Back Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

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



Questions:


What is the Atari Jaguar?
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.

Questions
How does IBM fit into this?
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.

Questions
Okay, who designed the Jaguar?
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.

Questions
What are the specifications of the Jaguar?
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)


Questions
Is the Jaguar really a 64-bit system?
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."

Questions
How can a graphics processor be the CPU?
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."

Questions
What kind of special effects can the Jaguar do?
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.


Questions
How come the Jaguar claims to have "32-bit" graphics, when 16 million colors only need 24 bits for rendering?
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.

Questions
Okay, get to the meat -- which is better, the Jaguar or the 3DO?
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.

Questions
What's the information on the CD-ROM drive?
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.

Questions
What's this "Panther" I hear about?
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.

Questions
What do I get when I buy a Jaguar?
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.

Questions
How does the ComLynx port on the Jaguar work? Can I connect my Lynx to it?
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.

Questions



Source: Robert Jung