Adventures with the Atari Jaguar (Patreon)

Anyone here own an Atari Jaguar? I do and, well, let's just say this is one system that is not fun to deal with.

So this Jaguar is a troublesome cat - it works but exhibited strange power issues that I couldn't figure out. It seemed to respond to pressure on the main board which is never a good sign.

A friend and I open it up, take a closer look and...it seems that someone else has run into power issues in the past as the main chip responsible for controlling power distribution across the system is in bad shape. Solder globs all over the legs is just the first issue.

This chip is labeled U38 on the Jaguar board and it has a difficult job - without any sort of fuse or safety in place, any power adapter plugged into the system stops first at this chip. There is no protection against an incorrect power plug or improper polarity.

Clearly someone fried the system in the past and tried to replace U38 - but they did a bad job. So, in its current state, that chip needs to be replaced!

We're going to first see if de-soldering and re-soldering the U38 can solve the issue but have also ordered a replacement part. 

What makes power troubleshooting more irritating with the Jaguar is the way in which the system handles carts. Unlike basically every other cartridge system out there, when you hit the power button WITHOUT A CART inserted, the power light does not illuminate. Yep, the system can appear dead without a cart inserted.

If you insert a cart with dirty contacts you might not get a power light either (usually you get the red Jaguar screen, though).

So why is this important all of the sudden? Well, for one thing, the Jaguar is going to play a large role in my upcoming DF Retro: Doom episode but, beyond that, I have plans to do an episode focused on the Jaguar simply because it's such an interesting beast.