I know you also aren't a fan of MiSTer core developers who have paywalled betas.

[uncut atlas]

we all know how betas work

"betas"

[gentle bobcat]

Drag it out until the money stops coming in... and then bingo... it's done. ☹️

[uncut atlas]

anyway enough cynicysm

I dont hate homebrew devs

I don't even totally object to charging for homebrew

but I do object to hardware locking it

[gentle bobcat]

I'm glad the VirtualBoy has you in a somewhat better mood.

[hidden siren]

In other news: so happy to see all these updates have happened!

[gentle bobcat]

single-RAM user? If so, satisfied?

[hidden siren]

yes, and, well, no, but I'm guessing that's me:

For some reason, the BIOS files don't load

and thus the whole tihng doesnt

but I cant figure out for the life of me why

the weird thing is: I can see them on the SD card

when sshing

but NOT when trying to select them, even if it should auto select them

tried capitalizing, didnt fix it.

I see the same thing for PSX, but not for CD-i. Anyone got any clues?

[mental briar]

which stack do you have?

[gentle bobcat]

I ran into that on one MiSTer (I think it was the dual-RAM). so I just deleted the BIOSes... reset the core config and copied them back over. Problem fixed. What is weird is that when it tried to load, it gave a weird series of colored box sections of the whole screen... kind alike multi-colored Qix.(sp?). I couldn't duplicate that on any other system and it hasn't happened a second time... so I just blamed cosmic rays.

[hidden siren]

big mac misterpi: all the things, single ram.

weirdness is: it used to work just fine

same with older cores

[hidden siren]

I tried deleting them and having update_all redownload them

I'll delete them again, reset core, rerun download_all

[uncut atlas]

I think it's funny how often this song comes up in my auto-generated youtube playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVZaZ8yO6o&list=RDMM&index=11

[mental briar]

how comfortable are you with opening it up?

[hidden siren]

data is on external usb disk

[timid snow]

Are they really charging for the Jaguar version of Mortal Kombat? If so, yikes. They’re playing with fire. Luckily WB Games isn’t notoriously litigious like Nintendo

[gentle bobcat]

Hey, at least with the MiSTer Pi, you can add a second RAM board for cheap.

[hidden siren]

well, totally fine, but all other things seem to run without a hitch

[mental briar]

well you said PSX doesn't work either, right?

[hidden siren]

Got one prepped, but my audio system requires analog out

[uncut atlas]

GLaDOS is my favorite video game hero ❤️

[hidden siren]

oh wait - lemme rerun memtest

[gentle bobcat]

It will be free when it is done... but for beta access, he requires a pay Patreon sub.

Just one month.

[hidden siren]

Yep. Errors galore.

[mental briar]

well when does it settle down

it's going to error a bunch at first because the number at the top right is going to be the fastest it goes (167)

but it should settle down around 140

[hidden siren]

It used to work great with 150, and it didnt settle at any point until I yanked the power and tried again, and now it's happy again at 150

[gentle bobcat]

I think sometimes Al Gore Rhythms can read minds.

[hidden siren]

and now all is fine again

Everything looks great! Managed to break the audio on Dragons Lair, but that might have been because my M30 8bitdo had that weird thing that was described here earlier, so I might have just disabled it by accident. Will look tomorrow as to how I should fix that, but: all is looking GREAT. Loving the work @uncut atlas did with making everything full screen now - works excellent on my 4:3 1600x1200 screen!

Rayman looks smashing

[uncut atlas]

fun fact: the aspect ratio in that core is the first to be calculated on the fly based on the output metrics

since it trims to the game's programmed visual window, there was no way to anticipate the right aspect ratio

[hidden siren]

I used to manually select integer scaling, but didn't see that anymore

[uncut atlas]

and you know how I get about aspect ratios

[hidden siren]

but I guess that is no longer needed?

[uncut atlas]

im not sure this core ever had that

[hidden siren]

🙂 Love the way it all looks, thank you so much for all your pain for us

[uncut atlas]

anyway ill get to releasing this core soon, it's more or less "there"

im just jugging one or two other cores

three if you count NES and that guy added more tests I have to fix

[hidden siren]

huh - I guess you were (of course, as one of the heroes who made this) right! Memory is a weird thing.

[mental briar]

“or two”

[uncut atlas]

yes, virtual boy 🙂

and etc

[mental briar]

mmmhmm

[dreamy hinge]

Atari Falcon here we come

[dim sundial]

holds breath for game com core

[hidden siren]

Ngage, calling it .

