What Can the SVI 328 Do? (Hint: It Won't Run Crysis 😃)
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- čas přidán 20. 05. 2024
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Let's see what the Spectravideo 328 is capable of doing! As the grandfather of the MSX standard, it is not quite fully MSX compatible itself, but it has an interesting and unique software library. It also seems reasonably easy to back port MSX games to the SVI 318/328 so we'll look into what's involved to do that.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:21 Historical background
02:19 BASIC
02:57 MSX standard
05:49 Classic games
16:33 Common trends
19:04 BASIC games
20:47 Fluffy
21:59 MSX backports
24:38 How to port MSX to SVI
25:56 MSX "converter"
27:06 Conclusion
Links:
Loads of Spectravideo information www.samdal.com/spectravideo.htm
More awesome music by McKlain: www.mcklain.com
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/ @noelsretrolab
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#spectravideo #msx - Věda a technologie
Additions and corrections:
- The SVI 328 had an AY-3-8910 sound chip, not a AY-3-8912 (same thing basically, but the larger 40-pin one).
- The MSX Microsoft Extended BASIC, not the SVI (the SVI had SV Extended BASIC).
- The blue UI screens are clearly coming from the ColecoVision UI.
- I was too quick to dismiss some of the graphics not being sprites. There are tricks you can play with the VDP to make it seem there are more than 4 sprites per line.
Thanks to everybody helping out get the facts straight.
If I'm correct all MSX machines (or at least most of them) used the same rather mediocre video chip TI 99/4A used. So not that much offered regarding graphics nor gaming -- comparing to, say, Commodore 64. Perhaps the worst disadvantage being lack of smooth scrolling.
@@beholder2012 they did, but the whole idea was to make a standard with off shelf products, so every company could build computers without custom chips or even fabrics to produce them. The lack of smooth scrolling was indeed a problem of the VDP, but there are tricks to bypass them (the use of sprites as an example, take a look at 'pippols').
Wow, such a great video about an 8-Bit computer I new next to nothing 'till today. Super professionally done, and, man, such a pleasure to see you tested and played the games first, and then shot the video!
Noel, your Spectravideo series nailed it on the head for me - for two reasons. The first computer that I owned was in fact a 328. At the time, back in 1983, I was a little miffed of the MSX incompatibility, as I had waited for some time to buy a computer that I thought at the time was going to set the standard. That was before IBM going into the market which changed everything! I spent many long enjoyable hours developing ME Basic programs and even typing in BASIC programs from 2 soft covered books that I had. I belonged to a MSX/Spectravideo club here in Sydney (Australia), getting monthly newsletters in the mail. How times have changed! Oh, I also had a Spectravideo cassette to store my programs as well. I thought the whole setup was the bees knees! The second reason is that I am (was) an electronic engineer and your diagnosis and process of repair was very impressive. I loved watching every minute of it and it brought back many, many memories.
Hi Mike, thanks so much for your comment. I love to hear your story and your feedback means a lot coming from a long-term SVI fan and an electrical engineer. So thank you!
This channel deserves a lot more subscribers. I believe it will eventually get them!
Agree, but a year ago Noel only had three thousand subscribers. 10k in 12 months is a great outcome and deserved.
I appreciate that! Thanks!
Im there now =D
Noel: The problem of the aspect ratio in tms9918 and later compatible versions is due to the number of lines on pal/secam systems.
If you use it in NTSC, with 525 scan lines, the aspect ratio is ok. But in PAL the chip generates 625 lines and the extra 100 lines are shown as background color bars on top and bottom of the screen generating this problem on aspect ratio.
Just type a small basic program that draws a circle on the screen and you will see the problem. You can do it on ti99, svi, or msx.
I myself had PAL ti99/4a and msx 1 and 2 and i know very well this problem. My last msx was msx 2 with dual standard (an tpc310) and it's not enough to change the switch to NTSC. You also need to change a VDP register to make it generate 60 fps and 525 lines if you want to solve the aspect ratio problem. There was a model sold in Chile that came with NTSC rom that sets tihis register on boot.
Ooohhh, that makes sense! Although wait, that would apply to everything, right? But the letters and cursor on BASIC screen looks to be pretty square. Or is that only noticeable in certain graphics modes?
@@NoelsRetroLab may be they should not be so square. I think characters are 5x7 pixels. I.e. the lowercase x should look square.
Try typing in basic
vdp(10)=0
This works in my msx2. Canges the video to 60hz/525 scan lines and the screen looks with the right aspect ratio. The standard value for PAL is vdp(10)=2
Hola tocayo! Is that tpc 310 the talent msx2? I've been trying to get one for some time, but they no longer show up on Mercadolibre. So I'm going to try modding a DPC 200A and adding the extra eproms and ram, still need to get some parts.
@@AlejandroJCura you will need to change the video chip and add more memory.
Hi
Unsure if other people might have already commented it, but when you list MSX and SVI features side to side (around 4:00), you wrote "Microsoft Extended BASIC" under the SVI, and "MSX Basic" under the MSX...
Well, it should claim something like "Microsoft Extended BASIC" under MSX (in fact legend says MSX name means precisely that: "MicroSoft eXtended BASIC") and "SV Extended Basic" under the SVI.
It's a minor detail though, it's been an excellent video.
I'm very happy to see my beloved MSX appear in this channel in the near future for everyone to enjoy :)
EDIT: Now I'm interested in the "other way back" about machine porting. That is all these old SVI games somewhat ported to MSX to see how they resisted the pass of time. I will investigate if ports of these SVI games do exist for the MSX.
