The MSX

[MatGubbins]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFRf87SqWrw

Dayam! How do I jump ship?

[PeterJ]

Don't tell anyone [mention]MatGubbins[/mention]...

Spoiler

The only issue I had with the MSX sprites when programming from BASIC is the collision detection. The system can tell there has been a collision but can't tell you (as far as I know), what has collided with what.

[akeley]

It's a very interesting machine, especially seeing as it had been big in Japan, it offers something different soft-wise compared to the usual suspects. ZX Uno runs MSX 1 core, MiSTer I think all of them. I'd get a real one myself, but for now have my hands full with my current micros.

[PeterJ]

Yes, it's s pity it never really caught on much in Europe.

[MatGubbins]

Ohhh nice. I had a Toshiba HX-10 from a 1999 bootfair, £2. It worked but I didn't have a compatible tape deck. The MSX bit the dust a few years later when I tested it again and I (stupidly) binned it. I have MSX Alien 8 somewhere.

1984, I had just got my Spectrum, the first magazines I purchased was Big K (yup, a great read) and MSX was the computer that the mag laughed at. It looked great but I never understood why the standard amount of memory in each machine wasn't a kept the same. It seemed to become a joke in the UK.... Sigue Sigue Sputnik and the MSX hat.

[PeterJ]

Ohhh nice. I had a Toshiba HX-10 from a 1999 bootfair, £2.

How I miss those car boot sales before eBay when you could pick up retro computers for a couple of quid. Happy days!

[akeley]

[mention]PeterJ[/mention] Do you have any modern storage solutions for yours? I know there's a MSX-duino style loader available, but was wondering about something for cartridges.

[PeterJ]

@PeterJ Do you have any modern storage solutions for yours? I know there's a MSX-duino style loader available, but was wondering about something for cartridges.

No. To be honest I don't use it much. The Cartridge games are good fun though and I do play Sorcery on it which is very good on the MSX.

[PeterJ]

This looks like a cheap multi-platform solution [mention]akeley[/mention], but is only for tapes.

https://www.antoniovillena.es/store/product/miniduino/

[akeley]

Yes, that's what I had in mind...there are few of its kind available (some can also load ZX programs).

MSXses are not wildly expensive (at least the lower models), so who knows, maybe one of these days...

[MonkZy]

There is a flash ROM cartridge for the MSX:

https://www.msx.org/news/en/megaflashrom-scc-sd

They are pricey though, i think the cheapest are 99euro.

If you like the graphics architecture of MSX, then look for the CGL M5. It was sold in the UK and had the same TI graphics chip. I had a hipster school mate who had one and he swapped it with my speccy for a few weeks (he wanted to play Hobbit). The BASIC gave you huge sprites with really simple syntax, it also had the screen offset command for really smooth scrolling in BASIC.

I thought the Spectrum NEXT would be a MSX killer for enthusiasts.

[1024MAK]

The Memotech MTX500, MTX512 U.K. made computers also use the same video display processor (the Texas Instruments TMS9929A) as the original MSX computers. However they are not compatible.

Mark

[PeterJ]

According to Wikipedia (which I always trust 100% )

The TMS9918 and its variants were used in the ColecoVision and CreatiVision, Memotech MTX, MSX, SG-1000/SC-3000, Spectravideo, Sord M5, Tatung Einstein, Texas Instruments TI-99/4, Casio PV-2000, and Tomy Tutor.

I remember with the Sord (sold in the UK as the CGL M5) and the TI99 you had to purchase the extended BASIC cartridge to make use of the Sprites from BASIC.

[RMartins]

The Memotech MTX500, MTX512 U.K. made computers also use the same video display processor (the Texas Instruments TMS9929A) as the original MSX computers. However they are not compatible.

Mark

The MTX line of computers, was one that really impressed me for it's quality and design.
The computer case made of aluminium with the keyboard attached, and everything so neatly fitted inside, with a simple hinge system to open the device. It was just was ahead of it's time.

But the price killed it, when competing with low budget machines, for the masses.

[DenisGrachev]

Yep, nice machine. I ported Yazzie and Twinlight from speccy to msx1 in a week

[Joefish]

Got a Toshiba MSX and a Green Beret cartridge.
The MSX can do 8x1 attribute multicolour graphics and single colour sprites, but only four on any one row.
The screen is character-mapped in that mode (hence the character scrolling), but has enough UDGs (3 banks of 256) to mimic full-screen hi-res.

The drawback is, in machine code you have to write to the video RAM via the graphics chip using the OUT command, which is really slow. You can't just write data to video RAM. So something like Speccy R-Type, that reads a byte from the screen, scrolls it, then writes it back, would run 3 or 4 times slower.

[Joefish]

On the other hand, if you load pre-shifted bits of scenery into those character sets then you only need update the character map to do some fine scrolling in no time at all. But you're very limited in numbers so your scenery must be pretty repetetitve, or just lots of abstract geometric shapes made from a handful of primitive character shapes. And any enemies that can't be done as sprites will still move in character chunks, if it means you can no longer afford to pre-shift them within the character set as well!

It would have been a nice screen mode to have had on the Spectrum, but with direct access to read and write the video RAM.

[Lethargeek]

It would have been a nice screen mode to have had on the Spectrum, but with direct access to read and write the video RAM.

but character backgrounds are almost useless without hardware sprites, and hw sprites are too costly and too limited at that cost imo
i would be much happier if the Spectrum have had more convenient screen addressing and a 4-color low-res mode (per attribute tile)
oh, and the ability to set its former vblank interrupt to happen on a desired scanline won't hurt as well
like this, the Spectrum could be just as cheap, but much more capable gaming machine
all without any superfluous console stuff

[RMartins]

It would have been a nice screen mode to have had on the Spectrum, but with direct access to read and write the video RAM.

but character backgrounds are almost useless without hardware sprites, and hw sprites are too costly and too limited at that cost imo
i would be much happier if the Spectrum have had more convenient screen addressing and a 4-color low-res mode (per attribute tile)
oh, and the ability to set its former vblank interrupt to happen on a desired scanline won't hurt as well
like this, the Spectrum could be just as cheap, but much more capable gaming machine
all without any superfluous console stuff

Do I detect some C64 background in there ?

[Lethargeek]

Do I detect some C64 background in there ?

very not much of it (but yeah, it can resemble the c64 with all the console crap removed and its cpu unrestrained)