[mental briar]

Don’t say that too loud, Beardo. Penny will hear you

[dreamy hinge]

more like lame com

[hidden siren]

Oh, and for all those cd+g lovers out there; after I saw that slamy at cd-i land did a cd-i Bad Apple port, I remembered someone did a cd+g port of it, too. unf. it's in .cdg format, so if someone feels like a challange to get it to work on the jag : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPecCGb284c

[uncut atlas]

that song is so dark

[hidden siren]

Lyrics-wise, or the animation?

[gentle bobcat]

Is on-the-fly-aspect useful for any other cores? Could that be added to the framework?

I see so much stuff NOT be full screen height in other cores (although I can't think of anything specific this second) and wonder if the Kitrinx "weirding way" (a Dune reference) could be of help.

[uncut atlas]

probably

if nothing else it's good for figuring out what the right aspect ratio is with signal tap which you can then hard code

[gentle bobcat]

I'm guessing you are aware of two current Atari Falcon recreation projects. One is a complete recreation (Falcon Re-Imagined by Wizztronics) using some newer tech mainly for storage options... and the other one is just a motherboard where the user has to supply all of the components. The later seems to be made for someone with a broken Falcon motherboard which doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

The later is called RE Falcon 030 I think.

[timid snow]

Still waiting for the Atari XEGS core

[gentle bobcat]

Were there any games specific to that hardware or was it all just stock 8-bit Atari computer game carts rebranded?

[timid snow]

Good question. I’m not an expert on retro PC games in the slightest. On GameFAQs they’re all just listed as Atari 8-bit. Bug Hunt was the pack in game and it used a light gun. I think it’s the same light gun as the 7800

[uncut atlas]

the 7800 light gun was pretty sorry

[timid snow]

To follow up, the XEGS didn’t have any exclusive games. They’re just ports of Atari 8-bit games. I remember trying to play these games on the Atari 8-bit core years ago and it was a bit buggy. I know there’s been a few changes to cart loading on the Atari 8-bit core lately so I might give them another try here soon on that core

It’s pretty wild that Atari released two home consoles in 1986 and 1987. By most accounts the XEGS sold 100K units in 1987 alone and was discontinued in 1993. It probably outsold the Jaguar

[gentle bobcat]

I don't think so... as "The Game Console 2.0" book says the systems sold for that range from 80K-100K..

But who knows who is accurate. I think it was probably Atari's plan to liquidate a lot of their 8-bit computer stock... both in computer parts and game carts as they were said to have used a lot of relabled older stock.

It was kinda like an Atari Flashback for the 8-bit computer line... but actually using the real hardware. Between Warner and Tramiel, they released so many revisions of the 8-bit computer line.

[slender valley]

Assuming the translated lhyrics I have heard are correct, probably the lyrics. I don't think it's THAT dark, but yeah, it's pretty dismal

[gentle bobcat]

@mental briar - I got the HDMI-SNES adapter cable for the Reflex Adapt in the mail today so I was able to use it to connect the SNES NTT controller and configure the buttons in the Jaguar core. It does indeed work quite well and is a suitable substitute for the Jaguar controller simply beacause it has the num-pad buttons and enough extra buttons to go around. Stating the obvious there. The d-pad does feel rather good and makes me more apt to slide my thumb from one direction to another rather than lifting my thumb and using the d-pad like buttons as I do on the Jaguar controller. To you, I'm only stating the obvious. I like using it better if I can rest both hands on a table. Holding it loosely in the air... not as much. The Jaguar controller has a better feeling of sturdiness simply because more of one's hands come in contact with it especially with the side of the controller with your palms. If one grew up with NES and SNES controllers (I did not have either of those during their long period of hayday), I'm sure it is a very comfortable feel. That's the closest I can come to a review. I like both. Too bad the display on the RA2 doesn't reflect the button layout of the NTT. It basically shows two SNES controllers.

So, any idea what the NTT was actually made for? You jokingly said spreadsheets.

[mental briar]

i believe that is honestly what it was for

[gentle bobcat]

One advantage I think the NTT has over the Jaguar controller is that it has that slightly recessed button over the button labeled C (that is mixed in on the right of the num-pad area) that seems to automatically be assigned as the OSD menu button. I don't have that on the Jaguar and if I want it, I usually assign a two button press for it (pause and option). Is there any way to use the shoulder buttons as duplicate num-pad buttons... for straffing in some games that typically use 1 and 3 for that?

[mental briar]

yeah, you can use the chording stuff that zakk added. its in the advanced options of the button/key remap screen

[gentle bobcat]

I'll see if I can fish that out. So really spreadsheets, eh? Were there productivity applications for the Super Famicom in Japan?

What would be the com part of Famicom. 🙂

[mental briar]

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/Super_Famicom_NTT_Data_Keypad

someone probably can fill us both in on the details

maybe for chatting online

[gentle bobcat]

Oh, so making it easier to dial phone numbers.