BTW, MSX games from around 1983/1984 share the same "bad quality" aura and "simple" approach than the ones you showed in this SVI video. Simple mechanics, silly music, etc... As time passed companies and programmers learnt how to push the pedal regarding machine capabilites and they created some MSX jewels within the 32KB range, as Knightmare (for example, in 1986), which could have been perfectly ported to SVI...
It's a pity the pure SVI lifespan was really short, and commercial era (regarding videogames) didn't seem to really take off .
Yes, you're right about the BASIC naming. Oops. And you're right about the music. I was even trying to find amazing music in the early years of the Amstrad lifespan and nothing stands out, so I think it was a matter of tools, resoures, and experience, not of technical issues.
It should be just as easy to port the games to MSX I hope. Let me know how it goes.
Hi Noel. You are like a therapist to me, showing goodies from my childhood and bringing good memories. The SVI is the machine I wanted but there was no way to get the money, even though you have shown that it is a Frankestein... Keep up the good work !!!!. Enjoying your video while repairing a 1541 and on a leave from work: you just laced a perfect day :-)))))
Haha, I'm really glad to hear that! Have a great rest of the day! 😃👍
Great to see video of my very first computer. Thank you for the great quality (as usual)! About the bad quality of music, they weren't very great on C64 either (at that time). It was only when some of the chosen ones learn the way of SID, and really get to know the power of the dark... I mean the sound chip. I look forward to see the MSX related videos. ;)
You missed New Zealand on your sales map. Their factory was in Hong Kong. The 328 + expander was marketed as a business machine, 192Kb RAM (total), 2x 5 1/4 Floppy, 80 columns, RS-232 (all carts added to the expander) - this setup was in the front of the computer shop in the local mall, and I used CP/M 1.8 (and later 2.2) on it, demo'd it to a couple of customers (there were SVI versions of WordStar and CalcStar etc).
Great video Noel - brings back many memories! As another comment mentioned, this was relatively popular where I grew up in South Africa. Myself and my cousin each had a 328 and a friend had the 318. The package included a cassette tape drive. Favourite games were Zaxxon, International Karate, Gunfright and Spectron. I remember taking it to a school computer meet-up and it being a much more advanced system than the ZX-81 and the VIC-20 (cheaper version of the C64?) which were popular at the time. The disappointing thing about the system was the lack of software - games in particular. But that just forced me to create my own - mainly text-based adventures - using BASIC and getting my brothers to play through them! Fun times. Moved onto the ZX Spectrum after that. Thanks for the video.
• The aspect ratio issue happened with any machines designed for NTSC and later ported to PAL. The NES, SMS, Megadrive and SNES all show the same symptoms. This and also the annoying 16.6% speed slowdown in games that use VSYNC (the majority).
• The MSX-BIOS is what nowadays is called "hardware abstraction layer". It was done this way to allow more flexibility to the system, and to allow parts of the hardware to be substituted in the future without breaking the compatibility. For example, the MSX Technical Handbook states that the keyboard interface could be changed to a totally different one, using wireless IR. This means that if you compile a compatible BIOS with drivers for a different system, you can run MSX games directly (with some constraints regarding the VDP interface). This is the case of most of the MSX1->Sega Master System ports.
The use of the BIOS also made the games smaller, since they didn't have waste space to reinvent the wheel just to initialise the VDP, read the keyboard/joystick or play sounds on the PSG. The freed space would be used for better graphics and soundtrack.
Oh, but usually only the Japanese software tend to respect the MSX coding guidelines (use the BIOS, Luke!). OTOH, most European just ignore the guidelines, access everything directly and have plenty of compatibility issues.
The BIOS compliance is also the reason why the MSX disk interfaces to have such a wild variety of designs, and also allowed it to evolve much faster than other systems that used direct I/O to the disk interface. Modern IDE, CF or SD card interfaces for the MSX can be very simple pieces of hardware and don't need expensive hardware trickery or expensive microcontrollers like other systems. They're just have specific drivers on their ROMs to match with that controller design. You can read more about it at the Nextor website.
The BIOS usage allows very nifty tricks to be implemented entirely by software on the MSX, on-the-fly. Floppy disk emulation, redirect the PSG to the SCC, convert OPLL commands to OPLn commands, map keyboard keys to a Megadrive joypad, are just a few examples.
Very interesting, especially the difference between Japanese and European approaches to the BIOS and the effect it had. Thanks!
i live in South Africa and this was my first PC. I played many of these games and also learnt to code some basic. I was young though so nothing fancy. Great trip down memory lane.
Great review on this computer. Very insightful commentary. Thanks 😁
Glad you enjoyed it!
Really well made video. I enjoyed it a lot. of course most of the games haven't aged so well, still when you played them at the time there were pretty fun, but sure after a while they became quite repetitive. Fluffy is the exception (and the MSX ports). The interesting thing about Fluffy is that according to the flyer I have it was a MSX game that was ported to the SVI (by the same authors), however the game is nowhere to be found for MSX. Anyway, very good memories revived with this video, thanks for that.
Thank you Noel. Your game reviews regarding the 'weird ones' was extremely entertaining and interesting. Best channel on YT.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
10:23 that angry bird scared shit out of me. :-D
🤣🤣🤣
Interresting video. Great stuff :)
Thanks for making a video about this. I have never seen this machine before.
