Atari Jaguar
The Atari Jaguar and the Atari Lynx were the last two Atari systems to be developed, but because Atari did not want any direct involvement in hardware production they were produced by outside contractors.
In 1990, Flare2 (a company formed by Martin Brennan and John Mathieson with Atari funding) said that not only could they make a console far superior to the Sega Genesis or the Super NES but they could also be cost-effective.
Atari immediately agreed and the system was released in 1993 for $250 under a $500 million manufacturing deal with IBM.
Initially the system sold well, but because of poor games it was eventually considered a failure. The system was difficult to program for, as the hardware had a large number of bugs, including one in the memory controller that stopped some of its processors executing code from the system RAM [1] [2].
The final nail in its coffin was the release of both the Sony PlayStation and the Sega Saturn.
In a last ditch effort to rescue Jaguar, Atari tried to play down these two consoles by claiming the Jaguar was the only 64-bit system, causing some controversy (some contended that the Jaguar's two 64-bit "processors" were essentially nothing more than graphics accelerators; its GPU was only 32-bit and its CPU was a 16-bit 68000).
This advertising push was futile, and production of the Jaguar stopped after Atari purchased JT Storage in a reverse takeover.
Several peripherals were announced, such as a voice modem and VR headset, but the only peripherals released were the Atari Jaguar CD drive and the JagLink, a simple two-console networking device.
Specs
| CPUs: |
"Tom" chip (contains 3 video-related processors), 25.59 MHz
- Graphics processing unit (GPU) - 32-bit RISC architecture, 4K internal cache, provides wide array of graphic effects
- 64 bit object processor - programmable; can behave as a variety of graphic architectures
- 64 bit blitter - high speed logic operations, Z-buffering & Gourad shading
- 64 bit DRAM controller (not a processor)
"Jerry" (the audio processor) - 32 bit DSP at 26.6Mhz
Motorola 68000 at 13.295Mhz |
|---|
| RAM: | 2MB |
|---|
| Storage: | Cartridge - up to 6MB |
|---|
External Links
- http://dmoz.org/Games/Video_Games/Console_Platforms/Atari/Jaguar_64/
- Jaguar FAQ: http://www.digiserve.com/eescape/showpage.phtml?page=a2
Referenced By
68000 | 68000 family | 680x0 | Atari | Atari 7800 | Atari Jaguar CD | Atari Lynx | Atari Panther | Atari Transputer Workstation | Ben Cheese | DOOM | DOOM (computer game) | Doom computer game | Game console | Games console | JT Storage | Jaguar | Jeff Minter | John Mathieson | Konix Multisystem | List of major flops | Loki (computer) | M68000 | M68k | MC68000 | Martin Brennan | Motorola 68000 | Motorola 68000 family | Motorola 68k | Nintendo 64 | Panthera Onca | Timeline of video games | Video game console | Videogame Timeline | Wolf3D | Wolfenstein | Wolfenstein-3D | Wolfenstein 3D | Zoop
|