[mental briar]

yeah, I guess so? seems like a weird controller for that

[gentle bobcat]

So there is a keyboard for the Super Famicon made by Nintendo mostly associated with the Basic Programming language they offered.

It does not include a numpad on the keyboard.

From pictures the keyboard looks big and thick enough that the a whole Super Famicon could have fit inside of it.

Wikipedia says regarding the modem: "Famicom Net System and Famicom Modem, is a peripheral for Nintendo's Family Computer video game console, and was released in September 1988 only in Japan. Predating the modern Internet, its proprietary dial-up information service accessed live stock trades, video game cheats, jokes, weather forecasts, betting on horse racing, and a small amount of downloadable content." So perhaps those numbers, including the . for the decimal point... really helped in stock trading.

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

NTT stands for: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone

[mental briar]

but this is a super famicon controller

[gentle bobcat]

Ah Super. Yeah. That explains why the controller shown on that page has a similar layout but is different. It was the same addon just for the newer console so it had to be redesigned for the different cart port and controller port.

So in theory, the Famicon controller could also be used. 🙂 Although I don't know what the availability of those would be.

[mental briar]

they don't look comfy

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, instead of a A, B, X and Y you only get A and B... I guess the C button in the keypad area could serve as the Jaguar's C button.

[gentle bobcat]

Thanks for helping me get the dual Jag controller problem corrected. Very happy about that working perfectly now.

[uncut atlas]

this looks like it's going to transform into a gundam

[gentle bobcat]

It sure do.

[slender valley]

IT'S A GUNDA-

[thorny swift]

haha I have that in my collection and I seriously thought about trying to use it for jaguar

[upper lodge]

I would not put it on the same scale as SF2 but it's definitely better than tattoo assassins lol

[deep granite]

whats the latest core?

[sterile moss]

The one in the pins: #1055574003810578503 message

[deep granite]

ok good

just wanted to make sure that the core didn’t get updated without the pins done so

[surreal wind]

Good morning everyone,

I’m using the single-core version and I have these files in the root folder. When I start the core, I can hear the Jaguar sound, but when I try to load a ROM file (zip), MiSTer loads the file and then goes back to the red screen and nothing happens.

Am I doing something wrong?

[uncut atlas]

I was trying to make single ram caching a bit more intellegent

but it didn't really pan out

that and getting highlander to be consistent were the two bugs I had left

everything else is working or implemented

I think

you all haven't really found any bugs im aware of

with the crop or etc

[glossy iron]

Did you get the hombrews to work I linked you?

[uncut atlas]

umm, tbh i've been a little distracted by virtual boy

and etc

but I will

[ashen spoke]

DON'T ANYONE HERE DARE DISTRACT HER FROM VIRTUAL BOY

😠💢

[gentle bobcat]

@surreal wind - Maybe you have a bad ROM file you are trying to use?

Your directory structure is correct.

[mental briar]

I have one stack where the single core boots to a red bios, but Im able to load all games fine

[mild karma]

or “etc.”!

[surreal wind]

fixed with a new fullset and last version, tks!

[fleet helm]

im sure this has been brought up but im unsure how to search for it. i just installed the latest jag core and now when i press on the D pad a menu pops up with a 0 in the center and a # and * on the left and right of it. is that in the menu where i can turn it off?

[mental briar]

in the input menu of the core there is a num…pad(?) option. turn it off

[fleet helm]

oh the numstick option

[mental briar]

that’s the one, yeah

turn that off

[fleet helm]

yup, that got it. thanks

thats a good option if youre using a dual analog controller

[mental briar]

yeah, it’s pretty helpful. don’t have have to dual wield a controller + keyboard or (shudder) use a jaguar controller

[gentle bobcat]

I guess the Jaguar controller is a controller that only a mother could love... I guess I'm its mother.

[deep granite]

Can the numstick functionality be implemented for non-analog controllers such as 8bitdo M30 or SF30?

L & R buttons is what I was thinking

[uncut atlas]

how do you know. etc could be something terrible.

[gentle bobcat]

Whatever "it" might be, it probably has to do with "peenz".

[mental briar]

I wonder if she found another Atari system

[keen zealot]

*or a Game.com

[uncut atlas]

are there more atari systems? god I hope not

atari needs to go quietly into the night

and game.com is stupid

it looks cursed

[keen zealot]

It is.

