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Revision as of 15:50, 16 January 2003 by Liftarn (talk | contribs) (Links)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Atari Jaguar and the Atari Lynx were the last two Atari systems to be developed, not by Atari but by outside contractors; Atari did not want any direct involvement in hardware production. In 1990, Martin Brennan and John Mathieson said that not only could they make a console far superior to the Sega Genesis or the Super NES but be cost efficient at the same time. 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 quite difficult to program for, as the hardware had a large number of bugs, including one in the memory controller that kept some of its processors from being able to execute code from the system RAM . The final nail in its coffin was the release of both the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. In a last ditch effort, Atari tried to play down these two consoles by claiming the Jaguar was the only 64-bit system. Their effort was in vain, and production of the Jaguar stopped after the sale of Atari to JT Storage.
Specs
CPUs: | "Tom" (the video processor) - 32/64 bit graphics processor at 26.59Mhz, 64 bit object processor, 64 bit blitter, 64 bit DRAM controller
"Jerry" (the audio processor) - 32 bit DSP at 26.6Mhz Motorola 68000 at 13.295Mhz |
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RAM: | 2MB |
Storage: | Cartridge - up to 6MB |