Those keycaps are epic... the colors, the font, the sculpture... Noice! 👌
Based on the specs this machine could have been the ZX Spectrrum we never got and should have made C64 a run for its money.
awesome job Noel... as usual!...interesting system... thanks for sharing...
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!
I remember the SVI's MSX offering but had no idea that the company was American, I thought they were East-Asian for some reason. Another great video btw, thanks for the hardware and software overview. :)
If I recall correctly they moved to some Asian destination at some point early on. Hence the MSX-Japanese connection I suppose.
What an excellent video Noel! I actually had never even heard of this machine before.
They didn't take off in the US at all. Actually, I'd love to see specific sales numbers. They must be ridiculously low. Same thing with MSX machines in general too. Funny how there were such huge regional variations back then.
Brilliant video, thanks!
Glad you liked it!
I had completely forgotten about these computers. Subscribed!
Thanks! Glad you liked it.
I have a SVI-728 in the garage, have to build a powersupply to it. Glad to see you run the "Noel basic performance index on it".
The power supply won't be trivial to make. I forget what it uses internally, but if it's just +5 and -5V (and maybe -12V?) you could do the trick of feeding it DC voltages from an external Meanwell PS.
@@NoelsRetroLab the manual says 16v AC and 9v AC.. I have sourced a correct cable and a pair of transformers.
I used to have this one as a teenager, with a Super Expander, 64KB memory expansion, centronics printer interface, disk drive interface, disk drive, graphics tablet, SVI-603 Colecovision adapter and lots of games on tape. I still have one now and the Super Expander, SVI-603 and the SVI-606 hardware MSX adapter (haven't gotten that one to work), I had no manual for it at the time, I should try it again.
I wrote a lot of software for it, like a really extensive drawing application for the tablet, with flood filling, printing and use of the 64KB expansion (with bank switching). I also wrote a 3D wireframe modeler and animator. Gave it all away when I sold the machine, never thought I would be interested in that later on.
Awesome video =D I had no idea the SVI 328 was so close to the MSX!
Thanks! I knew it was close but I didn't realize it was THAT close until I started researching it. Pretty interesting. I wonder what was the real reason they didn't choose that as the MSX standard. Probably company politics.
The SVI was basically what MSX was based on.
Loving the channel Noel! Just one minor correction - in the "o'mac farmer" game you described the playing field as "isometric" - it's actually an "oblique" projection. I only mention it so you know for the future - it was a great episode (and got me to find the other 4 videos that I hadn't seen and see them first)!
Oh right, because one of the edges is parallel to the viewer. Good point. Glad you liked the video and the whole series! 😃👍
Didn’t expect to see a Big Car comment here, Nice.
I bought this computer with my older brother back in 1985 (his money mostly, I was only 11 at the time). At first we only had the tape drive and played Turboat, Tetra Horror and Spectron. We expanded the computer with disk drives, a printer and a modem two years later. I got to know CP/M and Turbo Pascal. That experience brought me to Delphi and my professional career. And here I am so many years later having worked as an independent developer for almost thirty years. I still think Spectravideo was a better choice than C64 (and later PC vs MS-DOS) all my friends had (although they didn't end up so bad either).
Another interesting video! Keep up the excellent work!
Thank you! Cheers!
Thanks for sharing this. I am from the Netherlands and my cousin had one of these back in the day. He had quite a collection of peripherals for it as well. I remember being quite blown away by it. We both were into programming and when the MSX standard released we were trying to alter MSX 1 games to work with them - basically disassembling and recoding bits to work with the different hardware. We were marginally successful but I remember we did get some games ported. Part of what we did it exactly like you described - searching for opcodes that were we knew MSX hardware addresses were accessed that were different.
We were in our own bubble and we shared some with our friends but those 'ports' probably didn't survive in today's software archives. My handle was Radar-tm and my cousin's was RO-N back in the day. It's cool that some MSX games were successfully backported by others that survived or possibly are even very recent.
I ended up getting a MSX2 myself quite late on in the MSX era and was using a C64 as a main system during the 8bit era. But always coding and gaming on friend's Spectrums, Amstrads, MSX and Ti99s as well.
Love that story! I can totally see kids trying to make the most of the computers they had and doing that kind of porting. That's a lot more exciting than just removing protections like I did back in the day 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab oh but that was cool too! :)
As I see it, the Spectravideo ad is lying. "When you buy an SVI-328...you'll be able to take advantage of all the remarkable new equipment that will be coming from other MSX participants." If there is a single piece of incompatible MSX equipment such as a cartridge, that statement is false.
Anyway, another excellent video Noel! Your content is as good as it gets. Thanks again!
Yeah, that's the one sentence that I think is the most misleading. The rest are just dancing around the line. Apparently some people were really burned with that campaign because they expected a full MSX compatible computer. Ouch!
Thanks again. Glad you're liking the videos!
Nice and very complete review. Seeing your basic benchmark, make me wonder : Did you ever encounter the Belgian DAI computer which had semicompiled basic or the elan enterprise 64?
@The programming crypto guy I heard there is still a community using elan 64 in Hungary
The SV328 was my first computer way back in 1983. I could never bring myself to part with it so it is literally sitting in its original box in the cupboard behind me. I've never needed to fire it up again after finding the BlueMSX emulator and downloading just about every piece of SV/MSX software I could ever find on the net. It gave me years of joy until I jumped to the Amiga500. I used to subscribe to an Australian monthly SV magazine which included a complete disassembly and explanation of the ROM routines. I have no idea where they went but I have loaded the ROM into IDA Pro x64 which is a bit of fun for the inquisitive. I still have the tape drive and a few original cassettes including the Font Editor.
