Sakhr AX-230: An Arabic MSX
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- čas přidán 17. 03. 2023
- This is the first time I've ever used any MSX computer as they aren't common in North America. This particular unit is from the Middle East and is localized in Arabic. Let's see if I can figure out how to swap in some ROMs from another machine to try to get some games running on it.
--- Video Links
MSX standard:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
Sakhr AX-230: (This machine)
www.msx.org/wiki/Sakhr_AX-230
Sanyo MPC-2 (Japanese version of this machine)
www.msx.org/wiki/Sanyo_MPC-2
More info about the ROMs on the Sakhr:
www.msx.org/nl/node/55067?page=1
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After shooting this video I found a thread talking more specifically about the ROMs on this machine:
www.msx.org/nl/node/55067?page=1
Seems that there is some information that is incorrect on the MSX Wiki page for it. From a post by "mars2000you" says:
---------------
The Games ROM is in slot 3-1, 3-2 or 3-3, it needs to be checked with saverom. It's probably slot 3-3 if we compare with AX-170, as it is the place of the second cartridge slot, that has been removed on the AX-230.
This 1024kB ROM has the ASCII8 mapper. It can't work without the presence of an Arabic ROM in the MSX computer.
The other dump (128kB) can be divided as follows:
- first 32 KB = BIOS rom
- next 32 KB = Arabic ROM with inversion of the 16kB blocks (AB signature is not at the beginning of this 32kB block)
- next 64 kB = empty
---------------
The fact the upper 32k in the EPROM I made needs to be inverted is probably why the games were crashing and not working, but this is just a guess. Ideally I'd like to be able to use the AX-230 BIOS ROM (with the appropriate keyboard map) and then load in some games or a game into that upper 32. A switch could be wired to turn this on or off.
Hopefully that panel with the legend Bil Heard get's live streamed because I wolud watch it
When you get it working, you've to try SymbOS on it! :D
@@Kicher1985 You need 128kB to run it :) not possible on stock MSX1 (like AX-230)
Wouldn't holding shift key when booting select upper and lower part of the rom hence the programme like it did with the Arabic stuff?
I had a hunch the two sections of the second half of the ROM would need to be swapped. This means the A13 from the CPU is directly passed through to the ROM which seems easier to implement than subtracting the base offset.
Brings back wonderful memories, those machines were all over the Arabic countries and getting hold of parts or cartridges was very easy and we got a huge library of games and software ❤
Hi MSX/SAKHR bro ...
Are there any cool apps/games/demos for Arabic MSX that are unknown in other countries?
نعم كانت حلمي في الصغر
Being from Kuwait, I remember EVERYONE had a Sakhr MSX at home. Used mainly for education and games.
The significance of Sakhr MSX was that it was the first machine that had Arabic. The Sakhr company were the first to digitize Arabic letters.
Very cool video!
Did that company stick around for long and bring over more computers? Really never hear about computers from that area of the world. And I love seeing what localizing companies did back then, sometimes selling direct competitors under the same brand.
@@SonicBoone56 they had many versions of the MSX during that time, I believe the last model they had was the AX990.
But the company eventually stopped operating I’m guessing in the 90’s as PCs became more mainstream. The Sakhr founder and CEO recently revealed a story where Microsoft stabbed him in the back by “stealing” his most skilled engineers, who helped Microsoft localize Windows for the Arab region.
No, they were not the first to Arabize computers.
I wrote a very lengthy comment about that in an MSX facebook group post:
It is challenging to trace the history of computer Arabization since most of it is not well documented. I did a lot of research about it but not much is available publicly. This is what I have gathered so far:
0. Before computer keyboards, we had typewriters. The first commercial mechanical typewriter was made available in 1874. So I would not be surprised if there was already an Arabized typewriter by the late 19th century/early 20th century. There were also teletypers/teleprinters in the mid-20th century that I am pretty sure got Arabized. The Baudot code is known to support Abjad letters.
1. Perhaps efforts to Arabize computer hardware and software were started by the Arab governments since they afforded that and had a lot of use cases for it from the beginning.
2. Jordan is considered the first Arab country to have purchased a computer (I think it was a UNIVAC) for one of its security and intelligence organs in the late 1950s, so perhaps the first efforts to Arabize computers started there shortly after.
3. Since then, other Arab governments have started to purchase mainframes to use in their various ministries and state companies, notably Iraq in the early 1960s and Egypt as well. These countries had computer researchers working within many large universities.
4. HP sold an Arabized version of one of their computer terminal models in 1977: HP 2645R
5. Apple released an Arabized version of their famous Apple II home computer back in 1979. Steve Wozniak himself claimed that he worked on its Arabization.
6. Xerox Star 8010 featured Arabic typography in its promotional photographs in 1981.
7. A defunct body called "Arab Standardization and Metrology Organization" created perhaps the first standardized Arabic character set in 1982, the 7-bit ASMO 449. Precursors of that standard were already used in mainframe terminals in the mid-1970s.
8. An obscure Californian company back in the early staffed by Egyptian computer scientists and engineers created a series of Arabized computers called "Al-Raed/The Pioneer" in the early 1980s. The first models had Z-80 CPUs and ran Arabized CP/M-80 as OS. They also developed what is perhaps the first complete Arabic programming language called "Khwarizmi" to run on these machines. A few years later they moved on to create Arabized IBM PC clones. There is another Arabic programming language called "Najlaa" which ran in UNIX environments.
9. Finally, the first two Sakhr models (AH-200 and AX-100) were released in 1985.
10. While I am not certain when it was first released, an Arabized version of the NEC PC-6001 home computer was released in Iraq by the state there around that time as "Al-Warkaa 6001". It could not compete with Sakhr however, and it was usually found in select middle and high schools. The Iraqi state failed or did not bother to foster a local Arabic software market for that platform. They later moved on to Arabize an Italian IBM-PC XT clone, the Olivetti Prodest PC-1.
