Atari Jaguar Clean Sync SCART review

The Atari Jaguar might not have been the gaming powerhouse Atari was relying on it to be, but for many gamers the existence of Jeff Minters superb Tempest 2000 is reason enough to own the console. For all its other flaws, Atari at least saw fit to equip their 64 bit machine with full RGB output capabilities. The machine uses a proprietary edge style connector rather than any kind of standard, off the shelf component. Finding good quality SCART leads for the machine has been challenging, particularly if you needed one that used clean sync, rather than composite video for sync. Fortunately, our friends over at RetroGamingCables.co.uk have come to the rescue again, with their new Atari Jaguar csync SCART cable.

The big cat in RGB

As always, before we connected the cable to our Jaguar we opened up the SCART end to check the internals and we can confirm the cable is shielded and grounded. Over on the other end of the cable, the connector looks professionally made for the Jaguar. In the past, if you could find an RGB cable for your Jaguar at all, it was typically made from a recycled edge connector that was simply trimmed to size. Typically this was then attached to a ribbon cable that may have lacked the kind of shielding that hardcore gamers demand from their RGB cables. In practise, the large connector on this new cable is more prone to lateral movement and can be easily knocked, perhaps when inserting a controller. Compared with the nice snug fit of our old ribbon cable this is a little disappointing, but of course we’ll take the extra shielding over our old cable any day.

We tested the cable with our Extron Crosspoint switch, which absolutely needs a clean sync signal and we had no issues whatsoever. Picture quality was great, there were no sync dropouts or other problems. If you need a cable wired for composite video for sync rather than clean sync, RetroGamingCables.co.uk can do that for you too.

The Atari Jaguar doesn’t have a port of the famous 240p test suite, so we weren’t able to do such exhaustive tests as normal. However we encountered no problems while playing Tempest 2000. Audio quality was good too and only the very faintest hint of any audio buzz was present even with the sound turned up unsociably high. Below are a couple of screen grabs we took with the XRGB Mini while using the cable.

In conclusion then, RetroGamingCables.co.uk have delivered another high quality cable. If you need an RGB cable for your Atari Jaguar, look no further.