[mild karma]

it could be something terrible that I also love coughGame.comcough 🙏

awww you said game.com is stupid

maybe you morons just don’t have enough brain cells to understand

I don’t even think game.com is great, but I do have nostalgia for it since I actually owned one back in the day

[glossy iron]

Game.com is only interesting die to the high Numbers of high Profile licenses

Only mobile Port of Symphony of the night for a while

[uncut atlas]

well, I do like castlevania

[timid snow]

In terms of failed handhelds, I find the N-Gage to be pretty fascinating. It had major 3rd parties such as Bethesda, Ubisoft, EA and Activison. It even got an exclusive Elder Scrolls game

[mental briar]

it's never too early to plan for april fools

[warm oasis]

Holding out for someone to bash out Game King, Hartung Game Master, and Epoch Game Pocket Computer to round off our crude Asian bootleg handhelds

[timid snow]

Seems like something Flandango might be into. Does he still develop cores?

[warm oasis]

He's been very busy the last while and had a few things he wanted to work on

[slender valley]

That and there are almost no emulators for it outside of a 30 year old official development emulator that runs terribly

But yeah, the system was by Tiger, nuff said. Didn't that thing boast about it's audio and being able to do digitized speech, yet only had a single audio channel?

I mean, listen to what it did to Sonic's music!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jj2RbvQbnuQ

[warm oasis]

I thought someone said it was in Mame?

[slender valley]

Is it? I would not be surprised, though also no idea how well it works. I didn't recall anyone bothering trying to emulate it

Huh, guess so

Never really liked using mame for anything not arcade games

[limpid isle]

that Sonic Jam music is avant-gardiste

[slender valley]

Is that french for shit?

[gentle bobcat]

We determined that there wasn't much unique about the Atari XEGS system that it was just an 8-bit computer that added the novelty of a new case and color scheme and included a lightgun for one maybe two games.

Then there is the Atari Portfolio... but that is an 8088 DOS 3.x machine and there isn't anything special about it other than its built in productivity suite... which no one should have any nostalgia for.

There was that mostly analog music player (Atari Video Music) that was very early from them... but we all decided the Jaguar's VLM was the one true Atari-based visualizer.

And lastly the Atari Go (correction, Atari Touch Me)... or something... a handheld that was a rip-off of Simon I believe.

[warm oasis]

The thing with XEGS is if try play this games on the 8bit Atari core and best of luck to you. You get presented with a list of esoteric options of what mode you want to be in, and you just guess which to pick and then maybe the game runs...

[gentle bobcat]

I thought that was more of the 7800/2600 core. I haven't used the Atari 8-bit core a whole lot (mainly to load carts) and I don't recall that.

[uncut atlas]

Not mame?

[warm oasis]

#1055574003810578503 message

[upper lodge]

Other way around

Jag vlm ain’t as cool as video music, though it does get points for being designed by Minter

[gentle bobcat]

Granted, the Atari Video Music came out in 1977 and, to the best of my knowledge, was a pioneer. Is there anything similar before or even close? Does that make it "cooler"? Well, cool is a wishy-washy term that means whatever the user of it wants it to mean so I guess so.

[uncut atlas]

Video music sucks

[gentle bobcat]

It sucks in the same way "2001: A Space Odyssey" the film sucks.

It definitely isn't game system related whatsoever and is really a piece of stereo equipment.

[uncut atlas]

2001 sucked a lot

[gentle bobcat]

As do fine wine, puppies, babies, making love, and poetry.

[mental briar]

https://tenor.com/oWHL.gif

[deep granite]

i’m honestly a little surprised no one wrote a game.com openfpga core for the pocket

[gentle bobcat]

Dry sarcasm.

[slender valley]

... you're surprised by this?

I would be surprised if someone wrote a gamecom core period

[limpid isle]

I'm flabbergasted by the game.com soundtracks

I swear you could put them on vinyl and they'd score a 9.5 on pitchfork

[ashen spoke]

wat

[limpid isle]

it's musique concrete

I love this shit when it's intentional, even more when it's not

[gentle bobcat]

In other news, Taki sent out a big update post today and it seems to just have people more confused than before. Turns out that the "Fulfilled" status that shows in your order details was just a side-effect of how Shopify works. He has three industrial shelves of SSO+Dock orders just waiting for the Dock. He has 1,200 Dock motherboards waiting to be populated (SMT)... and an updated case coming next week... so in theory, he'll have 1,200 docks ready to ship (as I interpret it) in about 2 weeks... but I have no idea how many SSO's are on those three "industrial shelves". Are there more than 1,200?

[mental briar]

what confused me was that I was told that they couldn't ship anything together so I had to pay extra to cover the extra shipping

but apparently, that wasn't true?

[gentle bobcat]

Now they are recommending that if you want your SSO sooner, to split the shipping. I'll just wait... thank you very much.

