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Atari Jaguar
- the Portable System, part 2 |
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The Jaguar lay poised on a
corner of Ben's workbench like, hm... well, a Jaguar
waiting to pounce. For months it sat, eyeing freedom
like a World of Warcraft player's wife eyes a power
outage. Suddenly, the day came - Ben decided to finish
the thing! Not for love, not for money, but only for an
empty spot on his bench. Alas! |
In
actuality it just took a while to get the case cut. Somehow I've
been working on this thing since July. Or August. Eh, one of those
months, it's all a blur. Anyway, with the case finished I could
start wiring stuff up!
As you can
sort of see in the photo above the main motherboard fits in the rear
half of the case (left) while the front (right) contains the screen,
controls and speaker. Each half is 1/2" thick. Unlike some projects
I've done I didn't have too much trouble fitting everything,
probably because not that many wires go between the halves. Believe
me I've seen a lot worse, some of my projects look like exploded spaghetti
factories.
A closer look
inside the front half of the case. This is the first project on
which I've actually connected a headphone jack correctly to the PS1
screen. Using headphones saves a lot of power consumption on things
like this (which is probably why they don't sell iPods with built-in
six-by-nines)
Finally
after weeks of pain and suffering the portable Jaguar was done! As
you can see the color motif was black, gray and burgundy, pretty
much like the original console. It has the built-in keypad, can take
overlays and has stereo sound.
Doubles as an elephant tongue depressor.
Here's
some close-ups of the screen in action - buckle your safety belts!
Draw distances that make Rescue on
Fractalus look like Gran Turismo 4!
Watch out Playstation.
And
finally, of course, more photos of the finished product...
I had some fun doing the screen
perimeter graphics - a jazzed-up "Jaguar" text, cat's eyes and
graphical Volume and Brightness logos. Plus it's printed on
reflective material for added coolness, and so you won't get hit by
a car should you go jogging with this thing.
(Of course, if you get
caught playing a Jaguar some drivers might hit you anyway)
ATARI EXECUTIVE
What are some COOL WORDS these days that kids are using?
Lackey 1
Morphing!
Lackey 2
Cyber!
ATARI EXECUTIVE
That's it - CYBERMORPH! It's like a license to print money!
Looking down the gullet of the cartridge
slot. Burgundy abounds!
Real-time large battery changing for
massive damage.
It's pretty thin, the main body is 1"
thick and all the sticks out the back are the cartridge slot and
battery.
That about
wraps it up for the Atari Jaguar Portable "making of" Sadly this is
probably the last NEW Atari game console portable I can make, since
the 7800 is filled with IC's and not very shrinkable. 5200's the
same way (plus it's just an Atari 400 so who cares) Who knows -
maybe now I'll finally make the VCSp Revision... SEVEN!
THE END?
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