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Well, neither SCC nor OPL4 are in any MSX standard.

OPL4 is a superset of a MSX standard, it's 90% MSX-AUDIO compatible.

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I'd say, do everything you can to make the Moonsound/640kb a standard. And for those who want a moonsound.. place an order.. iirc, if 25 are ordered they will be made.. (ask sunrise)

Doh, not everyone is totally nuts to pay 172.00 euro for MoonBlaster...

Russian Spectrum folks came up with a neat cheap wavetable design, which was never over 35$. It's called General Sound... To me this is much more reasonable.

The problem with Moonsound is the price. Nothing else stands in it's way.

It may be cheaper yes.. but the point is what such a card will cause! You might get 2 groups, ppl with a <newsoundcard> and ppl with an opl4.. I think the last thing ppl are waiting for is another seperation!

Just because you support certain hardware that you owe you should not accuse other people of breaking a non-existant standard.

Your answer to programs with high requirement, ie, Moonsound, is just: buy it. The same rule could be applied here.

A super-enhanced FM-PAC (that is how I understand dhau's project) with a reasonable price I think that it is a good option for most MSX users.

Anyway, let him do his way without pointing him as the "breaker of the standard".

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Quote: What type of hardware expansions do you want to develop? no thrills projects: - internal 1, 2 and 4MB upgrade kits for popular MSX models with minimum soldering required - floppy drive replacement kit for Panasonic MSX2+ and TurboR machines - external 2MB memory mapper cart with 2 x 32-pin SIMM socket for 1MB SIMMs - internal notebook IDE hard drive kit - internal MIDI synth on TurboR standard io based on WaveBlaster II or clone MIDI daughter boards for PC Sound Blaster 16 and clones fancy projects: - MSX on a chip on a PCI card with advanced debugging capabilities and external cable with slot 1 and 2 to work with existing MSX hardware and cartridges - MSX on a chip in GBA cartridge - use it in your supersexy GBA SP to play games or in Gameboy Player with Gamecube with Phantasy Star keyboard controller for programming

First project already exist on simm based by Hans Oranje and detailed info on his site and that of Hans Otten
Second project exists also , you can find IIRC on several pages how to replace a floppy drive unit and pointed out many times in topics on MRC
Third project I wouldnot do it cause more and more the simms will disappear so as extended cartridge not advisable.
Fourth project is enmtirely not necessary since there is an adaptor for a few bucks from 40 pins to 44 pins connection so that you can use your notebook harddrive

A soundcard well let me say something in general

First the idea dhau , you claim a soundcard with almost no facts and a price.
Not every mentioned soundcard can be made suitable for msx purposes, a question of what do you want and what do you get.
To redesign you need copyrights, this design must be suitable for msx if it can what I doubt.Then it must be also accepted -and I mean not as a standard- by people who want to write software. Said shortly a PCB and writing software is already more then 35 USD
Another assumption: A new FM-PAC , is already possible in VHDL code and exists ( see another topic on MRC). But also with a price that comes above 35 dollar
And is this guy reliable , I mean I spoke e.g. a Russian guy Maxim Vlassov better known as the man behind a scan doubler. Since we wanted to produce that thing I contacted him.
When we suggested some changements because he used obsolete components he never answered anymore and that on a point that we had almost an agreement. A pty but a fact.
The Moonsound and not Moonblaster( which is the software) has indeed a relatively high price. But donot forget that the spareparts come from Korea. To import you pay many charges and Korea is really the utmost. They double the price. Since we have a VAT-number we can substract that later on with our balance with the fiscus.
Also expensive is sram and very difficult to get for someone who is private

Software is the most important thing to me, though. The Moonsound is very similar to the MSX-MUSIC and MSX-AUDIO. Japanese MSX Magazines had already announced the OPL4 as the new chip to be used in future MSX soundcards. People who had already written software for these soundcards could create OPL4 software relatively easy. example: Moonblaster FM and Moonblaster Wave. They were there in quite a short timespan. It took ages until we got Meridian and Realfun, but that's beside the point

Furthermore, on a phone the quality of the sound output doesn't matter. You will hear the sounds from a small crappy mono speaker in the phone, or from a small crappy headset connected to your phone. If there is to be a new, decent wavetable soundcard for MSX I'd like to be able to connect the device to my amp, just like the Moonsound. And the Moonsound sure delivers quite some decent sound quality.

I'm not saying you should not make another, new MSX soundcard... but creating the hardware is the 'easy part'. Getting people to see use for that soundcard and write software and music for it is a lot tougher.

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Anyway, let him do his way without pointing him as the "breaker of the standard".

Oh sure.. be my guest.. make it.. don't let me stop it..

However, software and scene-support are the real bottlenecks (dunno about the hardware itself, as Sunrise states). As long as the soundcard stays within the region of those few games that had MIDI music, then I guess it's ok. If that soundcard however tries to break into the 'scene' then I think ppl stay at the Moonsound, not at least because of the established user-base of ~450, and because of the already available software/support/development ..
You've to make up your mind whether that risc of 'possibly not becoming a generally supported new soundcard' is worth the development.

Well, I guess everyone should develop whatever it is they feel like developing. *Personally* I feel that the MoonSound is not at all bad and there are other things on MSX that more drastically need improvement. That doesn't mean you can't develop another sound chip though. I do think that with the MoonSound we're pretty much up to date. The only thing I would like to see in the sound area is a SFX chip that can basically play/mix WAV's and has a boat-load of internal memory. But this would only be interesting if it had a shitload of memory. And still, the added problem is it would occupy yet another slot on our MSX and wouldn't be used until it's widespread. That last problem is common for any new piece of hardware though. But, what MSX really needs is simple... A new MSX. I guess that's easier said than done though...

Sunrise, I respect you, and you don't have to worry about me. I'm not a big time guy like you Whatever I do, I do it for fun, and if I'll loose the interest, I can disappear from all this forums forever, or for a long while

You're the tough lean mean hardware maker. As tough or even tougher then Padial and this Brazilian CIEL guy.

It's just shame you guys pretty much are frozen with your 1995 designs (gfx9000, moonsound). Since then so many things had changed, you could've come up with nice cheap designs for all the same tasks (advanced sound with DSP processor and socket for 72PIN EDO SIMM, fast video with some basic 3d etc.)

I really like the promo pdf from your site about the ethernet card with builtin modem and 4mb mapper. This is something people need! I hope it won't be 300+ euro...