[timid snow]

Yeah last time I tried to play XEGS games it was a mess. The Tomy Tutor core is a much better experience to play Pyuuta Jr. games. You just load the Pyuuta Jr. bios and it acts like a Pyuuta Jr.

Did you just try the Atari 8-bit core?

[gentle bobcat]

Other than the two(?) lightgun games, the rest are just 8-bit computer games and should run fine on the Atari 8-bit core.

[timid snow]

Not everyone likes playing computer games though myself included. PC gaming to me is a clunky nightmare that involves keyboards and mice and configuring settings. No thanks 🙂

Just give me a controller and a ROM

Have you seen the Atari 8-bit menu OSD BTW? Wow it’s like Greek to me lol

[gentle bobcat]

The folks behind the Amiga.Vision, 0MHz DOS, and Neon68K collections also did the OneLoad64 collection for the Commodore 64. I mention that because OneLoad64 has somehow converted all of the media types into cart like files that just load and work. I wish someone could do that for the Atari 8-bit if it is possible.

KK19 - Well, if you ignore the stuff unrelated to carts and just pick the load cart... you can play carts just fine.

(I think)

[timid snow]

Thx. I’ll give it a try this weekend

[slender valley]

I mean, nowadays PC gaming is just choosing a game from your steam library and picking up the controller

[timid snow]

True, but I meant more old school PC gaming like playing DOS games where you have to use command prompts. It's pretty obtuse

Thankfully there are now huge packs like AmigaVision and there's one for DOS I think that makes it plug and play

[slender valley]

Yeah, there is a 0MHz pack for dos

[deep granite]

i want to get into mister computer stuff but i have my setup hooked up to my TV with a mini keyboard+touchpad setup which makes it uncomfortable to play games with KBM

[shadow topaz]

Played MK like crazy at the arcades and had the arcade cabinet at home.
The Jaguar version feels different, but certainly not too hard to complete.

[hidden siren]

I've been playing around with the single ram built, and it's very nice! I can confirm it seems to be running a tad slow - when I recorded the bonus-level-countdown timer, the in-game timer decreased 22.49 seconds in 22.80 real-world seconds (when recorded at 30fps - that was a mistake, precision-wise, but ok :)), so if I'm mathing correct at the end of the week, that means that particular counter runs at 98.64% of real time, again, not accounting for my silly mistake to record at 30fps, and provided the OG thing did run 100% correct, based on a 22.something length sample: not too bad, I'd say!

And: I love @uncut atlas dual stick control in lieu of a real phonepad! Works great! If I may be so bold as to do a feature request: I would love it if we were able to not just see the dialpad, but a picture of the overlays, behind the numbers displayed, so we know what the choices refer to. Know that I'm a happy camper as-is with this feature, but I thought this'd be a nice UX boost 🙂

[gentle bobcat]

You can do that if you drop in a PDF under docs/Jaguar/ with a picture of the desired overlay. Once there, you can bring up Help from the OSD and pick any text or pdf documents in that dir. Not quite the same thing and not as convenient, but will give access to the overlay(s).

[hidden siren]

Great tip; might just do that, thanks! I remember there was a collection of overlay-pictures mentioned quite some time ago in this channel, lemme see if I can find it again

[gentle bobcat]

Pinned items has it I think.

[hidden siren]

yep, indeed, a ready to use Pdf. Very handy 🙂 I had just found a post with a site which also has pictures of 3rd party ones, in case games didn't include it. never new some games didn't!

TY!

(and moondandy for making the pdf!)

[uncut atlas]

im not sure how I would gracefully do that, or even get graphics of them

[hidden siren]

we can provide the graphics, or load them from the menu; GBA new core has for examples loadable backgrounds/borders , that partly inspired me

also: who mentioned graceful ? :p

but: I fully respect your judgement that this is ridiculous

(there is a site that lists them all, or many at least: https://consolemods.org/wiki/Jaguar:Controller_Overlays , I found that link in a post by TheJesusFish)

[timid snow]

I already have way better overlay scans than those provided

Hit up @warm oasis

He’s in charge of an overlays PDF that has all the overlays prepared

[hidden siren]

Yeah, I got that file from the pins , thanks!; but if at some point we'd want the pics seperately, I'll be sure to ping him.

[gentle bobcat]

No, they have a full-screen sized scans that they have in a larger set of Jaguar documentation they have put together. They can automatically be downloaded/updated with two .ini files that they have produced... one for cart games and the other for cd games.