11. Many other Arabized home computer platforms started showing up shortly after: Atari 65XE was released as Al-Najm, Mattel Aquarius, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Thomson TO-7/70 CU77, BBC Micro, Enterprise 64, etc... But it was already too late, many could not compete with the popularity of the MSX computers, especially those under the Sakhr badge.
So, while Alalamiya did popularize Arabized hardware and software in the Arab home computer market, they were not exactly the first, and their work was perhaps based on the research made within the two decades prior to Sakhr.
A very good source on the subject of Computing and the Arabic language is this book from 1990: archive.org/.../computers_and_the_arabic.../mode/2up
You will notice that Sakhr gets mentioned only twice, and Alalamyia only once. Most of the research mentioned is from Arab state universities and institutes.
A couple of other notes regarding your video:
- Microsoft only made their BASIC variant available for the MSX. Microsoft BASIC was one of the very first Microsoft products and they provided versions for it to many popular home computer platforms back then. They also ported MS-DOS to it (as MSX-DOS 1 and 2), and that was about it. Microsoft was more interested in the profitable IBM-PC standard/platform which was widely adopted by businesses, especially in the US. So you can see that Microsoft's involvement in MSX was very minimal, and they were only interested in selling their software.
Sakhr is still in business. They are the world's largest Arabic localisation contractor.
Just to clarify, the Apple II had Arabic back in 1979, Sakhr was launched in 1986
Sakhr AX-170 was the most popular MSX (and home computer) in the Arab world, probably sold by hundreds of thousands... Lots of Egyptian ebay traders have hundreds of them in their stocks.
It was my first computer ever, and the only differences that AX-230 have is that it has just one catridge slot (the other cartridge slot space used for the extra ROM that had 30 games), and the case colour.
Let me know if you have any any questions about Sakhr or any other Arabized computer because I have done lots of research on them in the past few years...
Hi MSX/SAKHR bro ...
@@ahmedalshalchi hello, I am also an NEC/Warkaa bro ;)
I grew up in the 80s in Jordan and Sakher's MSX computers were as popular as the PlayStation today! Thanks for covering this amazing machine! Happy memories
The IC you asked about is a synchronous signal generator for CCD's, but in this instance its used as an ROM mapper for the cartridges to enable them to access more memory than the original 64. The chip can map up to 1024 KB of cartridge memory. :)
Ah!
So I presume in place of the unpopulated cartridge slot is a likely 1024K ROM and this mapper for the built in games... Cool. I wonder if that might open up some possibilities..?
@@charlesjmouse indeed
The LZ93N19 is the CCD signal gen you are talking about.
The chip in the video is the LZ93A13. ;)
There is a project video here on the A13 chip, which is the ROM mapper chip...
czcams.com/video/eXTdpdrzfeM/video.html
Great to see an American youtuber showing more of the MSX! I know they are rare in the US but MSX was successful in Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Netherlands and Japan. In this Arabic machine context, maybe fascinating to know, the Sakhr AX-330 can dual boot a NES, and the Sakhr AX-990 also supports Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games!
The MSX ASC8 (ASCII) ROM mappers can control up to 1024kB of cartridge memory with chip LZ93A13 (ASC1) or up to 2048kB with chip M60002 (ASC2). The connections will be made from (both) the flash memory to the MSX bus and to the LZ93A13.
1) A0 to A12 of (both) flash memory connected to the MSX address bus
2) A13 to A18 of (both) flash memory connected to B0 to B5 of the LZ93A13 (or M60002)
3) D0 to D7 of (both) flash memory connected to the MSX data bus
4) /WE of (both) flash memory connected to /WR of the MSX address bus
5) /OE of (both) flash memory connected to /OE.00-7F (pin 8) of the LZ93A13 (or M60002)
6) /CE of flash 1 to pin 5 (/Y1) of the LS139
7) Optionally, /CE of flash 2 to pin 7 (/Y3) of the LS139
8) /SLTSL of the MSX address bus to pin 1 of the switch
9) Pin 2 of the switch to pin 1 (/G) of the LS139
10) Resistor of 4.7 kΩ between VCC and pin 1 (/G) of the LS139
11) /RESET of the MSX address bus to pin 2 (A) of the LS139
12) B6 of the LZ93A13 (or M60002) to pin 3 (B) of the LS139
czcams.com/video/eXTdpdrzfeM/video.html
33:30: What you're seeing there: Those are NOT kanji. Those characters are kana, hiragana to be precise. Remember, kana (hiragana and katakana) are these syllable-alphabets that are basically only 46-letters each, plus some variants, so kana can fit in a 256-character code page (eg. Code Page 911 aka JIS X 0201), but kanji cannot (too many glyphs). By way of comparison, a basic Arabic alphabet can also fit in a 256-character code page, but all the variant glyphs cannot. You can recognise hiragana by their mostly curved look, katakana by their angular look, and kanji because they look like Chinese characters, which is what they are.
Indeed. Kanji means literally chinese characters.
I own a pair of MSX (a 2+ and a TurboR) with kana in the keyboard. But nowadays, they just type with the latin alphabet and the computer puts the kana or kanji (well, you have to select, it's a real PITA typing in Japanese either way).
There was another Sakhr AX-170 that was exactly like the mpc-2 with two cartridge slots and the only difference was the Arabic localisation. Also the Company that imported and sold the machines was called العالميه /Al-Alamiah ( trans. Universal)
and the machines itself were called the MSX صخر/Sakhr . These and most other MSX machines that I have seen are built like a tank they have aged well and they tolerate moderate mishandling unlike other 8bit machines were you can easily fry chips and ports. Also these machines mostly are standardised and it is very easy to build cassette cables and other mods. All in all I would say MSX were probably the best of all the 8bit machines and they dont get the recognition and love that they deserve.
Hi MSX/SAKHR bro ..
In an alternate universe, Commodore, Atari and Tandy all subscribed to the MSX standard (Apple refused). What a wonderful world that myst be.
