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_ _ ____ _ _ _ ____ ||| 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: 11/27/1993 ============================================================================== This file is not maintained by, overseen by, endorsed, or otherwise associated with Atari Corp. 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, usually around the first of the month. 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 publically posted FAQ have a vertical bar in the first column. ============================================================================== Q. What is the Atari Jaguar? A. The world's first 64-bit home console video game system. Developed after three years of research, manufactured by IBM, the Jaguar offers high-speed | action, spectacular graphic effects, and CD-quality sound for $250. ============================================================================== Q. How does IBM fit into this? A. IBM has a $500 million contract with Atari Corp. to assemble, test, package, and distribute Jaguar units. Manufacturing is done at IBM's Charlotte, NC facility, and the Jaguar is IBM's first attempt at producing a consumer grade product for an outside vendor. IBM has no known participation in the design of the Jaguar. IBM has no plans to create games for the Jaguar. ============================================================================== Q. Okay, who did designed the Jaguar? A. Details are murky. Atari claims that the Jaguar took over three years to develop, and was released because work was progressing faster than expected. Seeing an opportunity to leapfrog the new systems from Nintendo and Sega, they decided to bring the machine to light. The Jaguar chipset is reportedly co-developed by Flare, a British company with ties to Atari, according to Jez San of Argonaut Software. The proprietary chips are manufactured by an unnamed Japanese firm and also by Motorola. ============================================================================== Q. What are the specifications of the Jaguar? A. Physical dimensions: Size: ?" x ?" x ?" Controls: Power on/off | Display: Resolution up to 800 x 576 pixels 32-bit "True Color" display with 16,777,216 colors on-screen simultaneously Ports: Cartridge slot ComLynx connection High-speed synchronous serial port Video outputs -- S-Video, RF, Composite, RGB (supports NTSC and PAL) Two controller ports 32-bit expansion port Digital Signal Processor port Controllers: Eight-directional joypad 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 used as a coprocessor. Tom and Jerry are built using an 0.5 micron silicon process. - "Tom" - 750,000 transistors, 208 pins - Graphics Processing Unit (processor #1) - 64-bit RISC architecture - Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second) - 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 - 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 bits - Performs high-speed logical operations - Hardware support for Z-buffering and Goudraud shading - DRAM memory controller - Accesses the DRAM directly - "Jerry" - 600,000 transistors, 144 pins - Digital Signal Processor (processor #4) - 32 bits - Rated at 26.6 MIPS (million instructions per second) - 8K bytes of zero wait-state internal SRAM - CD-quality sound - 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) - Rated at 13.3MHz - General purpose control processor Communication is performed with a high speed 64-bit data bus, rated at 106.4 megabytes/second. The 68000 is only able to access the lowest 16 bits of this bus. The Jaguar contains two megabytes (16 megabits) of fast page-mode DRAM. Game cartridges can support up to six megabytes (48 megabits) of uncompressed or compressed information. Compressed data can be uncompressed in real-time, and can be equivalent to almost 50 megabytes (400 megabits). Compression is performed with JagPEG, an enhanced JPEG image decompression mechanism. Other Jaguar features: - Support for ComLynx I/O for communications with the Atari Lynx hand-held game system and networked multiconsole games - The two controller ports can be expanded to support "dozens" of controllers - Digital and analog interfaces - Keyboards, mice, and light guns are possible - Expansion port allows connection to cable TV and other networks - Digital Signal Processor port allows connection to modems and digital audio peripherals (such as DAT players) ============================================================================== Q. Is the Jaguar really a 64-bit system? A. Yes. Atari's position is that the Jaguar uses a 64-bit distributed RISC architecture, a 64-bit data bus, and a 64-bit graphics RISC processor as the primary CPU (central processing unit). The 16-bit Motorola 68000 serves as a subordinate coprocessor, and can only access the lowest 16 bits of the bus. The situation has been described as similar to the 16-bit ISA bus present in 32-bit personal computers. The "Tom" processor is a full-fledged 64-bit chip. The object processor and the blitter are confirmed to use 64-bit registers, although not all of the Jaguar's processors are 64 bits. As Eric Smith of Atari Corp. says, "one wouldn't call a 32-bit workstation with an 8-bit keyboard chip an '8-bit' machine." ============================================================================== Q. How can a graphics processor be the CPU? A. The 64 bit custom graphics chip is a good general purpose RISC unit, but | it has been optimized for graphics work. As Rob Nicholson of Handmade | Software says, "There is no primary processor in the Jaguar. It's up to | _me_ which I decide to use depending on the task." ============================================================================== Q. What kind of special effects can the Jaguar do? A. The Jaguar is capable of doing the following visual effects: - High-speed scrolling. - Texture mapping on two- and three-dimensional objects. - Morphing one object into another