#1055574003810578503 message

[warm oasis]

There is a nice pdf of all the overlays in the WIP DB, so if you use that then it will be in your docs folder. Maybe it can be added to the core's docs folder so everyone gets it when the core goes live

[uncut atlas]

• Fixes a bug that Greyrogue identified in the original CD BIOS that prevents CD+G colors from drawing correctly

so you grand dreams of the atari jaguar being the CD+G nirvana were ill-founded. It had a bad bug all along with it

probably the devs couldn't find a cd+g disc to test

[last crater]

MiSTer, better than an Atari Jaguar

[slender valley]

I thought the goal generally was to try to get the original console hardware as accurate as possible, warts and all?

[fallow salmon]

i'll be expecting videos of you all belting out your karaoke favorites

[uncut atlas]

yes, but that's software

[slender valley]

I don't need a restraining order, thanks

Pretty sure my singing voice is considered a weapon of mass destruction

[slender valley]

Wasn't that a bug in the original software though? But eh, I don't think anyone is going to be gutted about that change

[uncut atlas]

yes, it was a bug in the bios softwre

[fallow salmon]

people can always use the unfixed version if they somehow care

[uncut atlas]

firmware?

right, well, realistically who is going to use cd+g on a game system

but, now you have the option, if you are so driven by whatever ungodly force, to do so

since that bios is already my improved version, an extra fix doesn't seem against the spirit of it, while the original bios is useably by whoever wishes

[timid snow]

Thanks for going above and beyond to fix Atari’s buggy bios

[gentle bobcat]

Any suggested search terms to find some sample CD+G media?

[uncut atlas]

"moondandy" + "CD"

[uncut atlas]

thank greyrogue for that one

he just pointed it out and I did his fix and rebuilt it

it looks like it was a typo by the devs, d0 instead of d1

[gentle bobcat]

So the existing core can play a CD+G file if we can find a proper .cdi file to feed it?

[tropic rock]

Use my cdg branch (for now at least)

It requires 2448 mode cdis

Updated to include cdg option

If using cdg option it requires the bin to be in 2448 mode (raw interleaved subcodes)

(This produces the correct bin for example cdrdao read-cd --driver generic-mmc-raw --device /dev/sr0 --read-subchan rw_raw mycd.toc

You would need to convert the toc to cue and use options --cdg and --swap with the python script)

The resulting cdi works with BigPemu as well

[gentle bobcat]

Thanks for the cdrom BIOS update GR.

[warm oasis]

Amazing! So can the no intro CD+G be converted to a format that will play in the core?

[tropic rock]

What file extensions are they?

[gentle bobcat]

So, .ccd, .cdg, .cue, .img, and .sub

[sage rune]

Standard CloneCD file type

except somebody seems to have copied ".sub" to ".cdg" as well

Ormaybe that's a bit-swizzle conversion; hard to say

[deep granite]

I didn’t know CD+G was used outside of karaoke

[sage rune]

It had a brief time in the West. One or two labels in particular

I think Warner Music

[gentle bobcat]

Here's a list of the releases: http://www.cdplusg.com/cdplusg/Discography/Discography.html

[dreamy hinge]

if I remember right the checksums don't match, so probably raw/cooked difference or whatever the nomenclature is

[sage rune]

bit-swizzled

the .sub is assembled as a series of bytes representing 12 bytes of subcode P then 12 of Q and so on... but that's not how they would have been sent to the machine

They would have been sent as a series of bytes with format PQRSTUVW, bit by bit

[tropic rock]

This should convert the img and sub or img and cdg to bin. If using the cdg it will work on MiSTer as it generates the timing q-subcodes itself. Using the sub will generate a more complete file with the p and q subcodes and will be more compatible (works with bigpemu).

It needs cleanup a bit.

To get cdi use the other script to convert from cue and cdi. Recopied here.

Something like python cdgimgconvcdi.py -s WNM-15012 python bincueaudio2cdi.py WNM-15012 --cdg

The cue file will need to be modified to point to the bin file instead of the img file

Converted the cd+eg demo. It does display somethings.

python bincueaudio2cdi.py The\ CD\ Graphics\ World --cdg```

(after changing the cue to point to the bin instead of the img)

Actually looks better than I expected. There are going to be color and artifacting issues because it ignores the cd+eg specific commands but mostly looks ok.

[serene pasture]

Just tried some Tempest 2000 on my SuperStation. Worked great!

[gentle bobcat]

Glad to hear it. Some day... my Prince(ss) will come... err... I mean Classic Grey SuperStation One with Dock.

I was able to produce a .cdi file that works in BigPEmu. Thanks for the info.

Amaze. Amaze. Amaze.

[warm oasis]

Great work, and interesting to confirm the CD+EG demo is CD+G compatible, I thought it might be

[gentle bobcat]

JAAAAG is a good search term for some CD+G sample media

[warm oasis]

CD+G Endgame would be a pack of the no intro set (i.e. all the actual albums released in the format, excluding Karaoke) in a format that can just be downloaded and ran on MiSTer. Feels like we are almost there.