MSX is awesome, it's the computer of my youth. We recently release a game called MSX Sales Discontinued.
I am from Pakistan... I actually remember using an Arabic MSX when I was young my neighbors had one. It was well into the 90s and well into the Pentium era they had it hand me down from their relatives in the Middle East. That's was the only MSX machine I have ever used... I remember trying to write BASIC game for it.
MSX computers don't get much attention from English-speaking youtubers! I know they weren't popular over there but they were a big thing in Latin America. I'm from Argentina and I learned programming in a Talent DPC-200 when I was 5 or 6 years old. They are really capable machines. They also have MSX-DOS and many great games from Spain and Japan.
En México se vieron más las Commodore 16 y 64
Every time I see all the MSX stuff, I am AMAZED at what was available elsewhere while I played Nintendo.
The MSX was significantly more expensive though. Even the lowest-tier of MSX had something like 8x the RAM of an NES and RAM was incredibly expensive in the 80s.
MSX was huge in Brazil, we had two main machines here called Hotbit and Expert. I had an Expert myself.
Hotbit? Did you mean Sony's HitBit range or some obscure clone?
@@BilisNegraA clone manufactured by Sharp, which no, isn't the same company as the one that produced the X1 and X68000 lines of computers (much like how the Brazilian Taito, famous for bringing pinball to the country, isn't the same as the Japanese Taito)
To fix the key-map issues, you'll want the European localised version of the ROM, a ROM image from a UK Sanyo - MPC-100 will likely solve both your keyboard, and PAL 50 Hz vs flickery NTSC 60 Hz issues. There's a copy of the manual over on the Internet Archive, that includes the pin outs of the ports: "Sanyo MPC-100 Operating Instructions (GB)"
Yes, that is definitely a Japanese keyboard map....all too familiar with it
I had a Dutch MPC-100, no Kanji, no Arabic characters
Hi MSX bro ...
The funniest memory I have of the MSX growing up in the UK back in the 80's, was that there was a weird rivalry between MSX owners. Whereas the rest of us used to argue over which was best, the C64, Spectrum or Amstrad, MSX owners used to argue over the brand of their MSX instead. One of the things said by a Toshiba MSX owner about a Canon one was "If anyone can't, Canon can't", a play on Canon's slogan from back in the day - If anyone can, Canon can". 😁
I know Yamaha MSX computers were sold in the US, but mostly in music instrument stores that sold synthesizers because they had a limited (4-voice?) DX synthesizer built into it. I remember seeing it in a few such stores way back then.
First personal computer I owned was the Sakhr 170, and prior to that I had an Atari gaming console. This company has the brilliant idea of making a computer that combines business applications with entertainment applications. As a result of this idea, computers were transformed from office equipment to home entertainment devices in the mid-eighties. These devices include the Amiga 500 computer and many others.
I had the Spectravideo 728 back in the day and in my book it was the best platform in the mid-80s to learn to write basic. The MSX basic can do sprites, music, graphics, all with an advanced language without any peeks/pokes. Never did any HW mods (beyond building a standard centronics to the 14-pin Centronics adapter for a 9-pin dot matrix printer), though. You just brought back a ton of memories.
That sounds cool! Yeah I guess if it was 1983 Basic, MS would have put a bunch of effort into making it feature laden. That's neat as so few basic interpreters had much in the way of sprite and sound capabilities. Did you save onto cassette tapes?
There is another version for svi 728
From ecico electronics has a Arabic rom
In the opening screen shows "Arab max" in Arabic language
And you can chose Arabic basic and two another choices but I can't remember 😅😅
This seems to be a common thread with MSX and similar platforms. I have a Sega SC-3000, which predates MSX slightly but is an extremely near neighbor. The Sega machine has only 2k of internal ram to initialize the system and provide working space for video games inserted into the cartridge port, but it also has 16k of video ram, like the computer in this video was stated to have. When you insert a Basic cartridge, the lower memory space is switched to a 32k Basic rom, and the internal 2k is disabled in favor of up to 32k of ram on the cartridge. Like the MSX, the Sega does sprites, music, and graphics.
interestingly, in commie poland in the second half of the 80s the spectravideo 738 (not 728) was one of the very few home computers available in (state) stores. the main advantage was, of course, the built-in floppy drive, which allowed for software copying. and at my high school in warsaw we had computer science classes devoted to programming in logo …nominally, as we mostly played games that i obtained at a friendly computer store
I still have my original SVI-728 from the 80s. Works like a charm🤘
I had an MSX 170 which was white which I still own, lots of games and interesting Arabic cartridges such as Quran and Arabic lessons. Basic and paint, Oh man what memories
Spectravideo was a U.S. company making MSX computers. The SVI-328 was even the basis for the MSX standard. My brother and I each had an SVI-738 X'Press from age 8. I think our uncle imported them to Norway back in the day.
You commented about this computer probably being cheap because other people had PCs and Amigas, etc. but I think this is a very American point of view. Back then technology took a lot longer to get to third world countries (like mine) and everything was offset quite a few years. I was being taught MSX-LOGO in school in the early 90s and very few people already had PCs. I mean I had my XT in perhaps 1990 and in 1994 I had a 486 and still I was kind of ahead lots of people around me
Good point, also it wasn't cheap at all (at least were I live)
I remember writing programs on our school's by then-ancient mostly-MSX-compatible soviet computers in 1999 IIRC in Moscow, Russia. Yes there were windows-95 machines next door but we were not allowed to go anywhere near them.
School with MSX? Wow! I have a TK-85 and was a Alien...
@@GeografiaDasCoisas Well, Moscow is (and was) the capital, which had best access to "high tech" back then. In 70s and 80s soviet schools started to get computer classes. This process was slow and inconsistent, and of course was disrupted when USSR dissolved.
Economy crashed pretty severely during the 90s, any savings became literally worthless almost overnight, so all development (except maybe cheap retail) ceased.
