We’re On An Atari Jaguar Kick, Apparently

We don’t know why, but the Atari Jaguar is getting a lot of attention this week. [10P6] just came up with this Jaguar/CD combo that reminds us what Atari could have come up with in 1993.

The build itself is relatively simple once you get past [kevincal]’s ‘April Fools’ type joke he played on the Atari Age forum. [10P6] took a regular Jaguar CD drive and cut a hole into a Jaguar case. The whole case mod took less than a three hours, but [10P6] gives us a lot of commentary into what Atari could and/or should have built in 1993.

[10P6] suggests this type of Jaguar would have saved Atari money if the CD drive was stock on the base unit and released at a slightly increased price. This would cut out the cost of the cart slots and reduced the amount of plastic in manufacturing. [10P6] also talks about how Atari engineers could have dropped the 68000 coprocessor with an increase in the system clock. We’re not quite fond of that idea (ask us about our tattoo), but the logic does make sense.

Of course, this build comes on the heels of the Jaguar Portable we saw a few days ago. Honestly, we have no idea what’s going on with the Jaguar build.

11 thoughts on “We’re On An Atari Jaguar Kick, Apparently

  1. I remember seeing it at the FNAC Montparnasse, christmas 1992, running the smoothest FPS I ever saw. Was it Duke Nukem ? I think it was. Made my beloved Amiga 1200 look (really) bad. Hated it right away ;)

      1. I’ve always wanted to put a 68060 in one of my Mac Quadras. The 060 is pin compatable with the 040, but not instruction compatable, though.

        My thought is getting an 060 Amiga tower (which had a program to emulate 040 instructions) and somehow convert the Quadra ROM to 060 instructions. It’s one of those things that is possible but not likely to happen anytime soon.

        If anyone does happen to do it, they’re getting on HaD. I’ll probably send them a prize, too.

  2. @Brian Benchoff

    No reply inline button for some reason.. anyhow..

    >>The 060 is pin compatable with the 040,
    >>but not instruction compatable, though.

    I think the 040 and 060 are bus compatiable.. I think the issue is missing instructions on the 060 that need to be trapped. Amiga OS has libraries for that.. Apple never wanted to make an 060 mac. I think the 040 is 5v and the 060 is 3.3v also, could be misremembering though.

    >> 060 Amiga tower

    An 060 equipped Amiga will run Mac OS in ShapeShifter or Fusion.. The problem is 060 accelerator boards are crazy expensive. 060 chips alone are usually pretty expesive, esp. if you want the later mask that can clock up to 100mhz. But as I mentioned there are some trays on ebay cheap at the moment (if I was in the US right now I would be bidding on them ;)).. Amiga 040 boards can usually be upgraded to an 060.. 040 boards are still pretty expensive though.

    >>convert the Quadra ROM to 060 instructions.

    I think people have thought about this before and never got anywhere. Much like all the Amiga Coldfire projects

    >>they’re getting on HaD.

    Look out for the FPGA Arcade Replay. There is going to be a daughter board with a real 060 on there. It will be just amiga cores to start with but I dont see why someone couldn’t make a Mac core and do some ROM patching to have it play nice with the 060.

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