1035 replies to this topic

[rdemming]

kool kitty89, on Tue May 18, 2010 7:58 PM, said:

No, seriously, before I asked, I'd been assuming OPL was referring to the Object Processor, as I mentioned when inquiring about the abbreviation, but Object Processor Logic was the only logical (heh) assumption for the "L" I could think of. I almost mentioned it in that inquiring post too. Believe it or not, but I'm not being facetious.

In software terms, OPL could stand for "Object Processing List".
I'm glad Gorf is still around

Robert

Edited by rdemming, Wed May 19, 2010 12:53 AM.

[kool kitty89]

rdemming, on Wed May 19, 2010 12:52 AM, said:

In software terms, OPL could stand for "Object Processing List".

I thought of that too (or "object processor list"), but I didn't bring it up as it didn't apply to the context "OPL" was being used...

Of course, Yamaha used the term "OPL" for a line of their FM synthesis chips. (OPerator type L)

[kool kitty89]

I was reading Martin Brennan's Slipstream interview again: http://www.konixmult...nt=martin#start this time in its entirety and noticed some things.

Neither the Flare 1 chipset (which was used by Bellfruit for video quiz machines) nor the Slipstream ASIC intended for the multisystem (and later used by MSU) were purchased outright, the IP remained Flare's. (the interview mentions that at one point Konix asked for exclusivity, but declined due tot he high price)

Quote

Martin Brennan
The chip that they had was exclusive to them - I seem to remember a discussion with them that went along the lines of "We want exclusivity - how much will it cost?" You can have exclusive - but it'll cost you about 3 times what you're paying and they decided they didn't want it at that price. It was effectively exclusive anyway because we didn't sell the chip to anybody else.

So, that would mean that the Flare 1 chipset or (preferably) the Slipstream ASIC could have been used by Atari too. I wonder if that was ever considered as an alternative to the Panther.
I'd imagine that proposition could have come up during the time when the Panther was being completed and Brennan convinced Atari management to drop in in favor of a new, more 3D oriented design which became the Flare 2/Jaguar. (according the Brennan that happened some time in 1989)
Too bad that wasn't one of the questions in that interview.


There's also this:

Quote

The original design for the Jaguar was that it was actually going to be a 128bit computer, it wasn't going to be 64bit. We felt we had the pins to do it. We were going to have 2 banks of memory at 64bits and do double data rate and achieve a 128 bit architecture on 64 pins. It was really pushing it - but in the end the economics said that 128 wasn't necessary and it would have been too expensive.

Is that just referring to the support for the 2-bank interleaving, or is it more than that (dual banks int he final design basically just avoids page breaks, right, not increasing bandwidth beyond that of a single bank in page mode)?

On an off topic note I found this rather interesting:

Quote

Martin Brennan
My wife works for a games company and you're right - I think it's like electronics; Engineers like what they do so they don't mind so much. I read something the other day that said that what you get paid depends on your skills, the rareness of the skills, but more importantly the unpleasantness of the work. If the job is unpleasant you will have to get paid more. It's the obverse for engineering - It's essentially almost therapeutic. It's actually very satisfying and good fun; people will do it for nothing.

It sounds like Brennan wouldn't fall under the context mentioned here a while back: http://www.atariage....93#entry1797593

Edited by kool kitty89, Fri May 21, 2010 2:12 AM.

[Retro Rogue]

I think with how long this thread has been going, we're in to 1995.

[Gorf]

rdemming, on Wed May 19, 2010 12:52 AM, said:

In software terms, OPL could stand for "Object Processing List".

Well...kinda....the List is the software part of what the logic uses to draw the display.
The 'language' of the OPL however is almost irrelevant to the discussion here. The function
of it however does apply.

It is a language and the OPL is a processor regardless of what some knuckleheads around
here wish to believe. The only difference is it needs to be started...but here is a little
secret....so do any and all other processors. The difference here is it is started by another
processor....but so are the GPU and DSP RISC's which no one argues those as being any less
a processor than a 6502 is. a 6502 simply has a boot strap circuit on board where the GPU
or the DSP does not. The Blitter is also a processor. Like the OPL, it will 'run code'.

The difference here is the Blitter does not have a PC counter like the OPL does( well it
actually uses links to point to the next line of code( an object definition actually.)

The link is a good way to avoid more silicon for a fetch...the blitter does not have
that either. Both the OPL and the Blitter do maths, compares, interrupt handlings and
every other thing any other processor will do. They just need to be assited. They are
not just some simple support chip like you would find in a A8, Vic-20 or C-64.

The blitter and the OPL get set up and started and then go about there own business
and can do some very powerful processing all on their own after that.