[gentle bobcat]

https://www.montanalinux.org/files/JagCD_VLM_CD+G-sample.mp4
The embedded player under this isn't working for me but the link works fine.

[sage rune]

Well,if you want to maintain a set, that'd be nice

Just make sure that they include all formats

[gentle bobcat]

What does "all formats" mean? With regards to the Jaguar MiSTer core and BigPEmu, the only format is .cdi

No-Intro already has published their collection... and as far as I can tell, it is 31 of the 50 that are available.

I have posted what I thought were the 12 most mainstream titles out of the 31 but will do the rest of them ASAP. I have my in-laws visiting this weekend for my older son's birthday.

In related news, TRU FUN games is working on a media player for Red Book audio that he hopes will allow playing any desired soundtrack for his game... which is a bit of a feat... playing audio from a CD from a Jag cart game. He posted a video of it sorta working but no sound yet. He is getting the CD to read, get a track list, and play a track (without sound) so far... so he is making progress. I told him he should consider doing a general purpose audio player for the JagCD that can do data disks with .mp3, .flac, and .opus files. He says he has some ideas. Not holding my breath but will wait and see how that pans out.

[timid snow]

It’s fun seeing dowdle get so excited about Jaguar news. Glad to have a fellow Atari fan on the Discord server

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, I get too excited sometimes. 🙂

[uncut atlas]

it's not and stop bringing up the cd egg shit

it's dumb

[warm oasis]

GR literally confirmed it does.
#1055574003810578503 message

[uncut atlas]

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

https://tenor.com/view/angry-angrypanda-panda-mad-commercial-gif-1686382995209837276

[gentle bobcat]

I'm guessing that CD+EG is somewhat backwards compatible with CD+G. (ducking)

[uncut atlas]

[slender valley]

Does this count as a CD Egg?

[uncut atlas]

[slender valley]

That was the second one I was thinking of 😆

[gentle bobcat]

( me imagines the big fight scene from Kill Bill part 1 as an animated gif )

https://giphy.com/gifs/kill-bill-film-total-ATGtSpJKlh6Sc

[tropic rock]

GreyRogue was curious

[warm oasis]

Glad you did as it was a mystery if it was backwards compatible or not

[ashen spoke]

Remember when we used to play games on the Jaguar core?

[slender valley]

No

[deep granite]

i really want an atari jaguar even i have to spend upwards of $500 on it lol

[tacit eagle]

I play both from time to time, the keypads on the real Jaguar controllers are helpful in certain situations. I also have Atariage Jaguar carts which aren't available on the MiSTer. Wireless controllers on the MiSTer are a lot more convenient though.

[ashen spoke]

What do you mean about the AtariAge Jaguar carts?

[gentle bobcat]

Some stuff is currently only avalable in physical cart form.

[ashen spoke]

Oh, because it has custom hardware or hasn’t been dumped yet?

I mean hasn’t been “preserved”

[gentle bobcat]

All of that stuff has probably only sold a couple of hundred copies per title.

[uncut atlas]

you should dump them so we can make sure they work 🙂

there's no reason the core can't really cover all the titles, and it can certain handle real controllers with a simple adapter if that's the life you want to choose for yourself

[gentle bobcat]

MiSTer Addons is coming out with the Reflex Adapt 2 which allows for using two Jaguar controllers. The Reflex Adapt can accommodate one. I enjoy using mine. TheJesusFish really prefers a controller (NTT) that came out for the SuperFamicom that has a keypad on it... and that also works with the Reflex Adapt. Point being there are several controller alternatives to pick from. BlissBox also has an adapter.

There is the Reflex Adapt 2 with two Jaguar controllers hooked up... and the SuperFamicom NTT controller thrown in for good measure (not hooked up).

[shadow topaz]

Also waiting for mine, blue with dock.

[tacit eagle]

I'm not against playing the actual Jaguar. It sits right next to a MiSTer in fact; unless it fails in a way I can't repair, I'm keeping it around.

[mental briar]

Is that mt32pi stand and backplate 3d printed? If so, do you have the stl?

[tacit eagle]

I bought it as a set with the hat, I could look it up though? My other MT32 Pi is on the MiSTer Pi at my desk and sort of floats next to it. 😹

[mental briar]

I’ve been looking for a stand for it like that. Something I could screw it into

[tacit eagle]

I found it on eBay as a "limited edition" set. I like having it sit rather than float around. This is the one I bought:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/165130511131?itmmeta=01KP1D92014YM8FHWWK41ZGC0H&hash=item26728ba31b:g:OcEAAOSwkTVg84sj

I probably wouldn't have bought it if I didn't have two MiSTers, but I do like how it neatened the TV stand a bit.

