https://thefoggiest.dev/2024/05/16/my-sony-hb-f1xv Thefoggiest.dev "Why yes, I do have the foggiest" About RSS-feed Archives * 2024 * 2023 * 2022 * 2021 * 2020 * 2013 * 2012 * 2011 * 2010 * 2009 * 2007 * 2006 Webrings - IndieWeb - - Retronaut - - Fediring - archlinux logo coffeepowered logo creativecommons logo hacker culture logo indieweb logo msx.org logo not by ai logo python logo valid rss 2.0 logo selfhosted logo valid css logo valid xhtml logo made in vim logo webmention logo My Sony HB-F1XV May 16, 2024 My newest retro computer, and the one I use most often, is my glorious 1989 Sony HB-F1XV MSX2+ My Sony HB-F1XV My Sony HB-F1XV The Sony HB-F1XV is an MSX2+ computer, released purely for the Japanese market. In October 1989, it was the last MSX built and marketed by Sony. Originally, it had 64 kB RAM, 16 kB static RAM with MSX-JE (Lian Wen Jie Bian Huan ) and 128 kB Video RAM, a Zilog Z80A CPU clocked at 3.5 MHz, a Yamaha V9958 video chip capable of displaying 19,268 colours simultaneously and both a 4 channel YM2149 (PSG) and a 9 channel YM2413 (OPLL) FM audio chip. The machine has RGB video and RCA audio and video output connectors. A hardware pause button, a speed-controller slider for slow-motion and a ren-sha-turbo speed adjustable auto-fire for both joysticks and the space bar are nice features for playing games. To the right of the space bar, there is a Kanji button that allows the user to select either Latin or Kanji characters. I own a Mitsubishi ML-FX1 MSX1 and a Philips VG8235 MSX2 and have owned a Philips NMS 8250 as well, but none were as great for gaming as my Sony HB-F1XV, which I bought in August 2020 via the trading forum on msx.org. The person who sold it to me had upgraded its RAM to 512 kB, had replaced the clock battery and its holder, and had put in new capacitors and a new PC disk drive. In the spring of 2021, I had a switch installed that clocks the CPU at either 7MHz or the original 3.5 MHz and had the worn-out keyboard membrane replaced. Design The HB-F1XV has a wedge-shaped design that was a popular choice for home computer manufacturers. Amigas, Atari STs, Acorns and many MSX computers all had the user bend their wrists a little extra when typing on the tilted internal keyboards. Ergonomics were perhaps considered less important than for users to be able to correctly identify the keys. Sony HB-F1XV back At its back, from left to right, are RGB out and RCA audio and video out ports, a channel selector switch and the RF output port it is for, a Centronics compatible printer port, a standard MSX tape port, the second cartridge slot, an integrated power cable, a power switch and at the lower rightmost end, a ground terminal for good measure. Sony HB-F1XV right On the right side of the HB-F1XV there's a 720 kB DS/DD floppy drive and two standard Atari joystick ports. Behind the Sony disk drive front design is the PC disk drive that replaced the original floppy drive. Sony HB-F1XV left On the left side, there is the CPU speed select switch that I had built in. It has a little LED that will light up yellow when the CPU is racing along at 7Mhz. Sometimes, especially when reading from or writing to floppies, the CPU will be put back to 3.5Mhz to prevent disk errors, in which case the LED is turned off for a moment. The HB-F1XV, being exclusively for the Japanese market, requires a 100V power socket. My house only has 240V sockets, so I needed to buy a converter. I found one that Japanese citizens use when they go abroad and had it imported. Standard MSX2+ was the third generation of the MSX standard. The standard was meant as a way to have software and hardware manufacturers have an increased market potential without having to port every product to a dozen incompatible platforms, as was the case before. The successive generations, MSX, MSX2, MSX2+ and MSX TurboR, each improved on the last one with better memory architecture, graphics, or CPU, but remained backwards compatible in both hardware and software. MSX computers were mostly popular in Japan, Korea, Spain, the Netherlands and South America. Sony HB-F1XV box The MSX platform was designed as a modular standard. Internally, manufacturers could, and would, plug RAM and ROM modules wherever they wanted, logically speaking, which meant software was often at a loss finding it. The upside, however, is that, while the MSX2+ with all its colours and even the MSX TurboR with its 16-bit RISC CPU were not what MSX standard owner ASCII Corporation had envisioned as MSX3, it is the platform's modularity which allows us now to create that MSX3 from any MSX computer. Normally, I have both cartridge slots occupied. The first slot holds a GR8NET cartridge that has another 1MB of RAM, a Micro-SD card reader, an Ethernet port and a 3.5mm audio jack to make life easier. The second cartridge slot has a Modulon slot expander with a WozBlaster Reloaded OPL4 audio cartridge with 2 MB of sample RAM and 24 channels of 16-bit 44.1 kHz audio and a PowerGraph Lite v9990 video cartridge for screen resolutions up to 1024x424 pixels and a maximum of 32,768 colours simultaneously. Both are modern implementations of almost time-correct hardware and, except for the CPU, what many think of as a baseline for MSX3. Myths & Dragons (KAI Magazione, 2018) "Myths and Dragons" by KAI Magazine (2018) uses both the OPL4 and the V9990 when selected in the game's menu I've used RGB to HDMI converters with flat screens in the past, but these analogue games need pixel perfect timing, so I bought a Philips VS0080 monitor, the same one that Philips sold in beige to C64 and Amiga owners as "dedicated" apparel for their platform. During the eighties, games for MSX were normally developed on more powerful machines like the Atari ST, but they were tested on actual MSX machines by the developers themselves, who, during testing, became so good at their own games that they felt they had to make them more difficult. This is one of the reasons why games from that time are so much more challenging than modern games. Software As visible in the picture above, my Sony HB-F1XV has a big flashy sticker above the first cartridge slot. Here it is in close-up: Sony HB-F1XV sticker The big red text on the left means "creative tools" and underneath it says "3 disks". The diagonal texts mean, from left to right: * Music Software - F1 Synthesizer * Graphics software - (?) animation graphics editor ver2.0 * (?) Twenty lines Word Processor - (?) version These texts refer to three disks that originally came with the machine. The first two disks held software to create music and animated graphics. The word processor made use of the machine's capability to write Kanji characters. This machine was meant to create, not just to consume. Sony HB-F1XV Graphics suite Sadly, I don't read Japanese, and PCs are much more convenient for creating content, so to me this is mostly a games console, except I'm typing this text on my Sony. I could go on about this machine forever, but I need to stop here. One final thought, though. Look at the picture with the full setup. With all those expansions and cables extruding from them, it looks like the Sony is on life support, and perhaps you'd think that, without those expansions, how lively would this geriatric machine really be? You'd be wrong. Just the other day, I was playing Konami's Road Fighter from the original cartridge from 1985. For a game to be exhilarating, addictive and fun, it doesn't need all those colours and all those audio channels. It just needs to be a good game. And thanks to its backward compatibility, the Sony's potential library is huge. Categories: my-retro-gear Tags: msx, gr8net, msx2+, powergraph-light, sony-hb-f1xv, wozblaster-reloaded CC-BY-SA 2006-2024 thefoggiest.dev