Subject: FAQ: Atari Jaguar Frequently-Asked Questions From: rjung@netcom.com (Robert A. Jung) Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1998 06:17:31 GMT Newsgroups: alt.atari-jaguar.discussion,rec.games.video.atari,alt.answers,news.answers,rec.answers Followup-To: rec.games.video.atari Archive-name: games/video-games/atari/jaguar Posting-Frequency: monthly _ _ ____ _ _ _ ____ ||| Atari | | / |/ ___\| | | | / | _ \ Frequently Asked Questions ||| | | / | | __| | | | / | |_| | / | \ /| | |/ / | | |_ | | | |/ / | _ < | |_| / _ | |__| | |_| / _ | | \\\ \___/_/ |_|\____/ \___/_/ |_|_| \\\ \\\ Created by Robert Jung (rjung@netcom.com), because no one else wanted to. Dedicated to ASTEROIDS, for getting me hooked in the first place Last update: 3/31/1998 ============================================================================== This file is not maintained by, overseen by, endorsed, or otherwise associated with Atari Corp., JTS, or any of its subsidiaries. It's just a collection of questions and answers, with a few news tidbits thrown in. This file is posted on a monthly basis to rec.games.video.atari, alt.atari-jaguar.discussion, news.answers, and rec.answers around the first of the month. The latest version of this file is also available on the world- wide web at http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/atari/Atari.shtml. It is maintained by Robert Jung at rjung@netcom.com on the Internet. Send corrections, news, updates, comments, questions, or other stuff to that address. All mail is welcome! Updates since the last publicly posted FAQ have a percent sign (%) in the first column. ============================================================================== Q. What was the Atari Jaguar/Jaguar64? A. The Atari Jaguar was the world's first 64-bit home console video game system. Developed after three years of research, manufactured by IBM, the Jaguar was released in Fall 1994, and offered high-speed action, CD-quality sound, and polygon graphics processing beyond most other machines available at the time. Orignally released as the Jaguar, Atari had, at times, referred to the machine as the "Jaguar64" for marketing purposes. For the sake of simplicity in this document, the term "Jaguar" will be used. ============================================================================== Q. What was included when you bought a Jaguar? A. The Jaguar was first sold for $250. It came with the Jaguar itself, one controller, an AC adapter, a television RF switch box, and the CYBERMORPH video game. Later on, the Jaguar was sold without a game, and as time progressed, the Jaguar was sold for $150, then $99. ============================================================================== Q. What happened to Atari, anyway? A. The trials and tribulations of Atari could fill a small book (and, in fact, once did). To summarize VERY briefly, the history of Atari is as follows: 1972 Atari Inc. founded by Nolan Bushnell from a $250 investment. Pong arcade game becomes a smash sensation. 1976 Atari Inc. sold by Bushnell to Warner Inc. for $28 million. 1980 Atari Inc. posts record sales. $2 billion profits annually. Atari occupies 80 offices in Sunnyvale, CA. 1983 Decline of video games and irresponsible spending by Atari Inc. results in record losses ($536 million, up to $2 million daily). 1984 Warner divides Atari Inc. Home division (Atari Corp.) is sold to Jack Tramiel. 1985 Atari Corp. releases Atari ST home computer. 1989 Atari Corp. releases Atari Lynx, the world's first color hand-held video game system (see the Atari Lynx FAQ). 1993 Atari Games becomes Time-Warner Interactive. 1993 Atari Corp. releases Atari Jaguar, the world's first 64-bit home video game system. 1996 Time-Warner Interactive (Atari Games) sold to WMS. 1996 Atari Corp. announces reverse merger with JTS Corporation. 1996 Atari Corp. and JTS connsumate deal on July 31 1996. The deal was beneficial to both parties; JTS needed Atari's $50 million to shore up their financial situation, and the Tramiels needed some way to liquidate their SEC Rule 144 holdings in Atari. The Tramiels are now obligated to find fiances for JTS, and the Atari "profit center" in JTS must continue to do some business to validate the tax loss carryforward. Hence, the name Atari continues to live on for tax purposes, and the odds are very good that the licensing of titles and patents under the Atari name will continue for several years, at least. ============================================================================== Q. Who now owns/handles Atari's properties? A. At the time of this writing, Atari Corp.'s licenses and intellectual property are now owned by JTS. John Skrunch of Atari/JTS reports that the company is willing to license or sell the properties if an acceptable deal is offered. CWest has been contacted to sell Atari Jaguar software and hardware. CWest can be reached via electronic mail at atari@cwest.com, or on their WWW page at http://www.cwest.com/atari/ ============================================================================== Q. What was IBM's role in the Jaguar? A. IBM had a $500 million contract with Atari Corp. to assemble, test, package, and distribute Jaguar units. Manufacturing was done at IBM's Charlotte, NC facility, and the Jaguar was IBM's first attempt at producing a consumer-grade product for an outside vendor. By mid-1994, Jaguar units were also manufactured by Comptronix in Colorado Springs. Jaguar circuit boards were manufactured and assembled by an IBM subcontractor; IBM then cased, tested, and packaged final Jaguar units, which were then sent to Atari. IBM had no participation in the actual design of the Jaguar chipset. ============================================================================== Q. Okay, who did design the Jaguar? A. The primary designers of the Jaguar were Martin