[gentle bobcat]

Here's the MT32-Pi I bought for my Heber MultiSystems. Should be here with a few additional SNAC carts on Monday:
https://shop.heber.co.uk/pi-mms-expansion-cartridge-for-multisystem-no-rpi-assembled-black-enclosure/
Doesn't have a specific stand but they have a holder for their carts that I haven't decided to get:
https://shop.heber.co.uk/multisystem-snac-cartridge-and-sd-media-holder-in-charcoal-black/
I believe they have published the print files for everything.

[uncut atlas]

I usually go with porkchop's stuff

it tends to be the highest quality and he's always been really involved with working with devs, so it tends to get the most support in development too

I actually rather resent that things like multisystem seem like they try to replace the MiSTer name with their own branding, personally

but maybe that's just a me thing

[gentle bobcat]

I buy plenty of stuff from MiSTer Addons (two Reflex Adapts and about 10 adapters)... and Retro Remake too. I spread the love. Regarding Heber, they release the schematics and print files for everything so anyone can make it... and they fund The Retro Collective museum... and the MiSTer stuff is mainly a side hussle for them. They aren't quite non-profit with the MiSTer stuff, but close to it.

I would love for MiSTer Addons to be a reseller for Heber, Retro Remake and Zaparoo... or he could, with regards to the Heber stuff, manufacture it himself.

( so we don't have to buy retail stuff from overseas so much )

[mental briar]

I keep telling him to make a nice stand for the mt32pi but he keeps saying my message cannot be delivered because the recipient has blocked you.

Which is a weird thing to say to a person

[uncut atlas]

how did you manage to upset porkchop

[mental briar]

I kid. He hasn’t blocked me yet

Working on it. If I keep bugging him about the mt32, he might

[keen zealot]

YET.

[gentle bobcat]

Oh, I forgot... I also have one of the revisions of MiSTercade. I bought it when they were very hard to get... thinking I might have a use for it someday. It can be used as a regular MiSTer system but maybe someday I'll have an arcade cabinet... after I retire.

[glad otter]

Alright I won an auction and got a jaguar controller. What do I get for my MISTer?

[gentle bobcat]

Now that I think about it, I no longer have a stand alone DE10-Nano to use with the MiSTercade.

[glad otter]

SNAC? Another converter?

[gentle bobcat]

There is no SNAC for the Jaguar controller. You have two options to pick from. The Reflex Adapt 2 (coming soon) or the Bliss-Box Gamer-Pro Advanced. They both use the HDIM-port based adapters.

I posted a picture of my Jag controller setup earlier this morning so scroll up.

TheJesusFish and I both have the Reflext Adapt... and Pixel Cherry Ninja did a YouTube live stream yesterday showing his. I'm sure more folks here have them. I only know one person (Shinto) who has the Bliss-Box one... and I haven't heard much about it yet. Hopefully they'll cover it when they do a podcast on the MiSTer Jaguar core.

PCN was using the PC Engine adapter to use an original PCE controller.

I've been accumulating original controllers for the last few weeks and have a few more in route. Hope to use them all both with the RA2 and SNAC carts on the MMS2:

[hidden siren]

You showed us a great pile of controllers and I can't help but wonder what slashdot is like nowadays :). But: great collection!

[mental briar]

Man I love those pi monitors

I wish they could do 50hz

[gentle bobcat]

Yeah, I've been reading Slashdot pretty much every day since like.... 1998? 🙂

[slender valley]

Been meaning to find some sort of backplate to ptu on my mt32 as well, just to cover the bare circuitboard

[tacit eagle]

Slightly messier MiSTer Pi setup, the MT32 Pi just sort of floats.

The stand really made all the difference on the DE-10 Nano MiSTer.

[sly relic]

My Jaguar CD games are in bin/cue format, and I’m not having luck getting them to boot. Anything I should look at?

[dim sundial]

yes, they should be in cdi format

[sly relic]

Is there a recommended tool for converting them?

[dim sundial]

No clue myself, someone else might chime in about that. There does exist premade cdi images for jaguar cd games however.

[high token]

Love how the case is modeled after the US SNES

[tacit eagle]

There's a redump2cdi which mostly works.

https://dreamcast.wiki/Redump2CDI

[sly relic]

I found another set in CDI, but thanks!

[gentle bobcat]

GreyRogue had posted a .c program and then later someone made a python version of it (convert from bin/cue to .cdi)

[mental briar]

@gentle bobcat can you confirm that the NTT pad's keypad works on the core? I can bind it in the controller settings for the core, but I cannot get it to register keypad presses once in game