Virtual Bonkeydave

JagGD by RetroHQ – Beta Test

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Whoop Whoop, i have been lucky enough to have access to a JAgGD by RetroHQ – i have been a long time Atari user and pretty well know in the days of the Atari ST.

I have a pretty good Atari Jaguar collection already i have been collecting over the last 5 years or so, twenty odd games, 4 controllers etc with only a couple of games i have been unable to get hold of over the years.

The biggest issue has been price, like all retro kit there seems to be a massive up surge in demand which unfortantly pushes prices in the realms of ” Errr yeah wont bother with that “. Real shame however thats life and i suppose when you think about it shows there is a good cult following of the Atari Jaguar.

The JagCD , they are like gold dust and the price in the uk are well over £500 to buy one and i have never been able to get hold of one for a price i am willing to pay. Sad thing is if i have the money i have today i would have snapped one up when i was a lot younger.. Although not many JagCD games it did sort of open up the whole home brew scene…….

Thing to note with the JagGD, it does not currently support JagCD games; it may in the future.

I don’t plan on writing war and peace, its not needed as the JagGD is pretty self explanatory. Whole idea is to give a quick overview of using it and a few pictures etc.

 

Before we start, all the details about the JagGD are at RetroHQ’s website :

https://www.retrohq.co.uk/products/atari-jaguar-gd-flash-cartridge

Description

The RetroHQ Jaguar GameDrive cartridge allows you to play the full back catalogue of Atari Jaguar games and homebrew directly from a memory card.

The Jaguar GameDrive has full support for all games and sizes of EEPROM (used to save game progress). The EEPROM contents are saved directly to the memory card along with your game, so everything is stored in one place.

You will need to provide a memory card (FAT16 or FAT32 formatted) and your own ROM images (JAG, J64, ROM, BIN, ABS) to play. A selection of freeware games are linked in the resources section below.

The latest firmware for the ORIGINAL Jaguar GameDrive (recognisable by a different label from the one above) can be found below. For the new style Jaguar GameDrive, please follow the onscreen instructions as you boot the cartridge to access firmware updates.

 

Monday April 20th the post man arrived pretty late; was probably around 5pm. I do know where i have been living the postal service have been doing a great job in the current situation although postal deliveries have been getting a bit later over the last few weeks……

Opened the box and grabbed a 128gig micro SD card, fired up the Dell XPS laptop and the it had to happen my SD reader had given up. I am an Apple Mac person these days however i use the Dell for SD cards when i burn images for RetroPI. Amazon here i come to order one for my MAC which would add another day….

 

Tuesday April 21st, SD card reader arrived – come back to that in a minute

So out the box is a nice cartridge with nice art work and a small instruction manual, don’t forgot this is beta version so the official may come with a better manual ( no that you need it )

 

 

As you can see a micro SD card slot at the top with usual spring loaded mechanism.

There is a ” Getting Started ” section in the manual :

  • First thing you are told is that a firmware update is required, not sure if this will be needed when it goes GA.
  • Put cartridge into you Jaguar and turn it on
  • A QR code is displayed and a website to go too.
  • You have a choice, either scan the QR code or type the URL in.
  • Due to my my MAC being in a holding frame for work i ended up just typing the URL into chrome on my MAC. Yes i could scan in on my phone or iPad but then would need the hassle of getting the firmware upgrade file to my MAC.
  • Quick copy of a small upgrade file to the root of the SD card and i was ready to go.
  • Booted up and nothing happened, no firmware upgrade. Just sat there with QR code / URL Splash screen.
  • Spoke to RetroHQ, between us we figured 128gig SD cards don’t seem to work. Grabbed a 32gig SD card and copied over the upgrade file
  • Quick reboot of the Jaguar and the update is instantaneous !!! Thus the fact i have no pictures….
  • Menu appears as shown below

  • You use the cursor to navigate up and down and buttons xxxx to go back and forth.
  • It will happily navigate through folders and back and forth, just in case you want to organise you games into categories
  • Highlight the game and hit button xxxx
  • Loading window appears as shown below

 

 

 

  • Usual Jaguar red logo appears just like you where running a normal cartridge.
  • Game boots up as usual, i did not notice any difference in boot time from running a normal cartridge. Yes i guess i could use a stop watch to compare both however i don’t really see that being necessary. Zero complaints from me.



