BadCoder Consolation

Atari Jaguar Video-Games Programming and Development

Uploading to Jaguar with JUGS enabled BattleSphere

First of all make sure you have a BattleSphere by Scatologic, no easy task I think, but maybe that will change once chip prices drop and Scatologic can make many.

Next make sure that you have a fully working JUGS system. I am using an old laptop running DOS and Windows to develop on, (but understand from the technical requirements that this should be enough,) although I do not own JUGS. The supplied DOS loader supports only .BIN files and a supplied utility converts .ABS files to .BIN files. Badcoder will provide .BIN files for JUGS users normally as they work on BJL and Alpine too. Warning - reports indicate they load SLOWLY.

I do not know if there are different versions of the DOS uploader, the JUGS software itself is built-into the normal BattleSphere cartridge ROM.

This screen shows the system "unlocked". A secret cheat has to be entered in BattleSphere to unlock JUGS (I cannot tell you it) and then some special button combination activates it. The baud rate can be set.

Usage: JUGS.EXE [options]
-com=<COM1, or COM2>              Port number for COM1 or COM2
-baud=9600, 19200, 38400        Serial Baud Rate
-file=<name string>               Name of file to load
-addr=<load address>              Address to load file to (Hexadecimal)
-run=<load address>               Run flags (see below)
                                        0 = Run immediately
                                        1 = Reset DSP then run
                                        2 = Reset GPU then run
                                        3 = Reset DSP and GPU then run

While the binary is loading you do not see anything particularly special, unless the program occupies the RAM where the video display is sitting. (I do not know which binaries are affected, or at what address.) Apparently music plays during loading, but as the uploader is serial rather than parallel like the BJL, JagServer or Alpine, it is can take several minutes to upload the binary via JUGS.

Some Underground binaries are apparently not compatible with JUGS as they do things which cause it to fail during loading. Scatologic has some fix programs on their web-site to deal with these problems.

The BuyJugs site for the JUGS kit
The Scatologic Site for BattleSphere