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Jaguar Developer Weekly           July 21, 1995                  Vol.1, No.5
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Jaguar CD-ROM Track Format
--------------------------
Just a quick reminder to developers working on CD-ROM titles: it's very
important to make sure you are following the correct format for a Jaguar
CD-ROM track and are including the proper track header and tailer
information.  Failure to do so will prevent you from creating a bootable CD.

The proper format for a Jaguar CD-ROM track is described in the Jaguar
Developer documentation in the section entitled The Jaguar CD-ROM:
Programming, Procedures, and Guidelines in the Jaguar CD-ROM chapter.  Here
are some of the highlights: The start of each data track must contain a
specific Atari data header, and the end of each track must contain a
corresponding data tailer.  No data may precede a track header or follow a
track tailer.  The header must consist of 16 repetitions of the string "ATRI"
(64 bytes total) followed by the string:

"ATARI APPROVED DATA HEADER ATRIx"

where the "x" at the end is ASCII 32 + the number of the track (relative to
the disc, starting from 0).  For example, track 0 would have an ASCII 32,
track 1 would have an ASCII 33, etc.  The tailer must be long aligned (i.e.
your data must be a multiple of 4 bytes in length) and consist of the string:

"ATARI APPROVED DATA TAILER ATRIx"

The "x" should be the same value as in the track header.  This is followed by
16 repetitions of the string "ATRI" (64 bytes total).

The boot track of a Jaguar CD-ROM has two Motorola-format long words
immediately following the track header.  The first specifies the target
address of your boot code, which must be between $4000 and $40000.  The
second specifies the length of your boot code, which should be no longer than
64K.  The boot track may be longer than this, but only 64K will be loaded
automatically at boot time by the system.


Memory Track NV-RAM Cartridge
-----------------------------
The Jaguar Memory Track is an Non Volatile RAM (NV-RAM) cartridge used by CD
titles to save game high scores, user options, and save-game information.  It
is accessed via a set of BIOS routines which are organized and used much like
a disk file system on a computer.

The NV-RAM Simulator uses the Alpine board to simulate the Jaguar NV-RAM
cartridge during the development process.  This is available in the
JAGLIB.ZIP archive online.

The NV-RAM BIOS allocates blocks of memory on the cartridge to programs in
512 byte blocks.  Therefore, to get the best performance, your program should
read or write NV-RAM in multiples of 512 bytes.  Doing reads or writes with
smaller amounts of data will work, but is many times slower than reading or
writing the same amount of data in one step.  The difference is easily
noticable to people using your program.


CD Error Handling
-----------------
When an error value appears in register A1 after a CD_ptr call, you should
check that the address in A0 is equal to or greater than the buffer start
address given in the last CD_read.  If not, a CD_ack should be issued prior
to any other CD BIOS call.


Important Note about Adobe Premiere 4.0
---------------------------------------
Several in-house and third party developers have had difficulty in creating
Cinepak movies for Jaguar titles using Adobe Premiere 4.0.  These errors are
consistent with internal rounding errors that cause video frames to
occasionally be added or skipped.  In addition, these errors have induced
'clicking' in audio samples that are resampled by Premiere.

Adobe Tech Support has acknowledged these problems and is planning to correct
them in some future update.  Until then, Adobe (was CoSa) AfterEffects is not
known to suffer from these problems.  To correct Audio resampling problems,
we have used Macromind SoundEdit 16 with success as it has the ability to
edit the audio stream of a Quicktime movie atomically, without necessitating
the recompression of video on resaving the file.


Normen Is Back From Vacation
----------------------------
Atari's Jaguar Developer Support Manager Normen Kowalewski has returned from
his vacation, so things are back to what we call "normal" at Atari's
Developer Support department.


Tool Updates
------------
The Jaguar Developers Kit tools and related files listed below have been
updated in the month.  You can download the latest versions from the Atari
Software Development BBS or from the Jaguar Developer library in the Atari
Gaming forum on Compuserve.

Jaguar NVRAM Simulator — July 21, 1995.  The NVRAM simulator uses the Alpine
board to emulate the Jaguar Memory Track cartridge, an add-on for the Jaguar
CD that allows CD game titles to save their user options, high score lists,
saved-games, and other information.  The archive has been updated with
additional documentation.  Download JAGLIB.ZIP for the complete package.