A nice command buffer and command fetch ont he blitter would have been a nice improvement
to the system, even with the 68000 but I still say the 020 is by far the most practical
and by far the most cost effective, as well as greatly increasing the systems performance.

Using a a 020 just for opening up the DSP to 32 bits would have been worth it alone.

rdemming, on Wed May 19, 2010 12:52 AM, said:

I'm glad Gorf is still around

Actually Im not...just popping in to giggle at the longevity of this thread once in a while.

[MessalineApghar]

Aside from fixing the bugs,

1 - get a working Jaguar and Dev Kit into the hands of every programmer, from garage-lairs to the big boys,. every dev that wanted one, or who "we" wanted to steal is GIFTed a dev unit.

2- in addition to the Jaguar cart port, include a 7800 cart port. and make sure the 7800 port could accecpt the working 2600 cartridge converter. get all your existing stuff to run. keep your games , trash your console, plus you can run new games.

3 = as an expansion port , offer as thin as possable underunit expansion module that included a stadard-format drive and some sort of network. at that point in time 10-base-2 and 10-base-5 were prevalent and used simple Twinaxial or Coanial cables (depending on the transciever)

4 - promote the expansion by discounting it at or as a quick followoon sale to the main unit. say $100 off if you bought it immediately, $50 off if you bought it in the same month.

for people buying the complete bundle at once, throw in 2 procontrollers. ...build their cost into the cost of the "combopack" box.

alot of the companies with big hits, weren't demanding development money from Atari, which Tramiel would never pay, but they were demanding cross-platform-licensing fees. you want to have this game ported to this system , it'll cost $100k up front. and you get 0 on the backend, but it'll drive your hardware sales.

I Liked the idea of dropping the lynx in and using it's games but on the jaguar's video and controllers. while charging the lynx. make it a PBI-connector STYLE dock coming off the side or back of the CD expansion unit,. and that the Dock plugged into. and that Dock could look like a reqorked modernized 830 modem. while it held & charged the lynx.

5 - if atari had handled CD-rom/CD-RW/DVD properly, like implementing full atapsi protocol , it would have allowed upgrading as new tech came out. CD-THOR was already a live but expensive product. (CD-rom Write-ONCE per disk) drive ran $$2500 in 1989, by 1990 it was down to $1000....you could see the trending.

4b - so with 4 in place, approach the higher end software developers like philips CDi unit, and/or panasonics' 3d0 . ask them for permission to be compatable, which is a right they were willing to sell, esp after the product went bust.

amd with 5b - in a year or two writeable-CD and Writeable-DVD would be down to mass-market price point.

as for switching over to the Cyrix/IBM/TI 486 emulator chips., they had some really hot interna; features at the command level, like Dynamically ReAllocatable Registers, and built in routines to Flip Endian logic / memory. so with some dev work, it could have been done.
personally i'da stuck with the 680x0 series in the main unit, and perhaps slaved a 486SLC in the expansion bus.

Rana successfully built a CP/M computer into every Rana 1000 drive, all you needed to turn it on and run CP/m on your 8-bit atari was a software upgrade, and an upgrade of the RAM in the Rana drive. ;

but, hey i'm just blathering on.

- Just my 2 cents.

[Zerosquare]

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

1 - get a working Jaguar and Dev Kit into the hands of every programmer, from garage-lairs to the big boys,. every dev that wanted one, or who "we" wanted to steal is GIFTed a dev unit.

Good idea, but expensive, and Atari was out of money at that point.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

2- in addition to the Jaguar cart port, include a 7800 cart port. and make sure the 7800 port could accecpt the working 2600 cartridge converter. get all your existing stuff to run. keep your ames , trash your console, plus you can run new games.

7800 games were irrelevant in 1993, not to mention 2600 games.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

3 = as an expansion port , offer as thin as possable underunit expansion module that included a stadard-format drive and some sort of network. at that point in time 10-base-2 and 10-base-5 were prevalent and used simple Twinaxial or Coanial cables (depending on the transciever)

This is a console, not a computer. People wouldn't have cared about network compatibility, and certainly wouldn't bother with stiff coax cables.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

4 - promote the expansion by discounting it at or as a quick followoon sale to the main unit. say $100 off if you bought it immediately, $50 off if you bought it in the same month.

See above. Nobody would have bought it.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

I Liked the idea of dropping the lynx in and using it's games but on the jaguar's video and controllers. while charging the lynx. make it a PBI-connector STYLE dock coming off the side or back of the CD expansion unit,. and that the Dock plugged into. and that Dock could look like a reqorked modernized 830 modem. while it held & charged the lynx.

