SNES really 8-bit, Jaguar as a matter of fact, 64 bit.......

[blue lander]

The Jaguar's 68000 is in no way its main CPU.

The 68k is the only general purpose processor in the system. There's no way it can be anything other than the main CPU, since the rest of the chips are just GPUs and DSPs. Calling the Jaguar a 64 bit system because some of the support chips are 64 bits is a little like calling the Genesis an 8 bit system because it has a z80 for a sound processor.

Personally, since there's no real rule for determining how many "bits" a system is and since it's meaningless as a way of measuring the capabilities of a system anyways, I don't really care either way. It's just marketing nonsense to make console A look more powerful than console B.

[j_factor]

The Jaguar's 68000 is in no way its main CPU.

The 68k is the only general purpose processor in the system. There's no way it can be anything other than the main CPU, since the rest of the chips are just GPUs and DSPs.

I dunno, I've always thought of it as the control processor. Jaguar doesn't have a "main" CPU, IMO.

[boatofcar]

Actually, I just remembered Retro Gamer issue 26, all the facts about the Jaguar being a real 64 bit console.

So the case is settled,
the SNES is more 8 bit than 16 bit, whilst the Jaguar is a real 64 bit console.

Thanks for listening guys.

So you're basing your whole argument on two letters to Retro Gamer Magazine. That's pretty weak.

[tom]

Works for me :-)

[Ed Oscuro]

(I think Sony's PlayStation was the first console to do away with it in reference to machine specs as well as media format size)

Sega CD (and I think Turbo CD) was advertised as its games being on 650MB discs.

Could be. I haven't seen anything on the packages themselves, however.

In the 3/95 issue of Game Players, the Jaguar CD is advertised as "The most powerful game system in the world just got a 790 Meg tune-up", and in the description it says "It's like attaching an atom bomb to an F-14". It seemed like a very powerful add-on the way they worded it, in a huge number of 'Megs'.

Well, I haven't seen any early advertising for the PlayStation, but that console was released in Japan months before that GP ad you speak of.

[Ed Oscuro]

The old Genesis and SNES carts were measured in 'bits' to sound cool, eg 8 Mbit game = 1 Mbyte, 16 MBit game = 2 Mbyte and so on.

Megs (as opposed to using MB) weren't just to sound cool. It comes from the Master System days when Sega used "the mega cartridge" to refer to their 1Mb games (and "the two-mega cartridge"). It only made sense to keep going by megs, especially considering the early Genesis games were mostly 4 meg (Phantasy Star 2 was 6 meg). In 1989 that was actually quite big. The first 8 meg (or 1 MB) cart was Strider, and it wouldn't have made much sense to switch at that point. NEC started showing their games' sizes in megs to show that their little hucards were actually of comparable size to Genesis cartridges. Not every game was a multiple of 8; for example, there were lots of 12 meg games.

Nah, Tom has it right in this case.

Multiply all those numbers by 1024, and then divide by eight. Suddenly 4 meg (512K) seems awfully pathetic at a time when 360K double density floppies (which could hold 720K if both sides were used) were the norm.

[idrougge]

The old Genesis and SNES carts were measured in 'bits' to sound cool, eg 8 Mbit game = 1 Mbyte, 16 MBit game = 2 Mbyte and so on.

It's not only that, it's because memory is usually mentioned in bits. Since you don't know how wide the bus the memory is going to be connected to is, you sell them in bits, not bytes. This was particularly important in older times, when computers usually used "words", which could have lengths up to 36 bits.

[blue lander]

Even if you have a 32 bit wide bus, you still measure the memory in megabytes, at least from the consumer perspective. Your PC probably has a 32 bit bus, but you still count how much memory you have in megabytes, not in mega-32-bit-words or whatever. Since DEC stopped making 12 and 36 bit machines back in the 70's, it's not really as important to differentiate between the two. From the technical side, though you do specify a chip's memory capacity like 4 megs x 1 x 8 or x 16 or however wide the chip is. But to be honest, I sincerely doubt there's any reason for the whole megabit thing other than inflating the cartridge size. If Sega brags that their latest game is 500 kilobytes, people who use PCs are going to know that's less than a floppy disk holds and not be terribly impressed. 4 Megs sounds much more impressive.