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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