The Lynx wasn't a commercial success. No reason to spend money for a feature people are not going to use.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

5 - if atari had handled CD-rom/CD-RW/DVD properly, like implementing full atapsi protocol , it would have allowed upgrading as new tech came out. CD-THOR was already a live but expensive product. (CD-rom Write-ONCE per disk) drive ran $$2500 in 1989, by 1990 it was down to $1000....you could see the trending.

What's the point of planning for technology that will not be widespread (or even exist) until 5 or 10 years down the road? By that time your console will be completely obsolete anyways.

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

4b - so with 4 in place, approach the higher end software developers like philips CDi unit, and/or panasonics' 3d0 . ask them for permission to be compatable, which is a right they were willing to sell, esp after the product went bust.

You seem to forget that the Jaguar was released in 1993, not 1997. And even, who's going to invest in something that's been tried and failed?

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

amd with 5b - in a year or two writeable-CD and Writeable-DVD would be down to mass-market price point.

No. And writable media is the last thing a game company wants anyways (think piracy).

MessalineApghar, on Mon Jan 16, 2012 11:42 PM, said:

but, hey i'm just blathering on.

Yes, that's rather obvious. I don't want to sound harsh, but your ideas are pretty bad or nonsensical.

Edited by Zerosquare, Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:13 AM.

[Crazyace]

Seeing this crop up again I started thinking about what use was Jerry.
Given that the OP/2D sprite system came from the panther chipset if Flare had dumped that and just used a fixed 320x240 CRY output they would have saved a lot of silicon in Tom , maybe enough to put in a simple FIFO driven DAC ( Atari STe style, but 16 bit ) - after all if you add up the pallette and linebuffers that's almost another 4K of ram. Freeing that might allow the blitter to be slightly more functional ( texture mapping colour expansion at least )

Atari would then end up with almost a perfect single chip console - just Tom, and dram ....

[twoquickcapri]

What happen to your to your replacing the 68k with a 486sx. It got shoot down pretty fast. 486sx25 around 20 mips and 8k of cashe seem like a good idea to me. Or did I miss something other than the price difference and maybe heat issue. I don't remember seeing heat-sink in any console back than.

Edited by twoquickcapri, Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:11 PM.

[Rex Dart]

Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?

Spend all my money on hookers & blow, and let the market take the Jaguar wherever it may!
Just like Atari!

[Christos]

Rex Dart, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:46 PM, said:

Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?

Spend all my money on hookers & blow, and let the market take the Jaguar wherever it may!
Just like Atari!

I thought that was what Escom did with the amiga!

[Crazyace]

twoquickcapri, on Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:11 PM, said:

What happen to your to your replacing the 68k with a 486sx. It got shoot down pretty fast. 486sx25 around 20 mips and 8k of cashe seem like a good idea to me. Or did I miss something other than the price difference and maybe heat issue. I don't remember seeing heat-sink in any console back than.

That was way back then when everyone was talking about a 68020 going in the system - I thought the IBM 486SLC ( or even the older 386SLC ) would have made a better cpu due to it's larger cache. I changed my mind about 'throwing more chips into the design' and suggested no 68k at all and single speed CD build in as I think that would have been much more important to the success than having a slightly more powerful jaguar.
Finally I thought about the Object processor and Jerry DSP and exactly how important they were - and I decided that in my opinion they were overkill, as Jaguar audio rarely sounded much better than Amiga anyway - and very few games actually used the object processor in ways that couldn't be achieved just with the blitter.
If there was only Tom - no 68k or Jerry - on the system with a CD Atari may even have managed to launch at a similar pricepoint to the original Jaguar - and things might have been very different

[Christos]

Why not just Object processor, 68000 (or 020), a blitter and an actual real dsp? That would make a lot more sense. TOM after all is the buggiest of all the chips and the only one that noone could actually program.

And you don't even have to go to the 56K line of DSP's which were expensive. A cheaper one would do just fine.

[Crazyace]

Tom contains the blitter, gpu, and object processor - and Jerry is the audio dsp.

[ninjarabbit]

WIthout reading the 40+ pages in this topic, having 20/20 hindsight, and not being a techhead here's what I would have done with the Jaguar:

-Have a more standard controler. The Genesis and SNES controllers were pretty good and I would have had the Jaguar controller be similar to one of those, maybe like the Genesis's 6 button controller but with shoulder buttons to encourage fighter ports which were popular at that time.

-Make the Jaguar easier to program for. This would encourage more ports if nothing else and with the Jaguar being more powerful than the Genesis and SNES, having the best ports of games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat could be a reason to buy the system by itself.

