MSX Computers at MSX Meetup 2019

We take a look at a wide range of MSX computers on display at the Centre for Computing History during the MSX Meetup 2019.

[@ZenithMusicNet]

Great to see there are still events organized around MSX. Thanks for the video, I enjoyed it.

[@BazzaHSpeccymad]

Great video.....just added an msx to my collection. know very little about the machines so found this fascinating

[@marksands9196]

I have A Spectravideo 738 MSX1 and a Toshiba MSX1 out in the shed, A Sony Trackball, and a Yamaha FD Disk Controller, and a joystick I think. My first ever computer was the Sony Hit Bit. Before I got out of them, I had a Sony MSX2 that I purchased 2nd hand from Holland and had shipped to Australia, and I bought the Sony MSX2+ direct out of Japan And I used to do a Newsletter / Magazine for a while, produced on the MSX computers and subscriptions world wide.

[@TheCentreforComputingHistory]

We’d love to have the newsletters in our archive if you have any still?

[@BADC0FFEE]

Great stuff! I have an Hit-Bit Mezzo myself, one of the best looking computers ever designed

[@dizmop]

I used to have a Canon V20 and thought it was great, some of my mates had other MSX computers too

[@battmann7089]

As a recent convert to the MSX I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying it, it's a really interesting system or systems! I'm lapping up anything I can find on it. I own a Toshiba HX22 and Sony Hitbit HB 10B and I love them. All I want is an equivalent of an sd2iec for it and I'm sorted!! MSX2CAS is a must!

[@fr_schmidlin]

Life is easier on the MSX than with SD2IEC because MSX has native support for massive storage. You can buy either a "Carnivore 2" or a "MegaFlashROM SCC+SD 512KB".

[@MeitsMSX]

Great video. Good amount of stuff to show to the audience and an almost flawless flow of good information. It's just two things I noticed: This particular MSX2+ machine does not have MSX-Music built in (at least not officially) and the Moonsound does have twice as many channels (wave table at least) as mentioned in the clip. So not 12 but 24. but on top of that there's 18 2op FM channels as well of which you can trade two channels to get one 4op FM channel up to (iirc) 6 4op FM channels. It's quite a beast really and it's still possible to acquire brand new clones which do a marvelous job.

[@tasosrizopoulos868]

At any point the actual specs of the MSX machines were behind the curve but that was not the point as the flexibility and expandability of the platform were amazing even for todays standards. With slot expanders you could have 16 cartridges at once connected and each one could incorporate ROM, RAM, extra ports, Video with pass through, Audio with pass through even on a single cartridge. The MSX standard was designed to be incorporated into appliances as well and there were examples of connected home implementations back in 1983. Anyway, in comparison with other impressive computers of the time you could say that some bad decisions were made by the designers but so did everyone else in retrospect...

[@ArumesYT]

Yeah, sounds great when you 'forget' to mention the limitations of those expansion slots. github.com/Konamiman/MSX/blob/master/DOC/MSX2TH/th-5b.txt

[@tasosrizopoulos868]

Hardly anything was perfect 36 years ago and this is why we don't type on MSX computers today. The vision was for a universal platform for the digital part of all appliances, based on the most cheap and readily available components that were on the market at the time. MSX wasn't even supposed to target anything more than low cost part of the home market in Japan as this segment was already catered for by the PC88 and Sharp computers.

[@ArumesYT]

@@tasosrizopoulos868 You seem to have trouble acknowledging the weak points of the MSX, because you start generalizing whenever I mention them. You talk about "amazing expandability even for todays standards." I point out that that't not the case at all, and all you have to say is "hardly anything was perfect 36 years ago". When you say the designers made some bad decisions, you just HAVE to add that "so did everyone else". Yeah, sure, but choosing the wrong color of an on/off-button is not the same kind of bad decision as picking an outdated CPU. After all that time you still can't let go of your MSX fanboyism. You won't see me defending Amiga technology like that; I moved on long ago. It's time for you to see the MSX for what it really was and move on too.

[@DuranyTube]

Great! Thanks!

[@cpc4eva]

great video - whats the device at 11mins 40sec called ? it has the Ghost game cart inserted. I couldn't make out what it is called many thanks for your help.

[@fr_schmidlin]

It's called "One Chip MSX" (aka OCM). There's also a clone called Zemmix Neo that was built in many places: Korea, Brazil and Spain.

[@nawafaleid196]

nice, where was this ?

[@Stjaernljus]

Spectravideo is the way to go

[@johndoe9536]

Sony Hit Bit was the best of them all "!

[@Dawwwg]

I had the Sony HB-F900(A)P (with built-in digitizer and superimposer and 3 external cartridge slots) MSX2 modded to 2+ and floppy 2 drives (on top of eachother where the original full-height one used to be), 1 MB RAM, 192kB VRAM, SCSI-HDD, 7MHz Z80h CPU with speed-switch, IO-speedmod, modded BIOS & DiskROM, SRGB mod, Philips Music Module with 256KB SRAM mod, Midi keyboard, FM-PAC modded to stereo and SCC-cartrigde mod. It was the dream-machine were I honed my Z80 assembly skills that led the way to my current profession !

[@c7261]

Wooot! St Pauli! 😁

[@mgabrysSF]

Ah yes, the Zune of the 8-bit era.

[@mgabrysSF]

Sony did make MSX computers so yes, that'd work too.

[@rooneye]

Such a shame the MSX requires (really expensive and rare) ROMs to really see it's full potential :( Without them it's just like a Speccy (Which I find absolute garbage). Speaking of expensive ROMs that light up one at 22:18 is awesome!

[@fr_schmidlin]

You an also use a flash cartridge to try to keep costs at bay. I'd recommend to buy either a "MegaFlashROM SCC+SD 512KB" or a "Carnivore II".

[@rooneye]

@@fr_schmidlin Cool. The MSX HitBit the red one with the inbuilt joystick is THE coolest looking PC ever. Shame the stick's on the RIGHT though! The grey one's sexy as hell too. They all are tbf. But the red one is just👌*chefkiss

[@bubblegumgun3292]

22:45 is that RGB on the fukin game M8. that's fukin dank AF really ahead of the time MSX the Start of Master Race PC Gaming

[@deadlocked5337]

Sony Hit Bit > Sony PlayStation