The process kinda resumed in late 90s - early 00s, with modern Chinese-made computers.
This is why old soviet computers survived that long - there was no alternative, everyone (who wasn't mafia) was poor.
The computers, if I remember correctly, were japanese-made, soviet-assembled KUVT (КУВТ) which were MSX-compatible, but had horrible phonetically rearranged latin keyboard that I struggled with greatly.
There were something like 10 stripped down student machines with small monochrome CRTs, and a teacher machine with a 5" drive and a printer, networked via some sort of bus - teacher initiated parallel download to all student machines at once.
The computers were very unreliable and crashed/froze regularly, networking was even worse. Probably due to dying power supplies that weren't serviced for two decades.
IIRC our computer class was actually shared across several local schools.
Americans had fancy gear like PCs and Macs in the early 90's, in Europe and adjacent a lot of people were still using 8 bit micros with designs from the early 80s like the C64, Spectrum, MSX...
Just a note on MSX computers being sold in the US, I have a Yamaha CX5MC which is the Canadian version of that MSX computer, there was also the CX5MU which is the US version. So at least some MSX computers were sold in North America.
14:12 its a date converter. it converts between AD and the Hijri calender, the dominant one used in most of the middle east.
MSX is called by its fans as The Most Magical Of All Computers. As an old MSX freak (since 1986!), I can only agree with that saying. 😊
Funny to see that Adrian Black started with a Arabic MSX, the AX-230. It was developed by the Japanese company Sanyo to the Al-Alamiah company, which sell computers (until now) in the Middle East countries.
Cheers from the Brazilian MSX community! Hope to see more MSX related videos in the future.
Al-Alamiah stopped selling computer hardware since the early 1990s. Supposedly, it became an IT consulting firm, but their website is not working anymore so I guess the company is no more...
Its software subsidiary, Sakhr Software, still exists, based in Egypt and provides Arabic OCR software/solutions for those who can afford it.
@@KhalidYousif87 wow, I thought they still were in the computer hardware business. Thanks for the information.
OMG, this video brings back memories! I used to have the AX200 and my brother the AX370. ✌🏽🇮🇶
You are correct about Arabic countries using 220V, but that hasn’t always been the case. Saudi Arabia used to use both 110V and 220V, but changed over long after these machines were sold, which explains why that machine was shipped with a dual voltage power supply.
We had an SVI 738 msx, basically the first computer for my brother and me. It had an 3.5in floppy disk and was quite ahead of time with that featue. It also ran CP/M. Weren't many around in our village in the Netherlands,. Haven't thought of it for years, by seeing this video looked it up. It brings back memories. It was a great idea of my dad getting that for us, even though it wasn't cheap. I often say that I'm one of the first generations that grew up with computers and playing and programming, trying out stuff, made the minds of us kids then used to computer logic. Thanks for this vid Adrian, it made me remember old days :)
Maybe you want to take a look at "Noels retro lab" youtube channel. He has quite a few VERY GOOD SVI videos in his backlog.
Kuwait uses plug type G, which is the UK BS1363 plug with it's rectangular pins. Indeed, most Arab countries in area use that standard (UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen - even Iraq uses it in part). However, Japan uses the Type A and B plugs, which are the North American NEMA 1-15 2 and related 3 pin plugs.
The Japanese power system is weird in that it's 100 volts (with a 200 volt option for higher powered devices), and it's split into two within the country with one part at 60 Hz and the other at 50 Hz depending on whether that part of the country originally used US or German generating equipment.
My guess is that the importers just used the standard Japanese power cable, which would have been a NEMA 1-15. It's highly unusual to put 230 V onto such a plug. The Australian plug/socket combination was based on a design by Harvey Hubbell, who produced the original NEMA 1-15 design. He'd meant it to replace NEMA 1-15 in the USA, but it never caught on. However, it maintained the same blade sizes and separation, but in a three blade form and with the live and neutral at 45 degrees. So it seems that the insulation was good enough for 230V.
Came in the comments for this... Kuwait uses the British standard receptacles, but it's common to have the universal power strips so you can plug in almost any plug.
My childhood dream , I would love to get my hand on one of these
As Arab , this company was famous in Iraq , I remember 2001 tried some software product from Sakhr company, they made good learning tools and games. but i never tried MSX
If you get more involved with the platform, a Toshiba HX-10 and a copy of Jet Set Willy should be top of the list. Ahh the memories 😁
Chuckie egg, Chiller... Jet Set Willy with the coloured security card. I worked for a company that had a cassette duplication system and one of the guys had a younger brother with an MSX but couldnt afford many games. Shocked to find they copied the entire colour card which must have taken a fair bit of time. No colour printers/copiers back then.
You are somehow working through almost all the projects I have sitting in my garage! LOVE the diversity of projects!
I still have one back home, but i have the English version of it but I'm not sure what is the version no of it, I still have one of the games cartridge too... used to do some BASIC programming on it.... such a beautiful memories you brought back to me
oh also Sakhr means Rock in English and the guy who made ran the Kuwaiti company died a few months ago
thank you ❤
Little bit surprised Adrian hasn't met a MSX before and I surprised it was common in Middle East. For me, MSX was common in Japan, Europe and South America.
After flashing Sanyo ROM, that computer started behaving as roughly the same as any "non-arabic" MSX (click sound feedback on key down, status bar caption changing when SHIFT key is pressed, etc).
BlueMSX is a very good emulator to who wanna go deep on it and get a baseline what to expect from a physical MSX.
MSX - amazing platform. Warm memories. 🥰
* Brazil 1987 - MSX 1.1 Gradiente Expert GPC-1
Microsoft kept them out of the u.s. so as to not go against their other big money maker at the time that was dominating the u.s. market, the dos pc's. So almost no american has ever heard of msx, let alone used one.
@@ericp631 Tell me about it. Here in 1980's Brazil, our government didn't let IBM PC in...