object. - Scaling, rotation, distortion, and skewing of sprites and images. - Lighting and shading from single and multiple light sources. - Transparency. - "Rendering" up to 850 million one-bit pixels/second (35 million 24-bit pixels/second, 26 million 32-bit pixels/second), or 50 million Goroud shaded pixels/second. "Rendering" is believed to mean transferring a pixel from a frame buffer to the screen. | - Sprites of "unlimited" size and quantity. Realistically, sprites can be | over 1,000 pixels wide/tall, and the number of sprites allowed is | limited by processor cycles instead of a fixed value in hardware. | - Programmable screen resolutions, from 160 to 800 pixels per line. The | resolution can be increased even further with additional hardware. ============================================================================== Q. How come the Jaguar claims to have "32-bit" graphics, when 16 million colors only need 24 bits for rendering? A. It is widely believed that the additional 8-bits is used for Z-buffering and/or an alpha channel, to allow the Jaguar to perform some of its special effects. ============================================================================== Q. Okay, get to the meat -- which is better, the Jaguar or the 3DO? A. Ye Gods, the eternal question. The popular consensus is that the biggest strength of the Jaguar is that it deliveres performance comparable to the | 3DO for a lower price ($250 Jaguar vs. $500-$700 3DO units). The same consensus say the biggest strength of the 3DO is the corporate strength behind it: over 300 developers, a consortium of multibillion dollar companies, more reliable advertising and promotion, etc. Whether or not this makes the games or the machines any better is (hotly) debatable. Best bet, as always, is to try the two machines, see what games you like, which system offers them, then decide. ============================================================================== Q. What's the information on the CD-ROM drive? A. A double-speed CD-ROM drive has been announced for release in 1994, with an estimated price of $200. It is reported that the CD-ROM drive is capable of transferring data continuously at 350K per second, or run at normal audio rates of 175K per second. Storage on a disc is expected to be around 700 megabytes (5,600 megabits). The CD-ROM drive plugs into the Jaguar's cartridge slot on top of the machine, and offers a cartridge slot to permit playing cartridge or CD games. The Jaguar CD-ROM drive allows delivery of full-screen, full-motion video. The CinePak video decompression system has been licensed from SuperMac Technologies, and permits over sixty minutes of video to be stored on a single compact disc at 30 frames a second. Movie quality pictures can then be overlaid on the screen with computer generated graphics if the game demands it. Time-Warner has licensed a library of film clips from its movies to Atari for use in Jaguar games. The Jaguar CD-ROM is also designed to interface with audio CD, Karaoke CD, CD+Graphics and optional Kodak Photo CD. The system will not be 3DO compatible or CD-I compatible. An optional MPEG2 (Motion Picture Experts Group) compression cartridge may also be available, to allow users to play full length motion pictures from CD. The original release date for the CD-ROM drive is March, 1994. It has been reported, though, that it will be delayed until September 1994, to allow more CD games to be ready for its release. ============================================================================== Q. What's this "Panther" I hear about? A. Quick history lesson: Sometime in the late 1980s, Atari Corp. was doing research and development on "next generation" video game consoles. There were two systems, a 32-bit machine called the Panther, and a 64-bit machine called the Jaguar. It is reported that work on the Jaguar was progressing better/faster than expected, so Atari abandoned the Panther to focus their energies on the Jaguar instead. Reports of development work on the Panther have been whispered since 1988; some people have erroneously mistaken those rumors to be about the Jaguar. The Panther reportedly was considered a "32-bit" machine by Atari, though for reasons unknown. It featured three chips, consisting of a Motorola 68000 running at 16Mhz, an object processor called the Panther, and an Ensoniq sound processor called Otis, featuring 32 sound channels. The Panther could supposedly display 8,384 colors from a palette of 262,144 colors, and could display 83,840 sprites of any size simultaneously. ============================================================================== Q. What do I get when I buy a Jaguar? A. The Jaguar package has a suggested retail price of $250, and contains the Jaguar itself, one controller, an AC adaptor, and the game CYBERMORPH. There are rumors that a lower-priced package will be made available, without the free game, but that information has not yet been confirmed. ============================================================================== | Q. I want something better than RF output from my Jaguar. What do I do? | A. Atari will be offering an adaptor in the near future (early 1994) to give | the Jaguar RGB, S-Video, and other output formats. In the meantime, if you | are willing to build your own composite video/stereo cable for the Jaguar, | Dennis Brown (dgb@owlnet.rice.edu) offers the following instructions: | | Parts (from Radio Shack): 274-384 solderless phono plugs (4) | 278-772 25-conductor ribbon connector | 276-1564 34-position card-edge connecter | | Cut off ten of the pins from the 34-position card-edge connector. Then, | on the Jaguar's AV connector, wire the pins as follows: | | 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 | - - - - - - - - - - - - | - - - - - - - - - - - - | 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 | | 1 - Audio out 16 - Monochrome video (LUMA) | 2 - Audio out 18 - Ground | 3 - Ground 20 - Ground | 4 - Ground 22 - Standard composite color video out | | NOTE: If you are using standard composite video, the only video connection | you need is pin 22. This is a full signal, not just the color | complement to the monochrome output. | ============================================================================== Q. How does the ComLynx port on the Jaguar work? Can I connect my Lynx to it? A. The ComLynx port allows communication between Jaguar units and Lynx units. In theory, it would be possible to daisy-chain multiple units of either machine type for multiplayer games. At the current time, however, no such plans are in the works. Instead, it is seen as allowing Lynxes to be used as peripherals: software can be developed to allow Lynxes to be part of a Jaguar game as controllers. ============================================================================== Q. Who are the third-party developers for the Jaguar? A. The following companies have been announced as official developers for Jaguar software: Anco Software Ltd. Maxis Software Telegames Beyond Games Inc. Microids Tiertex Ltd. Dimension Technologies Midnight Software Inc. Titus Eurosoft Ocean Software Ltd. Tradewest High Voltage Software Rebellion Software Ltd. Trimark Interactive Krisalis Software Ltd. Retour 2048 U.S. Gold Ltd. Loriciel U.S.A. | Silmarils Millenium Park Place Productions | Ubi Soft Gremlin Software Microprose | Accolade Virgin Interplay | 21st Century Software Activision(?) | | Also, Atari Games/Tengen has licensed the Jaguar architecture for use in | future arcade games. | ============================================================================== Q. What are the upcoming Jaguar games? A: Note: These lists are hardly definitive. It's based on many sources, and in some cases, it just might be dead wrong. Games also often change from pre-release to production. Upcoming Jaguar cartridge games: Title Players Description ----------------- ------- ------------------------------------------ Alien vs. Predator 1 Be the Marine, the Alien, or the Predator... | Al Michaels 1-2? Baseball action with play-by-play | Announces Hardball Batman: The 1? The protector of Gotham rises again Animated Series | Battlechess 1-2 Take the King and take a break Battlewheels 1-6? Build it, arm it, drive it, shoot it Battlezone 2000 1 The tank wars continue | Brett Hull Hockey 1-2? Red hot action in the ice cold rink | Bubsy in Claws 1 Save Earth's yarn from the Woolies | Encounters of the | Furred Kind | Charles Barkley 1-2 Professional basketball action | Basketball Checkered Flag II 1? Formula 1 racing with fully rendered 3D Cisco Heat 1 Race through the streets of San Fran Club Drive 1? Relax at a fantasy driving vacation resort Crescent Galaxy 1-2 Side-scrolling shooting over five planets Cybermorph 1 Rescue survivors in a shape-changing ship Cyberpunk City 1 William Gibson's futureview on a cartridge Dracula the Undead 1 Escape from the Count's castle Dino Dudes:Evolution 1? Guide humans to survive prehistoric dangers | Doom 1 Crosstime war, big guns and bigger beasts | Grand Prix 1? Indy car auto racing in 64 bits | Jack Nichlaus' Power 1? Go golfing with the great one | Challenge Golf | Jimmy Connors' 1-2 Singles or doubles, you have to face Jimmy | Tennis Kasume Ninja 1-2 Hone your fighting skills with 91 moves Raiden 1-2 Destroy the enemy's military might Steel Talons 1 Take off in an Apache helicopter simulator Tempest 2000 1 Return of the demons, spikes, and zappers Tiny Toon 1? Stop Montana Max from mining TiToonium Adventures Upcoming Jaguar CD-ROM games: Title Players Description ----------------- ------- ------------------------------------------ Dracula 1 Bram Stoker's creature stalks the Jaguar Space Pirates 1? Scabbards, swashbuckling, and space | Return to Zork 1 The Great Underground Empire rises again ============================================================================== Q. How can I reach Atari Corp.? A. Customer Service: (408) 745-2000 Mailing Address: Atari Corp. 1196 Borregas Avenue Sunnyvale, CA 94089-1302 Interested developers should contact Bill Rehbock at (408) 745-2082. ============================================================================== Q. How is development for the Jaguar done? A. Jaguar game development environments exists for the Atari TT030 computer or an IBM PC/compatable. Art development can be performed on any machine, whether a low-end Apple Macintosh or commercial rendering software such as SoftImage. Estimated price for a developer's package is $9,000 for the TT030 setup, and $7,500 for the PC/compatable platform. The package includes a Jaguar development unit, documentation, and development/debugging software. The PC development system is reported to have inferior debugging tools. The centerpiece of the TT030 deveopment platform is DB, an assembly- language level debugging tool. The Jaguar and the TT030 are connected with a parallel cable, and software can be debugged interactively without interfering with the Jaguar's screen display. DB supports the use of scripts and aliases, which simplifies the use of complex or common functions. Atari grants final code approval, but does not see the need to "censor" games. Every game is given one man-month of compatability and quality testing before it is approved. Atari offers technical support via FAX, mail, electronic mail and voice. Atari allows developers to source their own cartridges, documentation and shells if desired. ============================================================================== --R.J. B-) //////////////////////////////////////|\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ Send whatevers to rjung@netcom.com | If it has pixels, I'm for it. --------------------------------------+------------------------------Lynx up! "You weren't chosen because you are the best pilot in the Air Force. You were chosen because you are the class clown and frankly, you're expendable."