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JagDuo PCB discovered...


Clint Thompson

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Thanks go to John Hardie for scanning this in. Confirmation that work was done on this and not just a case mockup!

 

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 its simply amazing how much atari dumped into hardware, yet did almost nothing game wise. when jack t. told me and bruce at b&c computervisions that atari was working on a jaguar 2 to make up for all of the mistakes on the jaguar 1, we asked him what about games, how about supporting the jaguar first before you plan on more hardware. it looks like he wanted more hardware.

 

 he never understood that no matter how good the hardware was, you needed games, lots of games, games can be so so, good, nitch games, even great games, that's what it takes, a wide variety of games.

 

lance

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OK guys.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the JagDuo had an extra expansion port compared to the Jaguar.  Jaguar has two: a DSP and one for A/V and other things.  JagDuo has three:  One what appears to be at the rear of the console I assume for A/V and two what appears to be on the right side of the console.  I am guessing that the smaller of the two on the right is the DSP.  And looks like the other one is almost the size of an 8-bit cartridge in width.  I wonder what that was going to be for?

 

Oh how I wish we could duplicate that and get the parts to populate that board.  The only thing that would be missing is the ROM to make it all work.  I'm sure somewhere all of the components required to populate it are floating around as NOS.  If I could I'd invest in duplicating the board just to populate it and get it to fire up.  Out of all of the hardware coming out these days (SNES Mini, tons of Atari and Sega clones, and AtariBox which is disappointing) I would definitely be interested in purchasing this machine if it was to be completed and released.  That would be the best console of the bunch in my opinion.  And that case design!  I have to hand it to the engineers at Warner Atari and Atari, Corp...they could design some beautiful cases for their hardware.

Edited by kamakazi20012
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On the case design: Ira Valinksy was the designer of the JagDuo and most of the later Atari products. Sadly he passed away at an early age quite a long time ago. Some sort of page in dedication and memory is definitely in order.

 

You're correct about the expansion port - it is similar to that of the Jaguar 2 design as well. No idea what they could have had in mind for use regarding the expansion port really.

 

While it's doubtful anything will come of the efforts, I am in contact with the original board manufacturer who produced this board to see if any possible archives of the original PCB files exist. There are other options as well but obviously having the original files would be the easiest. The biggest chip challenge would be the Orbit CD controller chip that is found in the Jaguar CD units. Very little information on those seem to be available.

 

While also unlikely, it could also be possible to have new Tom and Jerry chips made thanks to wafer pooling in the modern age bringing costs substantially down and the available netlists. In a best price scenario, they would still probably be roughly $60 a chip due to such a low or limited qty run.

7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe

 

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Clint, that's an amazing find!

 

 its simply amazing how much atari dumped into hardware, yet did almost nothing game wise. when jack t. told me and bruce at b&c computervisions that atari was working on a jaguar 2 to make up for all of the mistakes on the jaguar 1, we asked him what about games, how about supporting the jaguar first before you plan on more hardware. it looks like he wanted more hardware.

 

 he never understood that no matter how good the hardware was, you needed games, lots of games, games can be so so, good, nitch games, even great games, that's what it takes, a wide variety of games.

 

lance

www.atarisales.com

 

I can picture that, it's a very late-70s/early-80s view of the computer industry from a time when hardware manufacturers called the shots (IBM, Commodore, Nintendo, etc) and were the ones who instigated the big market changes by bringing out new machines. I suppose he never quite grokked how the rise of software players throughout the 80s and early 90s shifted the mechanics of the industry.

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Sad to hear about Ira Valinsky's death. His creations are tasteful and have character.

 

 

I can picture that, it's a very late-70s/early-80s view of the computer industry from a time when hardware manufacturers called the shots (IBM, Commodore, Nintendo, etc) and were the ones who instigated the big market changes by bringing out new machines. I suppose he never quite grokked how the rise of software players throughout the 80s and early 90s shifted the mechanics of the industry.

 

I think, the lack of software for the Jaguar was a consequence of Jack Tramiels treatment of 3rd party developers.

Maybe Sam was more kind to them, but the Tramiel's reputation was already destroyed.