Brennan and John Mathieson. They started their own company in 1986 called Flare 1, and designed an original multiprocessor game console. After the system was finished, Flare wanted to "evolve" the system, but needed funding for the job. Atari was contacted, believed in the idea, and agreed to participate. Atari, Brennan, and Mathieson started a new company called Flare 2 to develop the system. As Jaguar development moved along, it became apparent that the machine would leapfrog the then-new systems from Nintendo and Sega (the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, respectively), so they decided to bring the machine to light. The entire process took three years, from initial design to production-ready models. The proprietary Jaguar chipsets were manufactured by Toshiba and Motorola. ============================================================================== Q. What are the specifications of the Jaguar? A. Physical dimensions: Size: 9.5" x 10" x 2.5" Controls: Power on/off Display: Programmable screen resolution. Horizontal resolution is dependent on the amount of scanline buffer space given to the "Tom" graphics processor. Maximum vertical resolution varies according to the refresh rate (NTSC or PAL). Reportedly, a stock Jaguar (without additional memory) running NTSC can display up to 576 rows of pixels. 24-bit "True Color" display with 16,777,216 colors simultaneously (additional 8 bits of supplimental graphics data support possible) Multiple-resolution, multiple-color depth objects (monochrome, 2-bit, 4-bit, 8-bit, 16-bit, 24-bit) can be used simultaneously Ports: Cartridge slot/expansion port (32 bits) RF video output Video edge connector (video/audio output) (supports NTSC and PAL; provides S-Video, Composite, RGB outputs, accessible by optional add-on connector) Two controller ports Digital Signal Processor port (includes high-speed synchronous serial input/output) Controllers: Eight-directional joypad Size 6.25" x 5" x 1.6", cord 7 feet Three fire buttons (A, B, C) Pause and Option buttons 12-key keypad (accepts game-specific overlays) The Jaguar has five processors which are contained in three chips. Two of the chips are proprietary designs, nicknamed "Tom" and "Jerry". The third chip is a standard Motorola 68000, and used as a coprocessor. Tom and Jerry are built using an 0.5 micron silicon process. With proper programming, all five processors can run in parallel. - "Tom" - 750,000 transistors, 208 pins - Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1) - 32-bit RISC architecture (32/64 processor) - 64 registers of 32 bits wide - Has access to all 64 bits of the system bus - Can read 64 bits of data in one instruction - Rated at 26.591 MIPS (million instructions per second) - Runs at 26.591 MHz - 4K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM - Performs a wide range of high-speed graphic effects - Programmable - Object processor (processor #2) - 64-bit RISC architecture - 64-bit wide registers - Programmable processor that can act as a variety of different video architectures, such as a sprite engine, a pixel-mapped display, a character-mapped system, and others. - Blitter (processor #3) - 64-bit RISC architecture - 64-bit wide registers - Performs high-speed logical operations - Hardware support for Z-buffering and Gouraud shading - DRAM memory controller - 64 bits - Accesses the DRAM directly - "Jerry" - 600,000 transistors, 144 pins - Digital Signal Processor (processor #4) - 32 bits (32-bit registers) - Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second) - Runs at 26.6 MHz - Same RISC core as the Graphics Processing Unit - Not limited to sound generation - 8K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM - CD-quality sound (16-bit stereo) - Number of sound channels limited by software - Two DACs (stereo) convert digital data to analog sound signals - Full stereo capabilities - Wavetable synthesis, FM synthesis, FM Sample synthesis, and AM synthesis - A clock control block, incorporating timers, and a UART - Joystick control - Motorola 68000 (processor #5) - Runs at 13.295MHz - General purpose control processor Communication is performed with a high speed 64-bit data bus, rated at 106.364 megabytes/second. The 68000 is only able to access 16 bits of this bus at a time. The Jaguar contains two megabytes (16 megabits) of fast page-mode DRAM, in four chips with 512 K each. Game cartridges can support up to six megabytes (48 megabits) of information, and can contain an EEPROM (electrically erasable/programmable read-only memory) chip to save game information and settings. Up to 100,000 writes can be performed with the EEPROM; after that, future writes may not be saved (performance varies widely, but 100,000 is a guaranteed minimum). Depending on use, this limit should take from 10 to 50 years to reach. The Jaguar uses 24-bit addressing, and is reportedly capable of accessing data as follows: Six megabytes cartridge ROM Eight megabytes DRAM Two megabytes miscellaneous/expansion All of the processors can access the main DRAM memory area directly. The Digital Signal Processor and the Graphics Processor can execute code out of either their internal caches, or out of main memory. The only limitations are that (1) "jump" instructions in main memory have certain restrictions; the JMP (unconditional jump) command is longword-aligned, while the JR (jump-indexed-by-register) command must be either word- or longword- aligned. And (2) running out of the cache is much faster (up to four times faster) and efficient. Some believe that the inability to jump/branch in main memory makes the main memory feature useless. Swapping data between the caches and the main memory is a quick, low overhead operation, and therefore the main memory is often used as "swap space" for cache code. The RISC compiler included in the latest