 

  • As you can see plays happy, i already own pitfall but was nice to see it running on the JagSD
  • One thing to note, there is no way to exit out the game back to the menu of the JagSD so you have to hard power off as if you where changing the cartridge. This would be nice in a future firmware to see this feature however i don’t know from a technical perspective whether this is possible.
  • Third Party / Home brew games work quite happily
  • Video running the bad apple demo

 

Summary

Forgive my rubbish audio / visual certainly not my forte.

The JagGD is a great piece of kit, ok its not the cheapest in the world however its not exactly the most expensive.

Its very easy to use so people should be up in next to no time ( don’t use 128gig SD’s ) with the whole experience as simple as it needs to be.

Certainly opens up the third party and home brew scene and with a bit of luck this might invigorate  a few more people to develop against the Jag. The original Atari 2600 has a sort of cult following with the harmony cartridge so fingers crossed this repeats the same.

Atari Age are going to be dealing with distribution, not sure when this will be. My advice is get on the waiting list as you wont regret this as an addition to the Atari Jaguar…

 

SteelSeries 9X Headphones

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As someone who owns multiple gaming machines ( Xbox, Switch, DS ) and lots of retro kit; actually most importantly i have a special edition Evercade on order. Actually if you have not heard of Evercade its worth dropping over to there website to have a read https://evercade.co.uk/

I have had some decent Turtle beach headphones X41 Wireless Surround Sound for my Xbox 360 which i then used on my XBOX X; headset was discontinued in 2011. They where pretty good at the time however obviously quite dated, plus i seemed to get drop out alot with my XBOX X. No idea if this was my XBOX or the fact the technology was a a tad old…..

Time to look for a new set of headphones….

When i looked i could see the usual suspects :

  • Turtle Beach
  • Astro
  • Razor

However SteelSeries seemed to come back as a new one on the block, ok not new and apparently well known on the gaming scene on the PC. However since i have done any PC gaining for probably 15 years the brand meant nothing to me.

Like any brand the price range is quite large, £50 for the cheapest right up to £180 for the SteelSeries 9x. However i thought well i want a good headphone that will hopefully last and i can use on multiple devices. Also i hate wires although a wire from the headset to the Xbox controller i was willing to accept; again if the headset was good.

Came down to a choice of two :

Arctis 3 Bluetooth

  • Simultaneous wired and Bluetooth
  • Perfect for Nintendo switch
  • ClearCast noise cancelling microphone

Arctis 9x

  • Integrated Xbox Wireless connectivity
  • Simultaneous wired and Bluetooth
  • ClearCast noise cancelling microphone

Price of the 9x’s is around £90 more than the 3 so it comes in around £189…..

I really like the fact it as an approved Xbox Wireless headset so it can use Xbox’s Wireless connectivity…. Guess thats what swung it for me, meaning no lead to the controller plus i like to try and buy the best of the best if i can afford it.

Set-up was straight forward however really poor it does not come with a 3.5 male to male lead so i could plug it into my Nintendo switch, ok £5 off amazon however i do think one should have been included for the price.

Sound quality and overall use is second to none; the virtual sound works really well. However if you want to use Dolby Atmos ( if you have an Xbox X ) then you have to have this wired to your controller… Doh !!!!!!!! It wont work over the Xbox Integrated Wireless connectivity which seems a bit thick. Must be some type of technical issue ? however i don’t know what this is.

All positive up to now !!!! Heres the negative, it just does not work with my Apple Mac laptop, yes it connects and then disconnects after a few seconds. A quick search on google, lots of other people complaining about this issue and little or no response from Steel Series….. Very annoying and yes a bit of a let down  considering how much they where. However my main use was for gaming on my Xbox and Switch not for Zoom conference calls with world. So not the end of the world however would have been nice to see Steel Series actively trying to fix this. I guess its one of these ” Watch this Space ”

So all in all a good set of headphones at a reasonable price of £189, yes sure the Astra / Turtle Beach ones are better however they cost a lot more money.

