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Post by schlagwerk on Mar 25, 2015 11:40:29 GMT -5
schlagwerk - You're absolutely correct in that typically MSX stuff on eBay is treated as rare gold and marked up very high. So it's nice that Tom was able to find a seller who was willing to see this likely close to his original costs and not for an astronomical amount. Are you also an MSX user by the way? No, I just do a lot of buying and selling of action figures on eBay  I've played Metal Gear, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, Knightmare, and Maze of Galious but that all has been the extent of my MSX exposure. All of those except MG2 are MSX1 games, to boot. |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Mar 25, 2015 13:20:29 GMT -5
schlagwerk - Well, if you every have any questions about MSX games or hardware, I'd be happy to tell you what I know. Another cool toy was just released for the MSX Community, a program called NandemoSCC. For most of last year I was following the progress of a Japanese MSXer by the name of Tiny Yarou ( which I think translates to something like the equivalent of "Tiny Bastard/Jerk", which I think is a pretty hilarious name if that is the meaning) who would post various MSX game videos on Youtube that were originally in PSG sound only, and showing how they would sound when converted to SCC/SCC+ sound, which again is that special MSX exclusive Konami soundchip format. Games such as Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake had this chip on board in the cartridge and real ones, which make these carts more desirable, especially the REAL sound cartridges for Snatcher and SD Snatcher which were SCC+ Sound Modules. Eventually the MSX Scene started producing SCC-I chips that sound "just about" the same, but may still not be as accurate as some SCC/SCC+ purists would want. I used to have a Snatcher SCC+ Sound Module, but I ended up selling it back to the very person I bought it from... and now I wish I could buy it back from him for the same price I bought and sold it for... haha. ANYHOW, so Tiny Yarou's progress culminated in producing NandemoSCC which when flashed to a MegaFlashRom cartridge can be used in one cartridge slot, while a real game ( that didn't originally support SCC sound) or if you have two flash carts like I do, another flashed ROM is placed in the second cartridge slot. Then when holding down SHIFT on startup you can adjust some settings and play the PSG-only game with the SCC/SCC+/SCC-I sound chip. It's really neat and offers entirely different sounding soundtracks to virtually any MSX game out there. You can apparently do this with Disk based games as well such as the Ys series, but I've not figured that part out yet. I do know that Tiny Yarou made specific patches for Ys 1 -3 for MSX to have a good combination of PSG + SCC sound. Here's the difference in how it sounds: PSGPSG + SCCWyrdwad - Earlier I tested this with my cart for Goonies and again, incredibly different soundtrack than the PSG. In some ways I prefer the PSG over SCC sound, but again this can tweaked around if you know what you are doing and want to disable certain SCC sound channels. Edit: Here is a sample video showcasing several MSX games that were originally in PSG only being played with SCC sound. Some of these sound better than others, and some sound absolutely amazing depending on the game! Especially Maze of Gallious, Metal Gear, Gradius, Vampire Killer, King Kong 2, and Xanadu! -Thomas
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Post by Wyrdwad on Mar 25, 2015 23:35:01 GMT -5
So, possibly a dumb question, but is SCC/SCC+ the same as FM synth, or is that something totally different? And if it's different, do you know how common it is, and whether or not the flash rom supports FM synth as well?
-Tom
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Post by SkyeWelse on Mar 26, 2015 14:50:01 GMT -5
FM Sound is different than SCC. FM Sound became a sound standard in many Japanese home computers during the late 80's and early 90's. FM Sound in the case of MSX, was usually referred to as "MSX-MUSIC" (Not to be confused with MSX-AUDIO"). For MSX machines that did not have FM Sound internally, you would only hear the PSG sound in software meant to have FM music unless you had an external cart for FM-Sound plugged into one of your cartridge slots. These were typically sold as FM-PAC cartridges, sometimes combined with SRAM as well for saving games (for certain games that supported this function). You should not have to worry about FM-Sound as your machine, the Panasonic WX, has built in MSX-Music, providing 9 channels of FM sound without drums or 6 channels FM sound with 5 FM drums and FM-BIOS (MSX Music Basic ROM). SCC is a special Konami chipsound format included in a selection of later released Konami games and exclusive to games released on the MSX. So to recap, as well as to introduce a few others, the music/audio capabilities of the MSX were: 1. PSG 2. MSX-MUSIC (FM) 3. SCC / SCC+ 4. MSX-AUDIO (Phillips / Toshiba / Panasonic Music Modules with Keyboard Input) Not much out there supported this format outside of Compile games and some MSX Scene games and hacks. Thexder 2: Fire Hawk supports this format and sound amazing with it... btw) 5. MIDI 6. Moonsound (MSX Scene Developed Sound Cartridge based on the Yamaha YMF278 OPL4 Sound chip it was capable of 18 channels of FM sound as well as 24 channels of 12 and 16 bit sample-based synthesis. Think of this as an early Sound Blaster card.) -Thomas |
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Post by Wyrdwad on Mar 26, 2015 16:55:00 GMT -5
Cool, thanks for the info! You've been a huge help in this whole thing. Now, if only my MSX would just GET HERE... argh, the wait is killing me!!  -Tom |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Mar 26, 2015 22:41:35 GMT -5
No problem. I guess in the meantime, you can familiarize yourself with MSX games you want to play, especially when you get a MFRSCC+SD. There is this thread about Weird MSX games over at MRC too which has some interesting games to check out that you may not have heard about before. One of my personal favorites from this list is Yuurei Kun / Mr. Ghost. -Thomas |
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Post by Wyrdwad on Mar 27, 2015 0:30:37 GMT -5
I'm already very interested in that one, as I've watched some gameplay videos on YouTube -- looks awesome!