I remember it used to be a pain in the arse to copy the tape games with that BASIC + VRAM loader but I eventually discovered it was super easy to copy those games by adding a couple of lines of BASIC to the loader to save the loader to tape then on a keypress, also save the vram to tape... a perfect copy. At the time I thought I'd discovered the secret of the universe. Those were the days. I always loved poking through its brains.
Great video Noel. The cycle is complete.
Thanks! It feels good to bring this poor computer all the way from how it started to being able to do a full video about it like this to wrap it up.
Great video, just tried your benchcode (for fun) on a modern AMD Ryzen 9 3900X. Using just one thread same calculations was done in 1/1000 sec.
In another 35 years I will try it again to see if its done in 1/1000 ns.
Great video Noel - not that I'd expect any less from your channel! 😁
I was aware of the Spectravideo but knew nothing about it so this is a really good introduction. Kind of bizarre that the game developers didn't make the most of that AY chip, I'm wondering if there's some other limitation that prevented them from using it to its full potential. Also kind of strange that a company would release a computer so close to the MSX standard without actually being compatible!
Glad you liked it, Rees! I kept thinking about the AY chip, and I realized that in early Amstrad games (83-84), most of the music is kind of meh. Just a step above the SVI one. So maybe it was just that: Lack of tools and experience.
As for the compatibility, they came out first! The weird thing is why they couldn't use the SVI 328 as the MSX standard. Were those differences THAT important? Smells more like the other companies didn't want SVI getting a leg up on the competition with a computer 6-12 months before anyone else!
@@NoelsRetroLab Doh! I missed the part about the SVI being first. That makes sense then. I'm familiar with the AY chip from the Atari ST, although that was a later revision so perhaps more capable. Anything with those distinctive AY sounds is very nostalgic for me!
@@ctrlaltrees The ST has a ton more CPU power to get more out of the AY8192.
@@KJohansson You make a very good point!
One other reason why TI Invaders might be simpler than Spectron - it was compatible with the original TI-99/4 which used the TMS 9918 VDP, not the TMS 9918A. The TMS 9918 did not have the full bitmap graphics mode that is clearly used in the SVI Spectron game, graphics on the TMS-9918 were only character based (up to 256 characters for the 768 screen positions in 32 columns x 24 rows) plus 32 sprites.
That makes a lot of sense! I always forget about the TI99/4. Thanks!
Loved this video. I'm currently designing my own computer (based on the 65C02) that is going to use the TMS9918 and the AY PSG. Seeing these games shows me what my computer could potentially do if I had other developers onboard. :-) BTW, regarding the music in those games...my theory is that the same person did the art and wrote the music and coded the game. Which is why so many look like Space Invaders and Pac-Man. It's easy to mimic graphics...but hard to mimic audio without obviously sounding like the source.
Thank you! Glad you liked it. Yes, they were probably a one-person show for everything. And they had to be done in 2-3 weeks probably!
The SVI game difficulty menus look almost identical to the menus in most ColecoVision games. Freaky Freddy and Spectron were both released on ColecoVision in 1983, so the SVI computer versions are probably just quick and dirty ports. I suspect that Spectravison had several games in progress when the CV was discontinued. Coleco did have very strong UI requirements, all their games had to have a difficulty menu that looked like that.
Ah! That explains it. I have never played with a Colecovision, so I missed that angle. Very interesting. Thanks!
@@NoelsRetroLab SVI was a somewhat prolific third party publisher for the Atari 2600 as well. Their games have a reputation for being somewhat strange.
Very interesting ! Thanks for sharing this with us :)
Sorry for my lack of geographical knowledge, but what's that square in the middle of the pacific ocean ?
Haha, I saw that too late. That's the web page I used to generate the map adding a "blank" label with the same color as the countries I selected. Either that, or a secret US base for UFO investigation 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab Actually, that's the secret island where Adolf Hitler, Amelia Earhart and Elvis Presley now live, after finding the secret of eternal life is in a crashed alien spaceship. They're the ones creating fake UFO sightings in the USA to distract them from finding finding the island. That's all completely true, every word of it, I swear that none of my six tongues are in any of my 24 cheeks on either of my heads! 😁
The game with the farmer and the ants reminds me of Pedro on the Dragon 32, the tune sounds vaguely similar too. I spent hours playing that game.
Este video es muy interesante para saber los computadores que se usaban en esa época, y aún más interesante cuando aparece uno que otro software en Español para estas máquinas. Excelente canal!
Gracias! 😃
Love to see these obscure machines, keep up the good work!
Thanks, will do!
The ports happened in the 80s. Also we had software msx simulation that worked with 32k msx games that would comply to the msx standard, which specified that hardware should be addressed via bios routines only
Right, that makes sense. I wonder in what percentage of the games that MSX simulation worked on.
@@NoelsRetroLab Only a small percentage, most games addressed the hardware directly. Porting was pretty straight forward but back then I was too unaware (young) to do it myself. But 20 years ago I did port Superboy 1 on the emulator for fun, basically it was nothing more than changing the port numbers of Z80 'out' instructions and the joystick buttons were read from different hardware PSG instead of PPI if I remember correctly. You would usually still use the MSX bios, which was the first 16kb though. Most Konami games were 48KB so thats why they worked with the adaptions required.
16:52 Those remind me of the Coleco Vision game select screens. Interesting, I had a Coleco Vision in 1983.
Yes, apparently they're very similar. I never played with the Coleco so I wasn't aware of that similarity.
