EQUIPMENT

Below a summary of my MSX computers and external hardware. The info is taken from the wiki of MSX Resource Center. As most of my hardware has been modded this will be added to the description.


Philips VG 8235 MSX2 computer



This unit has some extras:



Philips NMS 8250 MSX2 computer



This unit has some extras:



Philips NMS 8250 MSX2+ computer (Tweety)



This unit has some extras:



Philips NMS 8255 MSX2+ computer



This unit has some extras:



Sony HB-F1XDJ MSX2+ computer



This unit has some extras:



Sony HB-F1XV MSX2+ computer



This unit has some extras:



Panasonic FS-A1FX MSX2+ computer



This unit has some extras:



Panasonic FS-A1WX MSX2+ computer


 
This unit has some extras:  



Panasonic FS-A1WX MSX2+ computer


 
This unit has some extras:



Panasonic FS-A1WSX MSX2+ computer


 
This unit has some extras:



Panasonic FS-A1ST MSX turbo R computer




This unit has some extras:



One Chip MSX




Bartop



Constructed of salvaged pc and laptop parts.



Sony Playstation 2 slim



This unit has some extras:


Not up to date below here


MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD


 

This unit got enhanced by adding a audio out jack.



Gr8net


 



ATA-IDE+RS232C interface


Tweety has this IDE interface by Sunrise built in in order to get life into the Compact Flash reader which is built into its case.



SCC


Two MegaFlashROM SCC cartridges with a 512KB flashROM onboard. Both are housed in a donor Konami cartridge with the real SCC still in function. The one to the left is housed in Tweety



Playsoniq




Padial PS/2 Keyboard interface


Cartridge that can translate PS/2 keyboard input to MSX. Works in most MSX computers. Not all PS/2 keyboards are supported and genuine PS/2 signal must be present



WORP3 MIDI-PAC 2


A cartridge that translates PSG and MSX-Music signals to MIDI data. I use this a lot when I make music on my synthesizers. When used to emulate MSX-Music not all 128GM instruments can be used. The instruments are grouped in as small as possible groups. In this second version of MIDI-PAC WORP3 managed to squeeze more groups in it with more diversity in the instruments as a result. When used with WORP3's command line MID player all instruments are available.



OPL4


In the mid nineties Sunrise developed and produced an OPL4 soundcard for MSX. As the tracker that came with it was written by Moonsoft, the name of the cartridge was Moonsound.

Mine is version 2.0 and has had its shares of dying moments. Just when I started to pick up my MSX activities again when the new millennium had just started, I found out that one side was mute. It turned out that a pre-amp had died. Sunrise replaced both left en right pre-amps for a higher quality version and added 512kB SRAM to its original 128kB. It worked some ten years until the OPL4's wave part totally died. Sunrise replaced the synthesizer and added even more SRAM to reach 1MB.

In the meantime I bought a Korean clone named Dal-So-Ri in case my Moonsound would die. I received it just before my Moonsound did die. What a coincidence.

The third OPL4 cartridge is the white FM Blaster by the French Repro Factory. The name is somewhat unlucky as FM is only a part of the cartridge and there is little to no support for the FM of the OPL4. It is a clone of Wozblaster. This cartridge outputs less volume than the other OPL4 cartridges. Just cranking up the volume of the amplifier is not the most satisfying solution as the noise gets amplified as well. Therefore there's a solution to this problem.

When Junsoft decided to make an update of Dal-So-Ri by adding several new modes, including some MSX-Audio features, I couldn't resist.

The last OPL4 cartridge I added was a Shockwave 2 by Tecnobytes. They claim it has a better DAC than all other cartridges on this photo. Yet it does not have gold plates and pin 49 is connected so noise from the MSX has a way in.

Dal-So-Ri is my favorite



MSX Audio


I have four Philips NMS-1205 Music Modules. There's one with 256kB sampleram and a 7MHz adaption, one with 256kB sampleram, one with a 7MHz adaption and one without any of all that. None of them has the silly software built in anymore. The tiny one in the middle is the Toshiba HX-MU900 which normally comes without ADPCM sample capacities. This one has 256KB of sampleRAM and the whole MSX-Audio BIOS addon by FRS. This MSX-Audio BIOS can not be used since this cartridge is housed in Tweety in an I/O slot of a 4+2 Slot expander



MSX Music


The FM-PAC is an invention of Panasonic. It contains FM and PAC. PAC was a cartridge which has some S-RAM to save game states on. Only for games which support this feature. Later they came with the MSX Music format and put this together with the old PAC in one cartridge, hence FM-PAC in which PAC stands for Pana Amusement Cartridge.