What I'm most interested in right now, though, are disk-based MSX games -- because if I can't get the Megaflashrom yet, I should still theoretically be able to download roms from disk-based games, write them to a floppy and play them on my MSX that way, right?
There aren't too many disk-based games I know of, though -- all the ones I usually hear about are cartridge-based -- but the Xak games are on disk, aren't they?
-Tom
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Post by SkyeWelse on Mar 27, 2015 9:29:24 GMT -5
There are plenty of MSX disk based games out there. I'm not entirely sure if there are more Roms than there are Disk based games, but it feels as though there are just as many disk based games as there are available roms. If you want to look at a good index of MSX games by format, you can check out the Generation-MSX website and their search tools. The entire Xak series and Ys series is on Disk, Dragonslayer: Legend of Heroes, as well as Illusion City, Fray, Golvellius 2 and Super Cooks, Yuurei Kun 2/ Mr.Ghost 2 (Compile Disk Station bonus game partnered with System Sacom), Snatcher, SD-Snatcher, the Aleste series, Final Fantasy, and really anything that may require a game to be spanned to multiple floppies and not being able to be contained in a ROM. You'll be able to more than theoretically play disk-based games. You'll be able to play them once they are written to disk. However, if the software you want to use on disk requires MSX Dos 2 to run as you may not have enough internal RAM for that. The MegaFlashRomSCC+SD + 512KB RAM will eliminate that problem however since it will work as an external RAM mapper. You can always try it, but it will likely not work until you either upgrade the RAM internally or through an external RAM mapper cartridge. Okay, so... Disks. The MSX reads single-density (360 KB) and double-density (720 KB) disks, but will not understand a high-density (1.44 MB) disk. DD diskettes are a little harder to find these days since they are an older format, but if you can only get a hold of 1.44 MB disks, you can easily convert them to 720 KB by doing the " Ye Olde Scotch Tape Trick". The best method for formatting and writing to a disk in preparation to be used with an MSX is a handy little program called Disk Manager made by Lex Lechz. It's very easy to use, and you can select which method you wish to format your disks in (MSX-DOS1, or MSX-DOS2) while writing a new downloaded disk (.DSK or FDx) file to it. You can also use it to explore the contents of any File Based Disks, as they will show all the files on the disk. If you ever load a .DSK file into this program and you see that it shows content that is "blank" it does not mean that it's blank. It most likely means that the disk format is Sector based instead of File based. -Thomas |
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Post by leesmapman on Apr 1, 2015 10:33:29 GMT -5
It warms my heart to see so much MSX love here ^_^
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 4, 2015 18:55:36 GMT -5
My copy of King Kong 2 and my controller arrived as well now, and both work great. And I just scored a good deal on copies of Xanadu (the MSX1 cartridge version, not the crappy MSX2 version -- at least, I don't think so! But either way, I didn't pay a lot for it, so whatever) and Shalom, both of which I'm excited to play. I am concerned, though, about saving. I didn't realize, going into King Kong 2, that you can't save your game... unless you have a copy of Hinotori in the other cartridge slot. And a tape drvie on which to save it. Which is kind of lame. Both Shalom and Xanadu are lengthy games as well, so... can anyone tell me what I might need in order to save my progress in them? I'm assuming a floppy disk in the drive? I'm also assuming this'll all be a moot point once I get the megaflashrom, but until then, it would be nice to play these games without having to restart from the beginning every time. So any help you guys might be able to provide would be appreciated! Thanks! -Tom |
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 4, 2015 22:56:41 GMT -5
Hmmm... looked into it a little, and it sounds like Shalom is no problem since it has a gajillion different save options (including password)... but Xanadu is a curious case, as it appears to default to internal SRAM battery backup saves, like so many different NES and SNES games! I wonder if the copy I bought will still have a usable battery in it...? Apparently both games also allow for tape-drive saving, and Shalom can save to disk as well. So again, no problem on Shalom's part, but I am a bit concerned about Xanadu. Fingers crossed that I got a copy with a working battery, I guess! -Tom |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Apr 4, 2015 23:20:22 GMT -5