17:50 The muted colors found on many systems of the day are the result of having a single color saturation value available. If the same level is used for the colorburst and the colored pixels, then the colors will have that washed out look unless the brightness of the pixel is very low. It's just how the color system works. A stronger color signal after the burst would have resulted in more vibrant colors but would have been more complex to implement.
😊 This brings back good memories . My first machine was actually the SVI 318, and the very first game I bought was Spectron.
Very cool! Was the keyboard on the 318 as bad as it looks?
@@NoelsRetroLab Compared to a mechanical keyboard or even a membrane, it's quite dreadful yes. But at the time I got used to the rubber keys, and it was actually this machine that got me interested in coding. Had my share of typos though. On the plus side though, the arrow keys, or rather arrow wheel, was a conversation starter when you plugged the little red nob in and converted it to a onboard joystick.
First joystick I had for my C64 was the Spectravideo. In those days I only had International Soccer, Lazerian, Jupiter Lander (all Carts), Cavalon & Hungry Horace (tape)...
Thank you for an excellent video about a system I know little about. I love discovering all the hardware that made use of the TMS9918A VDP. Adding 16K of dedicated system ram to the 16K of VDP ram would made this quite a powerful little machine at the time. (Sure beats the 99's abysmal 256 bytes(!) of scratchpad ram)
Just as an aside, TI-Invaders was released in 1981 - same year as the /4A, so I am guessing that initial game development pre-dates the TMS9918A, and was originally planned for the TI-99/4, and not the /4A (although the latter was backwards compatible with existing software)
Being equipped with only the TMS9918, the system did not have sprite capabilities, so early TI-99 games did not use them. I could be wrong on this (and I welcome correction if I am), but I'm guessing that would include TI-Invaders, suggesting no sprites were used.
Excelent video. You could make other video about SVI and MSX pages. Could be possible convert/port msx games analyzing this pages? Some of the games themselves appear to only ever use consecutive pairs of 8KB pages starting with an even-numbered page, they use it like a mapper with 16KB paging granularity. How adapt to SVI 32 KB pages?
Videos like this show what an iceberg the world of '80s computers really is. I can't believe I'm still learning about platforms I'd never heard of before. It's like when Techmoan trots out yet another obscure media format for the umpteenth time.
Crunch (20:15) reminded me of Chuckie Egg... it almost looks like a direct rip from one of the levels!
These sold reasonably well in South Africa I believe - sold through Game stores in Natal. IIRC I had the 328, 728 and a 738. PC clones became cheaper and were then sold in the same stores.
Interesting, I didn't know that. How MSX computers afterwards, did they also manage to get a reasonable foothold in South Africa?
@@NoelsRetroLab I think the 318 & 328 were almost MSX. The 728 and 738 were MSX compatible. I don't remember that a MSX2 machine was ever released in SA. I remember the stores which sold these transitioning quickly to PC Clone market which killed interest and software supply.
3. One charming Noel ready to go: check
🤣🤣
Great video, and someone with more than a passing interest in this machine (I own 3 of them) I learned plenty from this. 👍
Great to hear! Thanks!
This was my first own computer on which I learned basic and some machine programming. And it had 32KB if I remember right, because the other 32KB where used by the BIOS and BASIC.
You said they didn’t use the same basic, but doesn’t MSX Basic stand for MicroSoft eXtended Basic? The MSX standard was developed by Microsoft as a way to sell more of their software, not the Japanese manufacturers, which is where the name came from.
From what I was able to learn, they're not actually the same, but I also didn't dig to see what the differences were exactly. There's even some debate as to what exactly MSX stands for 😃 I think it's safest to think about them as two branches off the same codebase with relatively minor differences between them.
@@NoelsRetroLab Yes, I did a little digging and you are right - no-one really knows what MSX stands for. I think the BASIC versions must be pretty similar, they are both MS Extended BASIC. I had an MSX back in the day - they were a flop in the UK and my father picked up a brand new Lucky Goldstar (now known as LG) machine including half a dozen cassettes for almost nothing - about Euro30. No idea what happened to it, but it wasn't a bad machine.
Very interesting video!
When I got interested in computers. In the late 80s. I got some old computer magazines and books from a second hand book store. Seeing all those unusual computers in the dusty pages. Is it like Pokemon, collect them all? I tried, going to the local auction house, and car boot sales. I got most of the different commodores, sinclair, amstrads. I never seen a Spectravideo, in the wild. seems like an interesting machine
Haha, there's always that danger of wanting to catch them all. I try to only keep the ones that are unique enough and I'm going to be actively using. Otherwise I wouldn't fit in my apartment! 😃
How is the flashcart for the svi-328 project going? any progress??
Sounds like upper management said something like "We need games like Congo Bongo and Q-Bert" and the programmer responded with "Here's your Q-bert Congo Bongo mash-up!"
Yeah, that sounds about right!
Haha... that's exactly what I thought looking at Noel's playthrough too!
I ran your BASIC benchmark on my homebrew computer. It's running in Microsoft Extended BASIC for 6809, (color computer basic, but stripped of all HW specific stuff and using a UART at 19200 baud for text output) CPU is a HD63C09 at 3.58MHz, running in Hitachi's secret "native mode" ..... 9.28 seconds!
My machine is a one-off though, so it won't make me cry if you don't include it on your chart. :D
The story of the HD6309 is pretty interesting though. Hitachi never publicly acknowledged that their licensed clone of the Motorola 6809 had a secret mode. It took years for hobbyists to learn that they nearly doubled the number of CPU registers, got some instructions to run up to 30% faster, added HW multiplication, division, and memory block copy instructions, and even added some instructions that operate on 32-bit data!