Jaguar Graphics Tool — July 21, 1995.  Several minor bugs reported by Jaguar
Developers have been fixed.  Download ARTWORK.ZIP.

Jaguar Cinepak Utility — July 7, 1995.  A couple of small cosmetic glitches
have been fixed.  Also the program now gives an error if the QuickTime movie
you are trying to convert does not use Cinepak for video compression.
Download JAGMAC.SEA using MacBinary on the Macintosh, or download to your PC
and use a MacBinary-intelligent utility to transfer the file to your
Macintosh.  Once you get the file to the Mac, JAGMAC.SEA is a self-extracting
archive.

WDB Debugger — June 30, 1995.  A problem was fixed where all your breakpoints
were cleared when one was reached.  Also fixed is a problem loading and
executing script files from the command line.  Download DBPC.ZIP


CD Boot ROM Emulator For Alpine
-------------------------------
Atari now has a new CD Boot ROM emulator that loads into the Alpine board and
emulates the boot process of the Jaguar CD, loading the boot code from the CD
(or the CD emulator running on a Falcon030) and executing it in the same
fashion as if you had created a bootable CD disc.  You can even boot directly
from the CD Emulator!

The CD Boot Emulator program is available online in the CDROM.ZIP archive
(dated June 23).  See the enclosed documentation for details about how to use
it.


Developer Kit Archive Roadmap
-----------------------------
The tools, sample source code, libraries, and other components of the Jaguar
Developers Kit are updated frequently.  To keep track of what's new, see the
file ROADMAP.TXT that is posted online on the Atari Software Development BBS
and in the Jaguar Developer library in the Atari Gaming forum on Compuserve.
This file is updated and reposted whenever any of the standard distribution
archives from the Jaguar Developer's kit is updated.


Brainstorm BBS
--------------
We've had a few developers tell us that they "cannot find the ROADMAP.TXT
file on Atari's French BBS".  However, the reason is that the BBS they are
refering to is operated by Brainstorm, not Atari Corporation.  Brainstorm
does programming work for Atari on some of the Jaguar Developer tools, and
their BBS normally does have the latest versions of those specific tools, but
not the same exact archives as what is distributed by Atari.  Also, they
normally do not have current versions of other files.

While it certainly may be useful and convenient in many cases, the Brainstorm
BBS is not an official site for downloading any of the Jaguar Developer Kit
distribution files.  This is why ROADMAP.TXT is not available on this system.
The official sites for the Jaguar Developer distribution archives, where
you'll find ROADMAP.TXT and all the files it refers to, are the Jaguar
Developer areas of the Atari Gaming forum on Compuserve and the Atari
Software Development BBS operated by Atari in Sunnyvale.


New BBS Number
--------------
In order to improve reliability, the Atari Software Development BBS is
getting a new phone line soon.  This will be a direct line that doesn't go
through the rest of Atari's phone system, so there should be fewer
noise-related modem connection problems.

The new number for the BBS will be (408) 541-9164.  But remember this number
is not active yet!  The number will also be posted on the BBS itself at least
a week in advance of the change, as well as in future issues of the Jaguar
Developer Weekly.


If you've missed previous issues...
-----------------------------------
then it's possible that we may not have a current fax number for you.  Just
in case, please contact us with your current address, telephone and fax
numbers.  Also, consider that the better solution would be to subscribe to
the..


Jaguar Developer Weekly Via EMAIL
---------------------------------
The preferred method for Atari to send out the Jaguar Developer Weekly is via
EMAIL, but unfortunately, we don't have a database of everybody's EMAIL
addresses.  If you have a current Internet or Compuserve EMAIL address,
please send a message to mfulton@atari.com so that we can add you to the list
of developers that receive the Jaguar Developer Weekly via EMAIL instead of
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What you get each week will be the ASCII text of the issue, plus an online
readable version.  We've been sending out TIF files of each page, but some
people have had problems with this, so we are investigating the possibility
of using something like Adobe Acrobat or Word Perfect Envoy to create an
online version.  Let us know what you think.