Here, MSX was marketed as a game console (taxes): it was mounted and wrapped with joysticks, sent to vendors to be boxed with keyboard (Gradiente Expert was like a PC XT) , but those joysticks were sold separately. 🤡
But, maybe 'cause of that, today I spend my time on PC using and developing utility apps, not games... 🙃
MSX used to be the most successful home platform in the Arab world thanks to Sakhr's Arabized computers and edutainment titles. AX-170 was my first computer :)
Very cool. I'd love to see more MSX because like you I don't know much about it, being from the US.
Awesome you're going to be at VCF, I'm definitely trying to go
Of all things a sakhr was the thing I never expected to see on CZcams
I didn’t grow up with them being born way after their prime but my brother used to tell me a lot about them
According to him they were extremely popular at the time
Happy to see some MSX content appearing! This was the computer of my youth and I had an MSX 1 and followed by two MSX 2's. They were very popular in the Netherlands where I live. 🙂 There isn't much MSX content on CZcams compared to all versions of Commodore machines. I bought an Toshiba HX-10 again a few years back (it needs a recap) this was the first ever computer we had. Would love to see more MSX being featured on your channel! 😁 Really enjoyed you experimenting with this MSX.
Popular? because Philips had a deal with the department of education to introduce there MSX computers in clasroom in every primary school. There were far more pirate games for the c64.
@@arjanvanraaij8440I havent seen them in school (maybe a bit of an age gap). My primary school had Tulip and Philips XT's. People I knew mostly had an MSX or an XT. The C64 was less common. And they werent just Philips. Also a lot of Hitbits. 🙂
@@alexhofstee466 or Canon V-20 MSX computers. Kwantum sold them back in the day for a nice price.
@@arjanvanraaij8440 Sort of true, we had a Philips MSX2 in school, but yeah I found the MSX pretty popular. I remember having the local audio/video store a wall full of games cassette tapes for MSX. And still there is quite some hardware and software development being done on MSX. The MSX Magazine was popular but also the MSX FM radio broadcast was there.
MSX. The home of early Konami goodness.
Awesome to see you touching an MSX! I grew up with MSX and have lots of fond memories about them. We had one from Goldstar (now LG) and Mitsubishi. I remember MSX being used a lot in the Netherlands, probably due to the fact that Philips played a huge roll in manufacturing. Now being a vintage collector myself, I have quite a few MSX machines in my collection, like Philips MSX1 and 2, Sony HitBit MSX 2, Canon and SpectraVideo. I also happen to have the similar model I had as a kid, the Goldstar FC-200.
Back in the day we used cassette tapes, cartridges and 3.5" diskettes for our games and programs. And of course the MSX magazine was out there, with programs you could type into the MSX yourself and save it to tape or diskette. While writing this I also remember there being a Radio program where you could record a program on tape while it was being broadcasted on the air! Thanks for another informative and fun video!
Been waiting for this! The MSX was my first computer and though it was popular in some other European countries, it was not very common in Norway. As far as I know, only a very few MSX machines ever launched in the US, most notably the American Spectravideo SVI-728. RMCs CX5M (The msex machine) was also available, but sold more as music instrument than a home computer. These machines were quite capable, just look at the some of the scene demos out there made in later years.
Very interesting machine. Please make more videos on MSX.
This machine is very inspirational and has introduced the youth to the computer era in the Arabic world. Thank you for making this video and bringing back all the good memories.
Hi Adrian! Been watching you fiddle with old tech stuff for years now, a lot of cool stuff! Thanks!
That chip of yours, the LZ93A13, is some sort of mapper. If you want I can get you the datasheet, however it is in japanese. I also found some info on some french MSX site. They seem to be talking about using this chip to enable use of large ROMs, like 8 and 16 MB.
I imported that image into Google Translate and it says the mapper will work with up to 4MB. It can bank-switch 8k or 16k at a time. Looks like you need the 16KB pages for 4MB. It also tells how to interface with various high-capacity ROMs.
I enjoyed this video, especially that I still have my childhood Sakhr/Yamaha AX150 which I'm working on some of its small issues at the moment
Looking forward to see you there!
I like the MSX approach of making a single standard with lots of models
YAY! I kept wondering when you'd look at some of those machines Stuart sent you from all over the world.
As a kuwaiti and a content creator. The Sakar has been one major tech innovation in our country. The mostly and widely was the 130 model. But to reach that point and promote MSX as a education because remember at that time the market share was geared towards video games notably NES and SEGA. So, to sell these, there are some models of Sakar that have full on SEGA or NES mobo along with MSX. It sold like hot cakes and then slowly started to reel in affordable ones like the 230 and 130 models. I got few models of the MSX on me that do need repair. I'd be happy to share video or photos with you along with the internals.
There is no Sakhr AX-130, I think you meant 170 ;)
@@KhalidYousif87 Yup! that one. The white one. haha!1
"The Sakar has been one major tech innovation in our country."
Made in Japan.
@@Okurka. my friend. You have bad reading comprehension. Yes, it is "Made in Japan". Just like how you are using that iphone to make that silly comment it is made in China because that is where the parts are made and that put together in making your silly iPhone. But also notice that there's a little line that says Designed by Apple California. So yes, Kuwait designed it, Kuwait worked with Japan in production of Sakar. Next try to read diligently before making a smart sarcastic negative comment.
I am just starting this video but I am super excited as I bought this exact model on Ebay about a year ago hoping to do this! Just haven't gotten around to it yet :)
My childhood memories on these Arabic MSX machines.... My first one was MSX1 Yamaha AX-150.
We lived in the beautiful country of Kuwait back in the 80's and witnessed how Sakhr became the first mass adopted computer in the country. There were Apple, IBM, Olivetti, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair, TI, etc, but they didn't see any high adoption. We actually bought our first Macintosh in 1984.
Best nerd channel ever. I am sorry to hear that you have to go to New Jersey. At least you know that, shortly after, you'll have the worst behind you. You should reach out to @NostalgicShadow about this.