@Noel For the Amstrad CPC speed test, did you use floating point or integer variables?
There is a tremendous difference a simple 'defint a-z' can make on a speed test - learnt that back in the day when some BASIC games I ported from CBM4032 to CPC464 were a bit sluggish... until I realized I had forgotten the 'defint a-z'. Next thing I needed to add were delay loops, otherwise my games were unplayable.... ;-) The CPC BASIC is amazing, it does some (almost pre-compiling) optimizations that make the BASIC really powerful in comparison to other platforms. As far as games go, Starion and Elite are definitely worth a look on the CPC.
(At the moment I am working on a fix of the Gyroscope sound routine for the CPC version - the devs got the note timings wrong when they added delays for 'attack' and 'release' phases of the notes, and therefore the tunes de-synchronize after a short while and sound horrible. I found this out already in 198x, but did not have the rig to properly fix it. Emulators with built-in debuggers have made that task much easier now.)
Hi Hagen! No, I didn't set the as ints specifically (I didn't do that for any platform) but you're right that's a huge win.
I remember the Gyroscope music getting out of beat!!! 🤣 Please let me know when you have the fixed version. I'd LOVE to check it out. Such a great music!
@@NoelsRetroLab Got a simple JavaScript playback engine working (to be used for further analysis), see here: hpatzke.nl/retro/gyro-music.html . There is also a link to a small Gitlab project with a first shot at some more explanation. Hope you like it.
20:49 Hey, the bird and vegetable remind me of Gyromite on the NES :-)
21:13 Hmm, the girders and climbing ropes also look similar to Gyromite, that's funny... :-|
21:26 Movable blue pillars? :-O *calls R.O.B.*
Hahah, good point. Someone else mentioned they looked similar but it didn't fully click in until you listed them like that!
The screen design of the Freddie Frenzy game reminds me a lot of the "Alley Cat" game by Bill Williams, although the gameplay is different.
Yes! That was my first thought too, which added to my disorientation when figuring out what to do 😃
This was my very first computer and the graphics was awesome for its time.
I recall both 318 and 328 were sold in Hong Kong during that time, but not for long due to market demand.
A friend of mine had a SVI 328 and he saved for a whole year to buy a MSX compatibility cartridge , but it was definitely different of the cartridge you've shown, having a kind of tiny membrane keyboard. Interesting. EDIT: Found it, the Spectravideo SVI-606 in all its glory: www.msx.org/wiki/Spectravideo_SVI-606
Interesting! So that one offers a whole new slot at well so you can plug in MSX cartridges. I wonder if internall it's just a ROM or there's more to it than that.
@@NoelsRetroLab From the linked page:
The adapter has inside the PPI 8255, the PSG AY8910 and 16kB DRAM, what corresponds to a minimum for the MSX standard.
Restrictions include:
MSX software cannot be larger then 16kB
Only software that uses BIOS calls (no direct hardware access)
No function keys on the MSX keyboard (when this keyboard is present)
Adapter cannot be used for other MSX peripherals like disk drives
The keyboard, data recorder and joystick ports of the SVI-318 or 328 cannot be used when using the Game Adapter
Some of these games are ports from ZX Spectrum
23:29 yes, TMS (MSX, Coleco, SG-1000...) has non-square pixels, unlike ZX Spectrum with the same 256x192 and square pixels
29:19 because this music was initially made for ZX Spectrum 48k's beeper instead of AY.
There is another MSX model from Spectravideo, the SVI-738 (aka X'Press) a "kind of portable" MSX machine with built-in 3.5" SD disk drive, RS232 serial port and 80 column card (powered by a V9938, same VDP from MSX2 computers, so it's almost a MSX2 computer). By the way some original Spectravideo's games were ported to MSX and published in Japan by ASCII Corp., like "TURBOAT".
The Konami games and a few others that looks exactly like the MSX-games ARE the MSX-games and adjsted to the SVI-328 hardware. Made by a bunch of Swedes back in the days. Me and my team focused on Coleco Games (Byggy suftware or Nirvana Software). This was done around 1984-1995.
Makes sense. It seems like an easy port and I could see how it would be really fun to do (especially if you owned an SVI).
@@NoelsRetroLab The MSX was faitly easy... But the Coleco games took some effort with some backwards enginering of the Colecovision game adaptor. The Colecovision uses a SN76489 and an game ROM and NMI instead if IRQ... Anyway.. Fun it was... I really cant stand the SVI328 keyboard these days... sold the crap 2 years ago.
awesome, I had the 328 and full docking station with dual floppy drives (aimed at business) First machine with memory bank switching. I spent a year designing and building an interface to control mains devices for home automation. It had easy programming access to the address bus. Then I tossed it all in a bin and purchased my first Pentium PC. I still have all my floppys and CP/M os even calc star and word star etc.
That's awesome! I did read that the SVI 328 could run CP/M, but since I don't have a disk interface I didn't get a chance to try it. Really amazing you managed to interface with all that stuff. We forget that these old computers can do some amazing things.
@@NoelsRetroLab Yeah so easy to interface with. Another guy working in the computer shop built one of the first voice synthesizers using the sp0256-al2 that just plugged into the cartridge slot. I still have 2 of the ic's.
just discover your channel and subscribe right away:) Clear explanations and fun to watch:)
Thanks and welcome!
