MSX1 expanded to the max ?

Expert (90)

16-10-2007, 02:53

I'm amazed with the announcement of the new MMC interface of Padial, able to work with just an 16K MSX! I wonder which are the limits of an MSX1 configuration. If the following is possible it would be a real tribute to the MSX expandability:

- HB 55P with just 16 K ram.
- The MMC card
- and an FM-PAC.

On the other hand if 4 Mb Memory mappers work with such a limited machine it would be very cool to see my old HB-55P with 4 mb and a massive storage system!!

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6126)

16-10-2007, 07:46

There is no reason why you could not attach for example Slot expander, 4MB memory mapper, GFX9000, MoonSound, FM-PAC, MSX-Audio, Sunrice IDE, MegaRAM etc. to your HB 55P. The question is, is there any idea to do that.

I think most of the programs that use these features require MSX2 anyway. How ever I think that you could run SymbOS nicely with this kind of configuration.

By RobertVroemisse

Paragon (1341)

16-10-2007, 09:28

I always thought the GFX9000 wasn't MSX 1 compatible. Anybody?

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

16-10-2007, 09:39

I too have the same question.If an msx 1 can be expanded with all these stuff and with a gfx9000 then it is no longer an msx1.It's much more powerfull than an msx2.

IF someone has a gfx9000 can the msx run msx2 titles?Is it compatible with games for msx2?

By Manuel

Ascended (19810)

16-10-2007, 10:15

I don't think there is any reason why a GFX9000 would not be compatible with MSX1. What could be the reason???

nikodr: GFX9000 is not compatible with the MSX2 videochip, so you can't run MSX2 titles at all.

By RobertVroemisse

Paragon (1341)

16-10-2007, 11:49

There was a rumour with the introduction of the GFX9000 that it would only work on a Turbo R. Or maybe that was Powerbasic. Well, dunno.

Maybe an idea for a project. Emulate MSX 2(+) on the GFX9000 so MSX 1 users can play MSX 2(+) games. The P1 mode on the GFX9000 is very similar with screen 5 for example. You could even enhance MSX 2 games with specific GFX9000 features. Some MSX2 games would run a lot faster when using the GFX9000 speed.

By nikodr

Paladin (750)

16-10-2007, 12:06

Maybe someone like Nyyrriki who is a great programer could write some software that would allow screen 5 to be emulated on a msx1 with a gfx9000.That way,konami games could be played ?

EDIT:However what about the bios?An msx1 has a different bios,so even if it would have v9938 compatibility through an emulator of some sort,some of the bios call would fail right?

By SLotman

Paragon (1242)

16-10-2007, 13:20

Besides the BIOS, there's the RTC clock, the sub-rom and some memory areas used by it, which can make a program fail.

Also, brazilian MSX1s (and probably all MSX1s, since the BIOS is the same) couldnt recognize mappers, so the BIOS must be patched to do so. Ademir Carchano once released such a patch.

Take a look at a MSX1 with IDE here :)

Also, there's the BEER IDE interface, which works even on MSX1 without mappers! The only limitation is that you cant have DOS2 and subdirs, because DOS2 require at least 64k of mapper :P

By NYYRIKKI

Enlighted (6126)

16-10-2007, 13:34

@yum Yes, Powerbasic is only for MSX tR. I remember that there was a ROM-version that did work on MSX2, but I might be wrong. GFX9000 is just standard MSX hardware and as manuel said there should be no reason why it would not work.

@nikodr When it comes to Konami MSX2 games, most of them (Vampire killer, Space Manbow, Quarth etc.) use SCREEN 4 that is pretty hard to emulate, but not impossible. Emulating other MSX2+ screen modes should not be hard with GFX9000 as those screen modes are very close to each other. MSX2 BIOS is not a problem either. I think that all of us can find them from internet pretty easyly.

Actually the only problem is that emulating MSX2 system on MSX1 (with 4MB memory & GFX9000) is very slow. I have already tried emulating MSX2 on MSX2 without VDP emulation and the speed was about 5% of the original. When I added memory support the speed went down to about 3%. If we would add also VDP emulation the speed would still drop a bit, but I think that speed decrease would be very little.

How ever in practice this means that you can drink a cup of coffee before you are even in the game selection menu, so playability may suffer a bit.

By mohai

Paragon (1051)

16-10-2007, 13:56

GFX9000 is not a problem in MSX1. Think about there is no BIOS on it. Certainly, you can load POWER BASIC on Turbo R, or insert it in another cart (like Music module), if you don't have a TR.
There are some grafics modes similar to MSX2(+) ones, but compatibility drops a lot, as ports are different and games use to direct-access to VDP...
A lot of pathcing should be be needed in the original code, but a conversion could be possible

By RobertVroemisse

Paragon (1341)

16-10-2007, 14:30

Hey, I didn't say it would be easy!

It was only a wild idea. I have zero knowledge about programming/VDP/MSX architecture in general so don't expect any reasonable input from me. I only know about drawing on MSX (2) and GFX9000 and I saw a lot of similarities in screenmodes.