How to run a 32K game ROM from a ROM socket:
1) if you want to combine both BIOS and game in one chip, make a combined ROM with BIOS allocated to 0000 and game allocated to 4000 (not 8000 as you did) like that:
0000-3FFF: BIOS (16K)
4000-BFFF: game (and say goodbye to Basic which is 4000-7FFF)
C000-FFFF: nothing (zeroes). At start BIOS maps RAM page 3 to this location.
! All this would work only in socket connected to Slot 0.
! Not sure if BIOS handles 4000 in own Slot 0 the same way as other slots. Game might not run regardless.
In that case try to replace AB with nop, jp (direct execute from 4000).
2) if you want dedicated ROM with 32K game only:
0000-3FFF: nothing
4000-BFFF: game
C000-FFFF: nothing;
This works in any ROM socket except 0 (you must have BIOS there).
What happens when MSX starts up?
1) Z80 runs code at 0000
2) BIOS looks for RAM slot and maps its 8000-FFFF to CPU pages 2 and 3 (only page 3 if RAM at 8000-BFFF does not exist).
3) BIOS looks throughout all slots (including RAM slot(s), which is quite weird) for signature AB at address 4000 and then, if found, maps slot pages 1 and 2 to address space and jumps at address in next two bytes; so ROM header be something like 'AB', start address (mostly 4010), some cart signature or empty space.
Scan priority is Slot 0-0 to 3-3.
If nothing found, BIOS runs Basic at 4000.
How resulting address space looks like?
1) No cartridge in Slot 2 or game ROM in any sockets:
0000: BIOS
4000: Basic
8000: RAM
C000: RAM
2) Game in cart slot or socket:
0000: BIOS
4000: game (initial Basic page is hidden)
8000: game (initial RAM page is hidden)
C000: RAM
3) Adrian's 'game' chip in socket:
0000: BIOS
4000: Basic
8000-FFFF: game, BIOS did not replace this with RAM bc of Slot 0 priority.
As BIOS did not find AB at 4000, it runs Basic... which goes crazy bc of garbage at 8000 (this is where Basic program is supposed to be) and no RAM pages at all.
How to run multiple games from one image or cart?
This requires bank switching routines or slot expanded to subslots (4 max), so can't be done easily.
How to run game images bigger than 32K?
This requires mapper emulation so can't be done easily either.
Welcome to the magical world of msx! I got mine around '86, a Philips vg8020, later an nms8235. Sold it for an Amiga. 15 years later I've picked up 3 msx2 (nms8235, nms8245 and nms8250) and 2 msx1 computers for a few euros in working condition and still keep them that way, not that they needed much fixing, just some recapping. The msx2 machines are getting quite expensive these days.
Some essential upgrades are getting an msx2 with floppy drive, fmpac (ym2413 synth) and scc carteidge, which is sometimes implemented in fpga. Msx2 games on floppydisk are often on another level compared to rom carts. But yes, emulation is a lot more convenient if the full hardware experience isn't your thing.
The msx2 could rival with some 16 bit machines back in the day.
My wife is from eastern Siberia and grew up using a rebranded MSX2 computer with russian localisation.
Very interesting insigt, again :)
I had a Toshiba HSX10 MSX Computer , they were quite popular in the UK .
Seems the HX10 was popular in the UK was that because Toshiba had cool adverts back then or was it the cheapest MSX? I still remember the adverts. Hello Tosh.... Got a Toshiba....
When you started hunting for the plus sign, I busted out laughing. Thanks for that; I needed a good laugh today. 🙂
I used to have a Sanyo MPC-100 when I was a kid, a pretty stock PAL MSX-1 machine, probably built a bit better than this one... MSX was a bit an idea from consumer electronics manufacturers, hence the comparison with VHS. In the Netherlands, where I grew up, the MSX was actually quite popular, probably due to the involvement of Philips, that sold a couple of nice machines, up to MSX-2 machines with double sided 3½" floppy drives.
Interesting to see that this MSX boots BASIC into screen 1 with default color 15,4,7, the machines I worked with booted into screen 0 with color 15,4,4.
For cartridge games: as far as I know, they should short 2 pins in the cartridge slot to have the slot selected at boot, and yes, the splash screen (which is pretty cool on an actual MSX-2 ;-)) is displayed first! But most of the games I had to load from cassette, which was pretty cumbersome and unreliable. Unfortunately, the VG 8235 MSX-2 with single sided floppy drive my father once got for a project, we had to give back to Philips after the project finished...
The MSX was designed to be localized with cartridges in the standard cartridge slot that were auto-executed. On machines with just one slot, this meant that you had to choose between autobooting a game cartridge or a localization cartridge, or the autoboot ROM on an expansion. It seems likely that this machine hijacked this normal cartridge slot and put localization and programs in it. So the soldered ROM on the motherboard contains both the Basic in the area where it usually sits in memory, and the Arabic localization and programs to autoexecute as an MSX cartridge would in the standard slot and in that memory space. This should mean that the only cartridge slot on it is the extra cartridge slot from the Sanyo machine, and the Faces cartridge is like a normal game cartridge. So this one actually has two cartridge slots, but the standard cartridge slot was replaced with a ROM on the motherboard.
It could be that they had to add right-to-left text support (I think Arabic also joins the characters together), and that this meant they couldn't do the localization with a cartridge in one of the slots, as for other languages. And so they had to remove one of the cart slots and did something special with a special, bigger ROM chip with the Basic in it.
The MSX has many screen modes. SCREEN 2 allows you to set a foreground and background color for each character, as on C64, Spectrum, etc.
The key click is done in software and can be turned off with SCREEN ,,0 (first two parameters left empty).
To find the size of the extended ROM and where to burn a second ROM is difficult without the pinout of the SMD chip, but perhaps you could trace it from some address decoding chips if available. and compare the pinout to a more common package, or find which pins go high on boot and stay high to find which start address is read from it at boot?