 

” Recommended !!! ”

 

 

Arcains – Games Reloaded

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Twitter is a funny product, sometimes so much overload and you just cant keep up with the flow of content. Well by chance this website was retweeted the other week and i am so glad.

I am  massive retro gaming fan, i live in the north West and we are so lucky to have

  • Arcade Club in Bury
  • Retro Arcade Warrington

I have been Arcade Club numerous times and its a great cheap day out, family loves it. Still yet to get over to Retro Arcade in Warrington however i will make sure i get over some time this year

Going back to what i found on twitter, another retro arcade over in Liverpool

  • Arcains Games Reloaded ” www.arcains.co.uk “

Well I never knew this place existed, used to spend half my time when at university playing adams family pinball ( besides being in the student union bar ) at the arcade just outside Liverpool Limestreet stations

So i have another retro arcade to get to in 2020, looks great and a few really good reviews on youtube….

Pandora Box 6 Jamma Board Part 2

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So this is the headline for the Pandora 6 if you look on any resellers …. what grabs your interest is the words add’s support FBA MAME PS1 ….

Arcade Version Pandora’s Box 6 1300 PCB board HDMI/VGA/CGA for LED/CRT Support add FBA MAME PS1 game arcade cabinet coin machine 

  

  

1300 games . and can add games yourself 

As you can see from the above picture they have certainly improved the power under the hood…….. However the most important addition and a first time for pandora boxes is the ability to add your own games to the USB stick that contains the games already. OK in the past you could hack it within reason and add your own games however i never ever got this to work.

I ordered one from my usual supplier however thought is this too good to be true. Received it within a few weeks, this time little choice in colour. It was either fashionable pink for Jamma versions or horrible green for home versions ( none jamma interface ).  Usual Jamma packaging arrived with the Jamma box in bubble wrap and a quick little instruction manual. 

As you can see from below, it certainly is Pink.

Few screws on the back of my bartop to allow me to lay the back of the cabinet flat on a table.

Removal of 2 screws to take my Pandora 5 out…. Then replace with the new pink wonder machine. 

As you can see below, it really is straightforward to swap over : 

  1. Couple of screws to fix it firmly to the back of your bartop 
  2. Plug Jamma interface at the bottom
  3. CRT plug

Thats it…. Pandora 6 swap over, took me about 10 minutes. Obviously depends how you have built your bartop in the first place, however if you have followed most plans available with a quick search on google then your probably reasonably similar.

Below shows the USB drive thats used for storage, my advice would be to get a long male to female USB extension lead. This means you can leave the USB drive outside of your bartop so you dont need to un screw things when you want to add/remove games to the pen drive. Couple of pounds on amazon and you can get a decent one.

Thats it…….

Moment of truth, power my bartop on

Thats it for part 2, next one will show a few of the new nice touches available on the Pandora 6.

Pandora Box 6 Jamma Board Part 1

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I have a cabinet in the dinning room set up for family use, have always just used Pandora Box jamma boards. I know they dont have as many games as using a PC or a Raspberry PI; however they just work out the box with no hassle meaning its just easy.

My trusty cabinet below is really easy made, when a new version of Pandara Box is released its a matter of 2 screws inside and a couple of leads swapped over.

Pandora Box 4 was pretty good then version 5 appeared at the end of last year which had out run on it and another few hundred games…….

About a month ago Pandora’s Box 6 was released which has raised the bar a bit. This post is going to be in a couple of posts as i intend to put a few pictures on and give my honest john review of where Pandora’s Box has got too….

 

 

 

1300 in 1

Pandora 5

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So my trusty bartop cab has had a few changes over the last few months, started with a pandora 3 which has been in it for a few years

 

 

Upgraded my pandora 4 to a 5