Hi Tom, Not sure on Shalom since I never made it too far into that one, but King Kong 2 has had a save routine patch that came out for it. Check out this thread over at the MSX Resource Center for more info on that. As for Xanadu. Well, there's another thread for that too and a project idea that I presented pretty recently as well just to see what all is possible regarding how it saves as well as adding La Valse Pour Xanadu back into the MSX1 Rom version. It does save on a battery backup and uses a CR 2032 3 volt battery which is pretty common. Mine still works, but if you wanted to be careful you could try and change the battery out. Here's a picture of the inside of that ROM cart that I took the other day from mine. I'm asking the community about two options: One, is it possible to get the game to save to disk using a patch (because currently this ROM will not work in Flash carts, you have to have the original or play it in an emulator) and two, can the cart be reproduced as a reproduction with battery backup included? I pretty sure the second option can, but they would have to make some design changes to their current repro boards to support a battery. -Thomas |
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 4, 2015 23:58:08 GMT -5
Hmmm. I assume I'd need to use the flash rom to run the King Kong 2 patch, no? So that wouldn't work for the moment, but is definitely something to consider for next month. (In the meantime, I've been considering doing a straight run-through of the game using the level 50 cheat code, which I did for about an hour last night and it was super-fun!) Interesting to hear that Xanadu doesn't run on the flash rom, though. I wonder why not? Either way, sounds like I chose well in buying a cartridge copy of it. I'm even OK with the lack of La Valse Pour Xanadu -- blasphemous as this may be, I kind of... prefer the MSX music! It's really catchy. Does Xanadu require more than the base 64k of RAM to run, though? I'm pretty sure Shalom doesn't -- it should run right off the bat without any trouble -- but there isn't a whole lot of info I can find on Xanadu, so I'm hoping I'll be able to run it on my base MSX2+ prior to receiving the flash rom cartridge for extra memory. I'll probably risk it with the battery that's in there, since I have zero skills with soldering -- though there is a local game shop near me that does console and cartridge repair (mostly on classic Nintendo, Sega and Atari consoles and handhelds, though the guy who runs it claims MSX is supported), so maybe they'd be able to replace the battery for me? I'll have to ask, and also see how much they'd charge to do it. ...I have to admit, I'm really enjoying this system so far. It really was a frivolous purchase, but there's something oddly satisfying about playing these games on native hardware. There's definitely a visceral feel to it that's totally unlike the feel you get from emulating. And I am having an absolute blast with The Goonies! What a great game -- much better than the Famicom version, if you ask me. And much, MUCH harder, too! I'm on stage 4, and I am soooooo lost. -Tom |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Apr 5, 2015 1:29:38 GMT -5
It's not bad, and it is catchy it just isn't Xanadu to me. : ) It had a completely different feel with that music. But if you liked that version's music, check out this arrangement. It's quite nice. The ROM won't work on the FlashROM because it attempts to check for the SRAM and since it doesn't find it, it simply crashes. That is what I think is happening anyway. So yes, it's a good purchase to have made if you wanted to play it on real hardware. : ) As for 64 KB of RAM being enough base memory, it should be fine to run most MSX games, originals that is, because anything that required more than 64K typically had that extra RAM built into the cartridge itself. I mean Solid Snake requires 128 KB and it was made for MSX2+. All standard MSX2+ machines were only base 64 KB. There would be a lot of unhappy customers if they bought a game that said it was compatible with their system and it didn't work. : ) But when we are talking about flashing Solid Snake to the MFRSCC+, that ROM is still looking for the RAM and if it doesn't find it, it won't load. If it's not in the system or in an external mapper, it's just not going to start. That's where the 512 KB included in your MFRSCC+ will come in handy. Been talking with Xalphenos about this and changing the battery should be pretty easy provided that the battery is placed back in with the correct polarity (postive / negative side on the coin battery) and they even sell CR2032's with tabs already soldered to the battery which is the part I'm typically the most worried about soldering. Tell you what I'll try replacing my battery sometime to see if there are any issues or concerns to look out for. If everything works and it's just a simple battery replacement, then that would be the step you'd want to take too to be on the save side of your game being there for awhile after starting Xanadu with a fresh new battery installed. If the local game store