As a Dutchman, I had access to my dad's MSX when I was a tiny little lad. I recall a diskette with at least one game, and something about a music composition program on cartridge.
Also I am literally one day older than the MSX standard.
My neighbours had a MSX, they were not welcome at our place as Commodore owners😂
very interesting, here in argentina we also had MSX computers made by a company called Talent here (not sure if they were just rebranded generic ones though)
I always assumed the MSX was exclusively Japanese. Now I wonder if anywhere in North America got one.
Talent sold Daewoo rebranded MSXs. But the Talent MSX 2 was built by Talent itself. And we in Brazil were jealous, 'cause Argentina had MSX 2 and we had not (yeah, we got the upgrade kits, but it isn' t the same thing).
@@ricardojpinheiro the TPC 310! the daewoo models were very common, but that msx2 model was super cool, my school had one. it was waaaay too outdated but i loved it haha
Get well soon Adrian :)
Adrian, I would love it if you interview DJ Sure about his work on the Nabu. I know that is not what you do normally but I think you would have great questions about reviving an old platform like that.
One of the best things I put on my little retro gaming device was MSX emulation. I think I spent a month of nights in bed, drifting off to unknown MSX games.
My grandmother has a lot old pc and 3 like this 😊
She sid take all pc you want ❤
اخذتها كلها ❤
I worked for a small UK software company in 1986 and one of my first jobs out of University was working on MSX DOS as a subcontract to ASCII corporation. Nice but expensive machines.
Adrian, the MSX1 is basically a Colecovision with a keyboard (there is a patch-based Colecovision emulator for it called Mission). Same video IC, sound generator very similar, both Z80 based. Konami started many franchises on that machine. Try playing some MSX1 games such as King's Valley, The Goonies, Knightmare, Yie-Ar Kung Fu 2, Zanac, Gradius, Parodius and Salamander at least. If your machine is MSX2 compatible try Metal Gear 1 & 2, Castlevania, Ashguine, King's Valley 2, Snatcher & SD Snatcher, Space Manbow and many others.
I had an MSX1 Yamaha CX5m - I only used it for music production (as it was designed for), but I did play around in BASIC, and I was probably one of the only few that had a 3.5" disk drive with it.
There were an MSX2 and MSX2+. There isn’t an MSX3… yet. Kazuhiko Nishi (one of the founders of ASCII Corp) still owns all the MSX IP and is working on bringing it back. The first project is MSX0 which is MSX Basic and MSX Dos that runs on microcontrollers for IoT. It is based on the M5 devices (stack, stick, stamp) after these are launched they plan to develop an MSX3. Hopefully they are successful!
He did a system on a chip version a number of years ago too I think. I'm glad he still has a passion for the platform. There's a company in Spain that did a modern remake similar to the spectrum next or the c64 maxi. The guy in charge of the project told me he got Nishi's blessing for the project and was excited about it but I have no idea if that's true or not. Also I think there was a revision called turbo R in Japan after the 2+
@@TWL380 The turboR was the last MSX model series, made exclusively by Panasonic. It featured a 16-bit R800 CPU (based on Z80) made by Ricoh and 256 or 512 KB RAM (expandable, I think). They are basically fully backwards compatible as they also contain a Z80 CPU. The custom chips are more or less MSX 2+ standard, though.
AFAIK these machines were Japan-only but MSX fans import them for crazy prices nowadays.
Every MSX1 really only has 16KB of video RAM. Later models had more.
And supposedly there were some MSX1 systems sold in the US, namely some Yamaha models (exclusively via their own music store dealerships for MIDI and music synth) and also there have been claims that SpectraVideo sold a model in the US, but none ever turned up. This seems to be based on the service manuals mentioning a US model, but it probably never made it to the market.
Thanks for sharing, and I hope to meet at VCMW
It's an interesting company with a surprising amount of machines released. I attempted to get ahold of one when I was in Kuwait for work. No luck, but there is wild array of them including ones with a built in Famicom/Genesis. (AX-330, AX-990)
Apparently most anyone from that region learning computers learned on those from the 80s-90s. Software was very much geared toward education. The Kuwait war pretty much ended their dominance in the region. But it a fairly interesting MSX success story.
Back in the 80s computer magazines, the only ad for an MSX system I recall targeted to USA was a Yamaha system, which also had FM sound synthesis and MIDI ports and was marketed to musicians.
very cool, sir!
9:14 From what I understand, MSX1 usually had a 16KB BIOS ROM that would sit at address 0. The beginning would have a standardized table of addresses to functions. Such that on a standards-compliant machine... just looking up an example in the documentation: software can expect that address $4A contains a jump to a function which reads VRAM from the address in HL and returns it in A. The function itself can be machine-specific.
Cartridge ROMs would normally use addresses $4000-BFFF (optionally including bankswitching mappers to support more than 32KB) and $C000-FFFF would map to the base 16KB RAM. I assume the "subslot" architecture is how the remaining RAM would be accessed.
Fascinating. I had no idea that MSX was a Microsoft standard! They were very common growing up in the Netherlands, in addition to the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. I could have sworn the popular MSX in the Netherlands was made by Philips, but I don't see them in the list of manufacturers on the Wikipedia page in your video, so maybe I'm misremembering that.
If you look better, you see Philips, and indeed, they were one of the consumer electronics manufacturers backing the standard, and making them popular in the Netherlands of course! But they quit after the MSX-2, 2+ and Turbo-R never made it officially to the Netherlands...
@@HammondDirk Thanks. Yeah, I missed it.
The first system I got in 93. love it.
Thanks for bringing back such great memories. Mine was AX-170, it had two cartridge slots. Not sure how does it compare to the one you showed, but the software is exactly the same.
Feel free to reach out if you need help with the Arabic.
PS: The Arabic logo صخر actually says Sakhr.
