Atari Panther prototype website with system prototype photos

[STGuy1040]

I was browsing the Internet this afternoon and came across this website:

 

Atari Panther prototype website

 

I haven't read the entire website yet but it looks interesting!

Edited June 18, 2009 by STGuy1040

[roland p]

I would have to say the rarest is the Atari Panther- little brother to the Jaguar, I do know of about 3 in existence.

Only 3 in existence? Well, if you have one, 33% chance my fingerprints are on it

[kool kitty89]

I was talking about this with Kskunk awhile back, and while he agrees with curt's assessment about the system being a "horible peice of junk" he said Curt must have misspoken with the comments about the Atari ST and blossom video card. The only thing similar to the ST is the CPU (a 16 MHz 68000, same as the STe's at 2x speed, normal speed ST was 8 MHz), and there was noting to do with the Blossom card in the Panther design. (other than the same engineering tem working on both -and the Jag)

 

According to kskunk, the Panther used the "panther" object processor, a predicessor to the Jaguar's with some additional features, but also much more limitations (and less flexibility). The "OTIS" sound chip apears to have been dropped from the final design, and the system has only 32 kB of shared SRAM (used by both the 68k and "Panther" OP), fast SRAm was required to acheive the necessary bandwidth on a 32-bit data bus. (of which the 68k would only have 16-bits of access and the OP would be hogging much of the time) The Jaguar resolved this problem by using a 64-bit data bus with DRAM to acheive the necessary memory bandwidth.

 

Overall it was a very limited design and would additionally have been very difficult to port to; dumping it to focus on the Jaguar was a very good idea. (the sooner they did so the better; had the Panther been foregone entirely and the Jag gotten more resourses early on, it may have been a bit more complete, and polished by the time it was released...)

[Curt Vendel]

My info at the time was incorrect... remember, that was around 1997-1998 at the time if I recall and I was going off of piece meal notes and incomplete data given to me and I made some incorrect conclusions and assumptions at the time.

 

I have all of the actual Panther engineering doc's, developers manuals, I posted the code to the panther games up a long time around and in the coming months I'll work on scanning and posting the data up into a section on the Jaguar pages of Atarimuseum.com

 

 

Curt

 

I was talking about this with Kskunk awhile back, and while he agrees with curt's assessment about the system being a "horible peice of junk" he said Curt must have misspoken with the comments about the Atari ST and blossom video card. The only thing similar to the ST is the CPU (a 16 MHz 68000, same as the STe's at 2x speed, normal speed ST was 8 MHz), and there was noting to do with the Blossom card in the Panther design. (other than the same engineering tem working on both -and the Jag)

 

According to kskunk, the Panther used the "panther" object processor, a predicessor to the Jaguar's with some additional features, but also much more limitations (and less flexibility). The "OTIS" sound chip apears to have been dropped from the final design, and the system has only 32 kB of shared SRAM (used by both the 68k and "Panther" OP), fast SRAm was required to acheive the necessary bandwidth on a 32-bit data bus. (of which the 68k would only have 16-bits of access and the OP would be hogging much of the time) The Jaguar resolved this problem by using a 64-bit data bus with DRAM to acheive the necessary memory bandwidth.

 

Overall it was a very limited design and would additionally have been very difficult to port to; dumping it to focus on the Jaguar was a very good idea. (the sooner they did so the better; had the Panther been foregone entirely and the Jag gotten more resourses early on, it may have been a bit more complete, and polished by the time it was released...)

[kool kitty89]

Did you ever find out more inforation on the games supposedly ported from the Panther to the Jag?

[carmel_andrews]

wasn't blossum/blossom the videocard they used in the Atari ABAQ/ATW (i could have sworn it was)

 

never saw a panther but have seen a few ATWs/ABAQs, Perhaps Atari should have used some of ATW's grunt for the jaggie

 

Interesting that Atari opted for an esoniqs processor, which was designed by an ex C64 engineer unless i am much mistaken (Bob Yannes)

Edited June 19, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[kool kitty89]

As I mentioned, kskunk posted in another discussion, that the OTIS sound system had been abandoned, all prototype games/demos using FM synthesis instead.

 

Yes the blossom is from the Transputer Workstation, in that same discussion I proposed a gaming system that had used the blossom (or other portions of the ATW) but this was rejected on several accounts. The Atari Falcon hardware would have been a much better starting point for a game system in this respect. (though by that time you're geting rather close to the Jag's release, though practically it could have been released around the same time the Panther practically could in 1992)

 

Here's the discussion I'm referring to:

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...68#entry1750868

 

On the blossom/transputer specifically here:

That does bring an interesting thought though, a console using a (cut-down, cost reduced) blossom card would have been interesting, I don't know how well it would have worked in combination with a 68000 though.

 

Blossom was only impressive because it used wide buses and expensive chips, which allowed it to do 24-bit color at high resolutions for its time. This is not the foundation of a good console system. For example, it had no support for parallax scrolling or sprites, which were standard in the Genesis and SNES.

Edited June 19, 2009 by kool kitty89

[carmel_andrews]

So you could say that panther has a bit of commodore and sinclair in the system....hence the split personality

[kool kitty89]

So you could say that panther has a bit of commodore and sinclair in the system....hence the split personality

 

Umm I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at, the Transputer blossom had nothing to do with the Panther other than members of the engineering team. Flare designed the Panther along with the previousl Konix Multisystem and later Jaguar.

[carmel_andrews]

well, the esoniqs processors were originally designed by an ex c64 engineer (as mentioned previously) and the Flare2 team all got their start in the comuter ind. via sinclair research (would have thought you'd have known that)

[kool kitty89]

Sorry, I totaly missread that post, for some reason I thought it was still in context of the Blossom...

 

Anyway, the OTIS sound chip had been planned for the unit (and I've read that dev units supported it -though didn't include it), but it had been elliminated from the final design in favor of some FM synthesis chip apparently. (still, it's still notable as part of the initial design)

[kskunk]

Anyway, the OTIS sound chip had been planned for the unit (and I've read that dev units supported it -though didn't include it), but it had been elliminated from the final design in favor of some FM synthesis chip apparently. (still, it's still notable as part of the initial design)

 

I don't want to be accused of spreading rumors! There was no final design for the Panther, so nobody knows exactly what we would have gotten.

 

The newest Panther dev system schematics I have don't include sound memory, so I hypothesized that wavetable synth was not going to happen. But I don't have any inside info as to Atari's actual plans.

 

In any case, it was a long way from finished. I don't believe they even started a schematic for a final console, so what was going to be in there is definitely speculation.

 

Still, I think Curt summed it up best 10 years ago. Horrible piece of junk!

 

- KS

[carmel_andrews]

If all this is true....ATARI were probably in more dire straits (financially) then what they were letting on

 

Just as well atari put the panther out of its misery early on

Edited June 21, 2009 by carmel_andrews