can't do it, or plans to charge too much for it, Xalphenos does mod and repair work and has already fixed my PC-98 Keyboard and Tennokoe Bank PC-Engine Memory Card device which also used a coin battery for SRAM. I'm sure he'd be able to fix it for you, but he'd probably want to learn more about my experience first since I'm not too worried about breaking mine. Hehe, glad you are having fun with the Goonies. And you're right. The real deal using real hardware can't be beat. Emulation makes things more accessible for sure, but it wasn't enough to satisfy my cravings for MSX, which is why I needed an actual computer. I was active with MSX emulation for 8 years or so and played most of the MSX library on my XBOX's MSX emulator, but you just can't get the same music and sound quality and retro feeling without the real thing. If you decide to give the MSX version of Xanadu a serious playthrough, I'd definitely recommend watching some of the playthrough of MegaMarsvin's Let's Play Xanadu series. He teaches you a lot about the game and really is very detail oriented. He taught me a bunch of things that I didn't even consider thinking about when I first started playing the game. -Thomas |
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 5, 2015 2:01:33 GMT -5
I followed that YouTube link from your post on MSX.org, actually! It's very pretty indeed.
And yay, I remember that Let's Play! I watched a good chunk of that a year or two ago -- it really is very helpful! I think the guy had a different YouTube username back then, though, as I don't remember the channel being named "megamarsvin" -- but that's definitely the Let's Play I watched.
Keep me apprised on the SRAM situation, and thanks again for all your help!
-Tom
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 6, 2015 3:39:03 GMT -5
Hmmm... one more question. I know you were saying before that disk-based games are tricky due to RAM requirements and that I'd be better off waiting until I had the megaflashrom to play around with them, but I'm seeing some pretty cheap copies of Xak and Xak II online. Do you know if these require more than 64k RAM, or would I be able to play them as-is? (The boxes just say they require 128k VRAM, but my system has that, so I'm assuming they'll work just fine...) Also, how does one save in the Xak games? Would my save-data be written to the disk directly, or would I need an external tape drive or something? I might be better off waiting until I get the megaflashrom, if only to play the games in English as opposed to Japanese, but I'm also still in the honeymoon stage with this thing, so I'm psyched to use it as much as possible. -Tom |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Apr 6, 2015 8:24:28 GMT -5
Wait Tom, did you say that your system shows that you have 128 KB Ram already? What is the amount of Main Ram that shows up when you first get the blue screen with the MSX logo? If it's showing that you have a Main Ram of 128 KB then your system was upgraded internally at some point more than likely. In that case you would be able to launch MSX Dos 2 and compatible games without any issue. Also, it never hurts to try it anyway. : )
As MP83 explained, most games that required that you use a Userdisk to save included an extra disk just for that purpose, but any MSX-DOS formatted disk should do the trick. Once you save on it though, that Userdisk become married to that game. To create a new user disk you can use that program called Disk Manager that I linked to earlier, or if you are in MSX-DOS, you can type:
Format "DriveLetter":
So for example, if C: is your diskdrive (A being the MegaFlashRom drive with the Nextor OS that is installed by default, B being your MicroSD card) then inside of MSX-DOS you would type: format c:
And this will walk you through the process as long as you are using a single-density or double-density disk, or a high-density that has been modified (with scotch tape) to become a double-density disk.
Or you can follow the example I gave above with the new Disk Emulation software which was included in the Nextor OS on the MFRSCC+SD cart, where you rename the Xak disks (1 - 3) + 4 (blank user disk) which are normally setup with the .DSK extension as FD1, FD2, FD3, FD4, and then inside of the Multimente file manager, simply navigate to your game and launch, Xak.FD1. If the others are named Xak.FD2, Xak.FD3, Xak.FD4, then it will detect this and add them all in a big virtual disk file with instructions to call these disks the next time you boot the machine. Then you just hit 1, 2, 3, or 4 on your keyboard + Spacebar to select between the disks as you need them. You can also call and Save on the Userdisk (Xak.FD4) whenever you want through this emulation mode. It's very nifty and so much simpler than writing to real disks. Not EVERYTHING is compatible yet, but just about everything I've tried is, provided you hold down SHIFT on startup to free up memory for certain games.