Edited by TeddyGermany
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FB conversations with some of the old Atari guard from the Jags era seemed to come off as a general sense of them maybe not really having any self reflection.

 

A lot of pointing fingers to outside of Atari forces. Victim of circumstance. Forces were aligned against us etc. While a lot of that may be true there was no 'ok here here and here we could have done things differently.' really apparent. There are a few mentions with hardware design but regarding overall belief's, attitude s etc after they got what they had regarding hardware.

Edited by A31Chris
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The Jaguar CD unit was partially made by Phillips if I remember correctly.

This is true. Atari did hire Philips to create the CD-ROM unit. It will say it was made by Philips on the back label of the unit where the S/N is. It just needed some more stability with its motherboard design, and it would have been a real contender. It can be a little flaky playing some homebrew stuff at times. However, it plays Atari-made CD-based games well, without crashing. It can be finicky with certain CD titles. But, it was made pretty cheaply, unfortunately. That was Jack Tramiel cutting corners to save some cash, when it really wasn't necessary for him to do that. Thanks for letting me share. :)

Edited by DegasElite
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In case you guys haven't already seen it elsewhere, we're close to having some PCBs made. Hopefully by the end of the month we will have a few in hand and start building one to see how possible recreating it will be overall.

 

post-181-0-91726800-1509789065.jpg

7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe

 

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A few weeks ago Glenn was able to confirm that the JagDuo did indeed have a CD sub assembly daughterboard as well, which initially was discouraging because it was already difficult enough to find the PCB files for the JagDuo itself. Thankfully with a scan of the board he provided me, I was able to find them and so now both boards will undergo updates for modernized PCB production - which are still being worked on as time is available.

 

The files are interesting because they were completed in early February of 1995, so almost exactly 23 years ago! However, the boards weren't actually made until July of 1995, as noted on the CD board here. Makes sense seeing as how the Jaguar CD wasn't even completely finalized until about that time as well. It's interesting to also note that Atari did not do the design themselves and outsourced the project, which further explains why no one at Atari seems to have ever seen one in person or half of them not even knowing of its existence.

 

Remaining piece to the entire puzzle seems to be the BOM or Build of Material list at this point. While it's possible with some super talented and clever people to kind of work around and do it, it would seemingly be very difficult or at least, far easier to do if we had the BOM.

 

I've got some more work cut out for me and will spend the next month or so trying to locate these last few pieces in hopes that we can finally assemble one of the coolest puzzles Atari left unfinished. When you place the JagDuo and Sony PlayStation side by side, you can't help realize just how beautiful the console could have been.

post-181-0-17248700-1518625582_thumb.jpg

Edited by Clint Thompson

7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe

 

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Any more word on how this is coming along? Man I can't say that I wouldn't mind getting my hands on one of those system boards.

 

Nothing much in the way of progress yet. The first thing needing to be finished is the Pro Controllers, which appears to be closing in within the next 2-3 weeks. The guy that was working on the JagDuo PCB side of things is completely swamped with real life/work and I'm looking for someone on the same caliber of his expertise to handle taking over the that portion of the project. SainT may be interested in doing it at some point but I'm not going to pile this on his already overflowing plate with the JagSD cart he's still ironing out bugs on.

 

Time flies but I'm hoping before the end of the year to have a dozen PCBs made. I'll update back here when it happens. If I had a lot of spare money I could probably have this completed by the end of the year but unfortunately I'm not rich or a PCB design genius.

7800 - 130XE - XEGS - Lynx - Jaguar - ISO: Atari Falcon030 | STBook |STe

 

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On 6/3/2019 at 1:30 PM, Control Issues said:

Just a thought about the extra expansion port...

 

could it be a spot for some kind of memory cartridge to save games and such?

Seems like a good idea... Even with the Jag as it currently stands I often thought about the back ports on the current Jag adding some memory through those ports... To my understanding I think the DSP would be the only processor to have such access to something like that. The GPU OP probably wouldn't allow any access to any extra memory from the back unless my understanding of the Jaguar is flawed. The GPU back port is meant to display images only via the video chip receiving images from the OP; haven't find any documents to dispute those facts, which is shame for the GPU not to have access to extra memory without a workaround that's taxing to the system.

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