On the DIY scene many thing have been done. There are many design outthere that involve CPLD/FPGA but also more standard 74LS chip to reproduce memory mapper ASCII/KONAMI with SRAM/EEPROM/FLASH.
With that you can get many game running. We also have version with SCC + mapper in FPGA to enjoy the great KONAMI sounds.
アスキー on the chip is "ASCII". There aren't a lot of kanji that will fit into the character set - I saw days of the week (日月火水木金土) and hour 時/minute 分, which I guess makes sense.
Game ROMs load at $4000, so I guess if it's loading at $8000 that's why it's not working. I suppose if you could boot to MSX-DOS you could use execrom to load games from disk.
There were separate KANJI ROMs for later Japanese MSXes that introduces special screen modes and special character generation routines just for displaying kanji.
Not sure if execrom would work with commercial games as is, well maybe few simple ones, since games probably don't expect MSX-1 limited RAM to be occupied by ROM. But there were most definitely a lot of pirated games on floppies for MSX-2 which somehow were able to load into RAM, I've seen them personally. Most of them worked by BLOADing stuff into RAM from BASIC, although some used MSXDOS loaders.
However this is all moot: Adrian actually has a working cartridge. The only thing he needs to do is to socket the ROM in that cartridge and it would all work exactly as designed. Or just buy a flash cartridge.
Greatings from Spain~~ If you want to run different applications cheaply (60€) you can get a "Rookie Drive NX", it's a cartridge that can adapt a UBS or an external 3.5" diskette drive to the cartridge slot, thus being able to execute anything. Also be aware that there is software that can only be used by an MSX2 or higher.
I had a similar game to Faces for the TI99/4A. I believe it was called Face Maker. As a kid, we all loved it! As an adult it doesn't really do much to hold one's attention.
I like the cyberdeck aesthetic of this unit.
Asymmetry makes me crazy! And so MSX cases are oh so triggering. Thank God for NABU, I'll check out some MSX ports. I hear there's medication that can almost make a Nissan Cube tolerable! Thinking about it because I do notice the NABU's lesser asymmetry. Not everything can be an Atari 1200xl lol.
Check out the Toshiba HX-10. It's a work of art.
@Adrian Since the upper 32K of that ROM are mapped into 4000H-BFFFH, probably you need to swap the upper and lower 16K of the 32K ROM images, since it will still use A14 to select the memory. Then I bet it will work. The ROM images are usually dumped from the MSX, not from the ROMs themselves, so they usually do not swap the parts. Tho cannibalizing the ROM in the Faces game cartridge seems like it would be the easier approach, not requiring to open up the machine to change it.
Quite interesting that this machine has that ASCII8 ROM mapper chip built in. The symbol next to the ASCII brand in Japanese is the symbol for MegaROM referring to ROMs >32K that you would also see on game boxes. It is probably used in combination with the multi-game ROM chip, which would then be one larger than 32K. You could try ROM swapping it with a game which uses the ASCII8 ROM type, for example Bubble Bobble. (Most other ASCII8 ROM games I found are for MSX2.)
The openMSX ROM database also tells me there are ROM hacks for games that originally used other MegaROM types, like the one used by Konami, to adapt them to ASCII8, but I don’t know where to find those.
I had one when I was a kid. The logo you saw in Arabic is Sakher which the name if the company. It had also programing in Arabic I think it was Basic programming language but in Arabic.
I remember seeing these in Yemen, Aden, back in 2010, there was a shop that just had brand new old stuff, was a pretty cool shop
I recently decided I wanted to import a vintage Arabic keyboard and to take the keycaps, mod them into cherry stems using some kind of resin mold, and become the only guy with a modern cherry mx style keyboard with authentic vintage Arabic keycaps. I have been watching vintage teardown videos for research and am extremely surprised to see this one from only 4 days ago. As much as I like the design on the Sakhr's they all use the old school membrane switches and I was lucky to find one other MSX brand that released in Arabic which has surprisingly similar Cherry style + shaped stems (Spectravideo SVI 728). Among other brands were the Bawareth MSX2 Daewoo Mathaly (not sure the order of those words) , Najm Atari 65XE, and Al Fateh 100 which is basically one of these Sakhr's. Mathaly, Al Fateh, and Najm being the Arabic parts of their names. Excited to see people are interested in these. I'm hoping to have my retro MSX imported from Egypt soon and installing the keycaps onto my Keychron Q6 with Zilent v2 62g switches to combine some of this history with my modern computer.
In the UK we had the Toshiba HX-10, it was my first computer and Cartridge and Cassette were the norm here.
I came looking for the usually fun digital basement comments but actually found 100 comments about the cart saying ASCII. 😂
Although single-sided boards are easy to desolder, it is VERY easy to lift a pad on them - especially phenolic boards like these (fiberglass boards are a bit better in this regard).
@Adrian's Digital Basement You've got to check out the Centurion that Usagi Electric's bringing to the VCF East. With the Hawk hard drive.
Cool! I also don’t know anything about MSX but I can read Arabic.
Holding CTRL while powering up the machine will boot into the international version of the computer (and into MSX basic) and will have full MSX 1 compatibility. Also the RGB pintout is standard on MSX computers (save a few rare exceptions from Casio and the like) and any regular RGB cable on ebay will work. I know my 170e (for english, there's an f version with french on top of arabic) takes the same RGB cable as my MSX1 VG-8020 from Philips (French version), my MSX2+ Panasonic FS-A1WSX, my MSX Turbo R FS-A1ST and FS-A1GT.
VLSI was becoming a thing in the 80s. Famously the Acorn Electron was going to make the BBC Micro largely available at a lower price and the VLSI chip was the key to that but also the reason it never shipped on time. It missed the xmas holiday sales and that hit Acorns fortunes.
Lack of mode 7 was a big problem with the Electron
I can remember the early eights when manufacturers and operating systems seemed to be evolving and releasing new machines at a tremendous rate. I think a few Japanese manufacturers brought out mix machines and they were available in the uk.