There are sometimes issues where the disk order gets messed up initially, (so for example, what if it adds the disks as Xak.FD2, Xak.FD1, Xak.FD3, Xak.FD4 in that order. So in this case it may not auto-boot to say the starting disk (Xak.FD1) that you might need, but they have a fix for that that will allow you to choose upon MSX startup pressing and hold the GRAPH key and the number assigned to the disk you want to force the Disk Emulation to start on a specific disk. (In this case you would want to force it to boot to Xak.FD1 that you named, but since it got assigned as the second disk in the order, you would hold GRAPH until you see the CAPS LOCK LED Light come on, and then press "2" for the second disk you have in order, which is Xak1.FD1 in this particular hypothetical case.)
You'll likely run into that on occasion, but we can go over that again once you have access to using those tools. You only have to tell it to choose the correct disk once and it will update the file calling the disks.
Xak also can save to SRAM, but you'd have to have a SRAM compatible device such as an FM-PAC cartridge. There is no internal SRAM as far as I'm aware on your system.
-Thomas
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Post by leesmapman on Apr 6, 2015 8:38:34 GMT -5
I don't recall Solid Snake needing 128K. It's an MSX2 game, and is compatible with most MSX2 computers AFAIK.
You don't need MSX-DOS to format a disk. You can also use MSX Basic, where you can do:
call format
and enter the right drive letter when asked.
For all three Xak games (I, II and Tower of Gazzle (and Fray)), 64K should be sufficient.
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Post by Wyrdwad on Apr 6, 2015 10:10:05 GMT -5
Wait Tom, did you say that your system shows that you have 128 KB Ram already? What is the amount of Main Ram that shows up when you first get the blue screen with the MSX logo? Main RAM is 64k, but the box for Xak specifies VRAM, and my system says it has 128k VRAM -- it's printed right on the chassy itself, so I guess it comes standard! So if I'm understanding you guys correctly, I should be able to play Xak and Xak II with no problems, saving to the user disk until such time as I have a megaflashrom and can save to SRAM instead? I have yet to boot up the MSX without a cartridge in the slot, so I have no idea what happens when I do. If I have a disk in the FDD, will it read that disk automatically, or do I need to... do something? (I'm totally comfortable with DOS and BASIC, as I grew up with them and know them both inside and out -- I've just never owned a computer without a hard drive before, so that's more the source of my confusion here than anything else.) And actually, that brings up another question: if I have games in both cartridge slots, or a cartridge and a disk inserted into the system when it's powered on, how do I tell the system which one to read? Thanks again for all the answers to my stupid questions, everybody! It's greatly appreciated. -Tom |
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Post by SkyeWelse on Apr 6, 2015 11:06:36 GMT -5
Glad Leesmapman could clear up that issue. It's a bit difficult for me to be sure on some of these specifics in regards to requirements because the two MSX machines that I have on hand to test with have 512KB (Turbo R GT) and 2048 KB (Zemmix Neo) respectively. I just know that when I took my MFRSCC+SD (without 512 KB external memory mapper) over to my friend's MSX machine that was a Sony MSX2+ with 64 KB, I was not able to load any MSX-Dos 2 games.
Also nice to know that a drive can be formatted in MSX Basic. I've never tried that before. : )
Tom, if you boot up the MSX without a cartridge or disk inserted it will simply load MSX-Basic. You can start programming in Basic on that screen if you like, executing the program and/or saving the program to diskette (if you have a MSX formatted disk on hand to insert to backup your program). I'm not a programmer and I've never really programmed anything in Basic yet, but maybe one day, those tools are there for me to experiment with.
When you boot the machine with a disk inside, it will attempt to read the disk and possibly boot from the disk if it is meant to execute automatically in Basic or MSX-Dos. If it's something that boots in MSX-Dos, it will have the MSX-Dos system files on the disk (MSXDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM) or in MSX-DOS 2's case, (MSXDOS.SYS, COMMAND2.COM) which will load the MSX into MSX-Dos and then call whatever is written to the autoexec. If nothing runs, then it's likely something you have to call directly inside MSX-Dos to load the program such as a .BAT or .COM file.
If you have both a cartridge and a disk inserted, it will go in the priority of cartridge first, and then disk. Depending on the cartridge, you can sometimes skip the cartridge from loading by pressing and holding down the ESC button when powering on / resetting the MSX. This doesn't work for say the Goonies cart for me, but it does work for cartridges meant to work with other cartridges such as the MFRSCC+SD and the Konami GameMaster 1 and 2.
While you should never unplug or insert a cartridge into your MSX cartridge slot while the power is turned ON, you can surely remove a disk when it's not being read from to swap it with a different disk.
-Thomas
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