-Beg and plead with 3rd party developers. Atari wasn't the kind of company that could support a system all by itself so it was going to need all the help it was going to get. Maybe much lower licencing fees than what Sega and Nintendo had at the time and other incentives.

-Make an exclusive killer ap. Much easier said than done but people needed a reason to buy a Jaguar. Cybermorph I guess was supposed to be the killer ap but the Jaguar needed it's Mario, Sonic, Halo, etc

[skip]

IIRC Atari thought Trevor McFur was going to a mascot, potentially starring in a series of games...d'oh!

In a perfect world, hindsight etc, here's the 'simple' things they should've / could've done. None of them individually would've drastically improved things, but perhaps at least some of them would've contributed to improved success. These are based on observations at the time and various discussions I've had or online commentary made by those in the know. Some of these have been mentioned before

• Delay the launch until the new year, the pseudo launch with minimal games was silly. Stockpile so it could be launched 'everywhere' - in the states and Europe at least, maybe Japan too, though that's a stretch (obviously they are the three most important markets).
  
• A 3 to 9 month delay could've helped in numerous areas including: Hardware bug removal/minimilisation, incorporation of a 68020 and maybe slightly more RAM (at relatively minimal cost) and the development of a PROPER Windows (or even Mac) dev kit with proper libraries instead of the non-standard Atari TT dev kit. Foresee that texture mapping was going to be 'big'...don't necessarily change the design so much to include specific t-mapping hardware, but make allowances in the flexible nature of the architecture (more on chip RAM? I don't know if that would help, I suspect so). A much better launch lineup (at least 10 games?) with more than one 'average' 3D game would've been great. Ensure that T2K, Iron Soldier and AvP were available. Easier said than done, but a delay could've seen them on the shelves on day one.
  
• Launch with a CD. Decide to do this from the beginning. Even if the initial price was $300-340ish, it was still half of the 3DO. Integrated components, no big cartridge port (though a slot or two for memory cards would be needed), one PSU, a 'standard' system for all devs to aim for. This should've been planned right from 1991 / 1992. Sure, the system would sell with much lower margins, but software (the lifeblood of any system) would've made much higher margins than carts. Less stuffing around with components. More FMV (hmmm) which for better or for worse would've sold systems. Pack in a demo disk with all the 'prettier' early games (AvP, T2K, Cybermorph, McFur). Hell, if they were gutsy, they could pack AvP, but that wouldn't have been a smart thing to do early on - it really was a relatively big seller. If they included FMV of Aliens & Predator movie clips...damn!
  
• Pro-controller from the start, perhaps without the keypad (though I don't mind it at all). Whilst the controller isn't as bad as some make out, a three button, no shoulder button controller was a retrograde step at the time.
  
• Have a decent advertising campaign. The ads in general were childish, puerile and amateurish. The AvP ad was nice and gruesome.
  
• Get some *proper* (ie. realistic) sports and driving games. Madden, FIFA, Need for Speed on the 3DO - nuff said. If they couldn't get EA on board, get someone else. Pay them. Push them. Make sure your libraries made it easier for them (see points one and two above). For better or for worse, these things sell systems.
  
• Focus! The VR helmet, voice modem etc. were great innovations, but they were white elephants. Games, games games!
  
• Use that $100 million from Sega PROPERLY to produce some of their 'allowed' IP. Use it to pay Midway to create a MK game and Capcom to create a SFII.
  
• If cost effective, put four controller ports on it. I thought that this should've been done even before it became de rigueur.
  
• Develop the console to console networking further. Ensure it was bug free Encourage developers to pursue it where appropriate. Maybe not a core issue.

That's enough for now. Atari did pretty well given their position at the time. They also made some incredibly basic mistakes that were *relatively* easily remediable (bugs, controller, lack of certain types of games). Occasionally I wish for a DeLorean...

Edited by skip, Fri Jan 20, 2012 12:03 AM.

[SoulBlazer]

I'm late to this thread, and it was amusing to read, but I have a simple question.

If it was 1993, I was in a position of high authority in Atari, and the decision on what to do with the Jaguar was in my hands, am I the only one who would have said 'we're not releasing this'?

Things had changed by then. The console market was different. Atari was just a shell of what it had been 10 years eariler. Competion in the home console market was at a all time high. Atari did not have the money or resources to support the console properly. You may argue we should be glad we got it and the few good games for it, but it was doomed from the start.

99 percent of the suggestions and things people have posted here either 1) couldn't be done due to how strapped Atari was by this point 2) were not pratical for the time or 3) are totally hindsight.