Later Panasonic released MSX2+ and MSX turbo R computers in which they installed the MSX-Music so they halted the production of their FM-PAC. A lot of clones without the S-RAM were manufactured by several hardware builders in the hobby scene.

Out of the box this cartridge does not have its own audio output. One of mine has a custom RCA output on it so the audio can be separated from the audio coming from other cartridges. It has an English patched firmware installed and is built in to Tweety.

 

I bought two FM-PAQ lites by Eric Boez. One was going to be installed in Tweety (but that never happened) and one was going to be used as MSX-Music replacement in my turbo R. I am absolutely not satisfied with the poor audio quality of this computer. And since Panasonic's FM-PAC is being switched off in machines with MSX-Music built in I had to do with this.

Both FM-PAQ lites received an output decreasing resistor of 33K on R9 to avoid triggering the clipping LED on my mixer. Eric Boez delivers them quite a bit too loud.



MSX Club Gouda 1 Megabyte external memory mapper


An external memory mapper of 1 Megabyte by MSX Club Gouda.



MSX Club Gouda Slot expander 5.0


One of the nicest slot expanders around. The MSX Club Gouda slot expander 5.0. it does not need external power, so it is expected that the used MSX has a PSU strong enough to power the filled slot expander.

Below a picture of a situation which not every MSX can handle:





The audio rack


In this rack there are several different 19 inch units. From the bottom up the stack consists of the following machines:

  • Roland Fantom XR synthesizer with 512MB extra sample RAM.
  • Roland JV-1080 with the SR-JV80-13 Vocal expansion board mounted.
  • Roland XV-5050.
  • Behringer RX-1602 mixer
  • M-Audio M-Track Eight audio interface.



The Rack Mixer


This Behringer RX1602RX mixer is filled with the following

  • Roland XV-5050
  • Roland JV-1080 with the SR-JV80-13 Vocal expansion board mounted
  • Roland Fantom XR
  • Korg X5D
  • PSG/SCC from MegaFlashROM SCC+ SD's custom jack out
  • MSX-Audio
  • MSX-Music
  • OPL4



Synthesizers


Then there's an old picture of my two Korg X5D synthesizers together. Why two? Well, at the time I just could. I wouldn't want two of them now, but I already have 'em. There are however extra features when having two of them. A Korg X5D is actually just an X5 with some extra samples. These extra samples are being stored in a separate sound bank. Switching between the two is quite a hassle because Korg wasn't really thinking as a user when they made this thing. So when having two, you just have to play the other if you want the other sound bank. Another is that when connecting both synths, you can play more notes simultaneously. One plays the even notes while the other plays the odd notes. Slowly decaying sounds won't be cut off this way.

I only use one of them as a master keyboard while the other is in storage.



The PC

These are modern times. There's a PC involved in this mancave. As of early 2020 I repplaced my old rig for a new one. Here are some specs

  • Coolermaster Silencio 550 casing
  • Coolermaster 650W 80+ Bronze PSU
  • Asus PRIME Z390M-plus main board
  • Intel Core i7-9700F processor
  • Asus Dual RTX2070 videocard
  • Kingston DDR4 2666 32GB HyperX Predator
  • Samsung 970 Pro 512GB M.2 PCI NMVe SSD
  • Samsung 840 Evo 120GB Sata SSD
  • Seagate 3GB bulk drive
  • M-Audio M-Track Eight audio interface
  • An extra cart reader in the front panel to work with CF carts
  • 2x IIyama Prolite E2473HDS main screens
  • Windows 10 Pro 64bit running tools which aren't too heavy, so in fact the computer is several times overkill to my needs

 

 



Work space


This is how the relax corner looked like in the previous house. The new mancave isn't ready yet, so no pics yet.