Spectravideo made a few strange machines :) The SVI 738 was a MSX computer with a MSX2 VDP (so you could upgrade them to MSX2). I believe they added that VDP for the use of CP/M (80 colums). If that wasn't strange enough they later made the SVI 838 which was a pc with an MSX2 VDP and AY soundchip (and a MSX cartidge adapter).
I think the SVI738, was ment to be a MSX2, but Spectravideo was ready with the computer before the MSX2 standard was ready :) Some of the mainboards have a socket for the RTC (real time clock chip also).
Most commercial MSX games do use the BIOS ROM. The official standard coding guideline was to not use the I/O ports directly. With the permitted exception of the VDP, but software must read the VDP port address from the BIOS ROM. Especially Japanese developers (like Konami) usually stuck to that. So if you give the SVI an MSX-compatible BIOS ROM with the I/O ports changed to their SVI equivalents… I reckon that’s what the adapter did!
there is/was a guy who converted a few ZX Spectrum games. the 318/328 can also pay Colecovision carts as well.
as a newbie to "bare bone" computing - what does the difference in memory paging mean? like whats the impact of it?
It's mostly a matter of granularity. The SVI can change 32KB of the memory map to map to something else (ROM, RAM expansion, whatever), whereas the MSX can do 16KB individually. So that gives them more control. 16KB seems like a much more natural number for an 8-bit computer so I wonder why they came up with 32KB in the first place.
Little correction: At 18:11 you say that SVI and MSX had AY-3-8912, but that is not true. These have AY-3-8910. The difference is pretty much limited to lack of last few I/O registers in 8912, but that also kind of leads to 2nd error later when you expect that converting games is pretty much just changing I/O ports. There is quite a bit more than that on it as the features such as reading cassette, joystick or keyboard are spread differently between PPI and PSG chips. As general rule of thumb native MSX titles usually used BIOS quite a lot, but games ported from other platforms usually skipped the whole BIOS. I know about this stuff because I've written a software that allows you to load and execute MSX ROM games on SVI-328 hardware using cassette or disk and I must say there is quite a lot of things going on on the background that does not meet the eye as it is happening without user knowing about it. The software is combination of two parts: Open source C-BIOS that is kind of free MSX BIOS implementation that I have rewritten to SVI-328 and a small artificial intelligence that uses fuzzy logic to separate code from other data such as music or graphics, finds the direct I/O routines and patches them to use SVI-328 hardware instead. How it does that depends a lot from the case, but straight forward I/O port replacement comes to question only if the CPU is talking to VDP. All other I/O needs more complex logic around and sometimes the correct implementation method is selected only when the game is already running.
You're right! I missed that (even though I had it open in front of me!). It shouldn't make music any worse than one in AY-3-8912 computers though, right?
Interesting that they did use the BIOS quite a bit. I guess that's why those converter catridges providing an adapter ROM was important. Thanks for the corrections!
@@NoelsRetroLab Yes, the sound features on these chips are identical. 8912 has just less pins due to lack of I/O features. If you want to hear better music you should try to run more recent MSX games on it. Many homebrew MSX games today use music players originating from ZX Spectrum and Amstrad scene and those players really push the chiptunes quite a long way from these basic blips and blobs that we heard in early days.
What confusing games. LOL. Great vid, Noel.
They really are. As a game designer, I'm fascinated by them. It's like a really early stage of evolution that was doing things, but not very well 😃
@@NoelsRetroLab Yeah, right idea, wrong implementation.
Also a computer I never seen in real life.
Here in The Netherland it was basically C64 and Phillips MSX machines and an odd Atari XL
16:45 Colecovision flashbacks intensify...
(well it has the same CPU and video chip, just the sound chip from the TI99/4a, so maybe you could say the Spectravideo/MSX is the lovechild of TI99/4a and Colecovision)
Yes, I missed the whole Colecovision connection, but there's a very clear connection in there.
I'm very curious about the "Sony HIT BIT HB-75" from 1984. Can you please make a video about it?
Other MSX PC manufacturers such as "Zemmix" (better known as Daewoo), Panasonic/Matsushita, Pioneer (with Laserdisc interface!), Yashica/Kyocera, JVC (with overlay functions for video editing), etc.
would also be interesting!
Definitely! I have one or two of those to repair anyway, so that will make for a fun video after this one.
Instant-Like for video title! :D
Here in the Netherlands there was an SVI-Club, they had a monthly magazine. The first few SVI computers were not MSX compatible, but slightly different. Later on SVI had machines that followed some of the MSX rules. Never there was information about why SVI International did not follow the MSX standard completely. SVI was a founding member of the MSX consortium, it could not have been so that they didn't get the plans and schematics. Maybe the Hong Kong based SVI tried to keep the consumers tied to their machines and software, without competition. The others in the MSX consortium were most of all Japanese, they manufactured first of all the hardware and didn't bother with software. Maybe that was the reason of the incompatibility between MSX and SVI.
Really? The SVI 728 wasn't completely MSX compatible? I figured that everything after the 328 was MSX. Strange!
@@NoelsRetroLab A friend of mine had the SVI-738 with build in disk drive. And sometimes it reacted strange on standard MSX programmes. It had the MSX-2 Video chip build in, but it could not be used as an MSX-2 because it only had 16kB V-RAM and MSX-1 BASIC. It was only used for 80 columns of text for CP/M. It could have been a great development but it didn't catch on. Shortly after that they went into PC's for a short while and then it was finished for Spectravideo. The end!
