Atari Jaguar - the Portable System, part 2

 

   Finish.... me.....

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!

I've sure taken a lot of photos like this...

  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.

...and this. It's deja vu!

  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.

When it came to the Jag's specs Atari was the Lion King
Doubles as an elephant tongue depressor.
 

   Here's some close-ups of the screen in action - buckle your safety belts!

Atari Jaguar - 64 bits / 64 polygons
Draw distances that make Rescue on Fractalus look like Gran Turismo 4!

The Lynx it ain't
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!
 

I call this the "Enterprise" angle
Looking down the gullet of the cartridge slot. Burgundy abounds!

This battery weighs more the unit itself
Real-time large battery changing for massive damage.

My favorite MC is Escher
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?


Back to www.benheck.com Homepage