If I was in charge of Atari in 1993, I would have done instead what Sega finally decided to do several years later -- quit the hardware side of the business all together and just focus on arcade and console games. Maybe then Atari as we knew it would still be around today.

[JagChris]

They should of went for financial help from the Government. If big billion dollar oil companies can get subsidies, why not Atari?

[skip]

SoulBlazer, on Fri Jan 20, 2012 12:34 AM, said:

99 percent of the suggestions and things people have posted here either 1) couldn't be done due to how strapped Atari was by this point 2) were not pratical for the time or 3) are totally hindsight.

Most of my suggestions are not new - I had the bulk of these ideas back then, either my own or, as I said, with chats with a couple of developers. Are all of them feasible? Maybe not. Are some of them...especially the little things? Absolutely. Atari was on a potential winner with the design being as 'advanced' as it was in 1990/1991. Atari also got the $100 million Sega cash injection in 1994 (I think). I don't think I've gone over the top with any of my suggestions with regard to either (1) cost, (2) practicality or (3) using hindsight. Whether any of these things would've been a major benefit I don't know, but some of them would've weighted things their way, even if very slightly.

Remember that there were two Ataris then...this Atari didn't have 'direct' access to the other Atari's arcade games...though I could've put that on the list...they so should've leveraged that back catalogue...arcade perfect STUN Runner anyone?

[twoquickcapri]

If it was me and I was in charge. First I would replace the 68k with a MIPS R3000a then replace TOM with a geometry transformation engine. Then remover JERRY and in it place put a sound chip that can handle 24 channels and sampling rate of up to 44.1 khz. Then add 1.5 megs of ram and a 2x CD-ROM. Then send hundreds of millions dollar on advertising. While doing this I would buy up a few software developer to make games only for my system. After all of this I would price dump it in the winter of 95 and use the profits from my TV and Music division to keep the project afloat.

[so_tough!]

I cant get into the technical aspect, but I would have marketed the Jaguar as a cheaper alternative to the ps and Saturn. Not only cheaper hardware, but cheaper games.

Focus on really good software and get as many developers on board.

This all brings me back to seeing the adverts in gaming magazines at the time. I thought Jaguars looked so cool!!! Thinking about that brings me back to being a kid, great, exciting times.

I was so excited when I got my jag

Edited by so_tough!, Fri Jan 20, 2012 1:31 AM.

[JagChris]

You know what, I'd leave the hardware the way it is. It wouldn't be the Jaguar if it wasnt what it is. I would go about trying to maximize its success as it was. First things first. I'd of bought the development system from High Voltage Software. I would of retained them to keep improving it.

I would of bought/attempt to buy the rights to all hacks found on the Jaguar such as the Blitter Trick Scatologic discovered and the UART bug fix.

I would of hired.a good research and development team to do what R&D teams do, and do it for the Jaguar. Like finding the GPU in main workaround and keep developing tools so all the Jaguar's quirks are as transparent as possible for developers. I think Ken Rose and Eric Smith were pretty good but they needed help.

Try to get government subsidies to keep the company afloat.

SUE SUE SUE! to keep the company afloat.

Get some of those Sega titles it supposedly had the rights to use. Eternal Champions, perhaps some RPG's.

As for hardware changes, do the best you can with what you got now because its already done, then on the Jaguar II start doing all the hindsight things.

[GKC]

I'm just a fan of playing games on the Jag and dont know much about where the Jag was development wise throughout it's history but people keep talking about postponing the launch but what about if Atari had been capable of launching it sooner, say, 1991? That way it would have truly competed against the SNES and Gensis more so than being in that "in between" period of people waiting for the next generation and the Jag being compared with, and competing against, those systems.

Wasn't the Jaguar hinted at during the CES of 1991 (or a bit after?) and, in fact, hadn't Atari been developing both the Panther and Jaguar for sometime? I'm sure I'll be told that 1) the Jaguar was too young in development in 1991 2) Atari didn't have the funds/wasn't prepared for a launch in 1991 3) the hardware would have cost too much in 1991 or a mixture of all thee but as a purely hypothetical question, would an earlier release date have helped the Jag? I think at the very least it would have helped it's legacy. Who could really hold it against the Jag if it was only "a little better than 16-bit" as critics say if that was the time period it was released during and those were the consoles it competed against?

Edited by GKC, Fri Jan 20, 2012 6:09 AM.

[walter_J64bit]

Have a working 2600 Emulator.

[toptenmaterial]

Streamline the console a little bit, and rework the controllers. Phone controllers died in 84. Market the system heavily, but don't emphasise all the "64 bit" crap. A console does not have to be technicly superior to
succeed. Concentrate on games!!!