Gun Fright aspect ratio stretching, one possible theory: What if it was ported from the Spectrum? It sounds like the MSX had the same screen resolution as the spectrum. The graphics on this version of Gun Fright look very typically Spectrum - monochrome. The Spectrum had the same resolution, but the area occupied on the screen was closer to being square than a lot of other computers (narrower). So if they'd lifted the Spectrum graphics, that'd probably give the stretched look.
old school friend had one , while we all had commodore ,spectrum and Amstrad
Astro Robo Sasa was released for the Famicom and is pretty good considering when it was released. I’m shocked to see it was on this computer as well.
I owned a SVI328 in 1988, and the ports you talk about like MSX ports was already out around that time. I played Knightmare, RoadFighter, Hyper Sports etc. I am not sure I remember The Hobbit, I played also alot of Spectron and Telebunny. I can tell you most MSX games use BIOS calls. There is a MSX Bios variable to read the VDP chip, but very few games do it since its like 98 and 99 for the VDP. Also another issue is to read Joysticks and Keyboards. And then you can not do just a simple search of a binary file. First out data to a port can be done in many ways, and if you just search for opcodes (eg D3 XX) you migth rand in to data like graphics or sound data which actually also is D3 XX and change it if you dont know what you are doing. The Interrupt hooks are also not the same, but its also quite easy to fix. I have ported a lot of MSX games, as well as a few SG-1000 games, and Sord M5 games - Mainly over the the ColecoVision and Memotech MTX. What I did was simply to create my OWN rom routines, so eg. if a game called read joystick, i created my own routine so the routine will return the same value as the game expect. Porting games from MSX to Colecovision, have another issue :) the Soundchips is not the same. So wrote some emulation code for that also.
To the Question why choose a SVI over a MSX, hmmm I think maybe the only way i can think is the games, but actually all the SVI games could be easy ported over to MSX Basic if you wanted to use the time. SVI328 was also a good CP/M computer, you could get 80 crt video card for it, which I think only is possible for MSX if you have a MSX2 or a MSX1 computer with the V9938 VDP (Spectravide SVI738 or Some YAMAHA MSX1's). But you needed the Super Expander to use Floppydrives. So its a huge setup. I also recall the Spectravideo diskformat as you said is not standard. The MSX share diskformat with IBM, e.g 3.5" 720kb diskformat. But the SVI had its own which was in someway clever, you had the Directory in the middle of the diskette. So that means it would be faster to access files. I came from a Memotech MTX so the Keyboard on the SVI328 was very good feeling to me. I like the SVI, I currently dont have a 328, but have a few SVI738's in my collection. As well as a few other MSX computers.
Those keycaps are pretty gorgeous.
Yes, they are, aren't they? I can't think of another MSX computer with better keycaps.
the games seem really innovative actually... the shoot to thrust thing is pretty cool implementation of newtonian physics where if you shoot, you would be pushed in the opposite direction.
They are. I suspect is mostly due to time constraints and lack of established game design though. "Oh you got something working on screen? Ship it!" But there are some interesting controls there that could be explored further today for sure.
Mostly with the TI and Colecovision I'm mad they didn't utilize the 2 bit color byte much or at all that allows 2 colors for every 8 pixels wide like MSX1 graphics used a lot.
Rom size is a factor but clearly that VDP range was used best when the NPCs were background tiles and the player as a layered sprite so everything wasn't just a single color. Especially true in creating sprites without see through holes in them heh.
I understand the difficulty in smooth horizontal scrolling but really that whole hardware family should have scrolled vertically smooth more often in more games.
Been learning about the nature of menu coding in the early days being hard to come by for the sake of the cart sizes, not as severe as the A2600 but using hardware switches(no menu coding) or in this case a uniform menu saves ROM space.
I've gotten used to used to using the colors but it's not a great fixed system palette, people say the C64 colors are dull heh.
Definitely think homebrew is where things like the sound hardware can actually now be utilized. I think every model that wasn't a Japanese MSX1 barely had it's hardware fully employed like the SVI 328, ADAM, TI, or Colecovision were.
Lastly I think the controller standard could be improved across the board with something new or at the very least MSX1 based adapters since it has the most modern control designs.
My friend had an SVI328. He had some software on tape that he loaded and then he could load an MSX game. I don't have any details of the software, and I could be wrong (childhood memories).
I still could have that cartridge that allowed to use msx games in my 328 in my parents home. It was manufactured by a Bilbao (Spain) company. It usually got very hot. All Konami games worked very well at full speed. Many games must be 'tunned' with pokes and vpokes... Some of then were imposible to run. Were good happy times.
The UI are very similar to the Coleco Vision ones.
My favourite 8 bit computer.
Really fascinating games! Obviously, the hardware itself is not in any way compelling compared to its more prolific cousins. So I never paid any attention to the Spectravideo. But I had no idea the games were so weird and creative.
They are, aren't they? Probably some of the more off beat games I've seen in older platforms. I suspect it was more due to management time pressure rathern than whimsical game design, but oh well, it all counts in the end 😃
If you add ,r at the end of cload it runs the program after loading. Example: cload "loadg",r
I used to play Sasa on the Famicom, it's called Astro Robot Sasa too, slightly better but still bizarre to handle.
Interesting, I didn't realize it had gotten so many ports. Someone must have thought it was a fantastic game 😃
Great videos but the volume of computer sounds/music is so loud that I had to consistently adjust it.
Sorry about that! That's great feedback and I'll keep it in mind for future videos 👍