As we had already announced several times, ASCII and MSX Association held a demonstration and lecture on the upcoming One Chip MSX1 computer at PLD World 2004 yesterday. In a report on ASCII24 we can find an extensive review of the demonstration and lecture, revealing several interesting new facts.
First of all: the One Chip MSX1 is going to be commercially produced. If all goes well the first One Chip MSX1 computers will become available in March 2005. Second, the board contains 2 cartridge slots (unlike several people expected), making it a fully MSX standards compliant device. More than enough reasons to have a closer look at the article:
The lecture was given by Mr. Hidekatsu Yokoi, member of the board of directors of MSX Association, and Mr. Eiichi Sato, editor in chief of ASCII's IT department, including the recently released ASCII MSX Magazines. It explained the history of the MSX Revival so far, mentioning the official MSX Emulator MSXPLAYer was the result of the combined efforts of many MSX Hobbyists from all over the world, and the success of the MSX Magazines and the sold-out Game Readers. The success of these steps of the MSX Revival made it possible to take the next step in the MSX Revival: recreating MSX itself.
The One Chip MSX, which was demonstrated at PLD World, contains 32MB SDRAM, 1MB SRAM, FlashROM, a SD card slot, 2 cartridge slots, 2 MSX Joystick ports, 2 USB ports, VGA and SVHS video outputs and a stereo audio-connector. A keyboard can be connected through a standard PS/2 port. Using VHDL on a Cyclone EP1C12Q240C8 FPGA chip, the entire MSX1 standard is perfectly emulated. This prototype may however differ from the final production version.
Mr. Yokoi and Mr. Sato continued talking about the FPGA possibilities of this device. Thanks to the FPGA structure, the One Chip MSX1 can easily be upgraded to be fully MSX2 compatible in the future. At the moment the chip is already partly MSX2 compatible. However, the production version of the One Chip MSX1 also allows the end-user to alter the VHDL code, thus designing a new MSX computer. This way it is, for instance, possible to allow a double amount of sprites to be displayed on one line, or to add more colors, or even to let the MSX write data directly to VRAM. The best thing is yet to come: The software for improving the VHDL code for the One Chip MSX, Quartus 2 is free of charge.
Apart from being marketed as a great, fun and cheap home computer or gaming device, Mr. Yokoi also thinks the One Chip MSX1 can be used by student engineers, allowing them to learn to understand the structure of hardware in a very simple way. Although the price and time of release of the One Chip MSX1 are currently undecided, ASCII and MSX Association aim at a release in March 2005.
The entire (Japanese) article on the lecture and demonstration can be found over here. It contains several high-resolution pictures of the current One Chip prototype. We will -of course- keep you posted on any other new information concerning the One Chip MSX project.
Relevant link: One Chip MSX1 at PLD World - ASCII24 report
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