Driver:MSX

The MSX standard was created by ASCII and Microsoft. Computers for this standard were created by several manufacturers (Daewoo, Panasonic, Philips, Sanyo, Sony, Yamaha, and more). There were four generations of MSX computers:

• MSX
• MSX2
• MSX2+
• MSX Turbo-R

When there is no auto booting software inserted the MSX systems boot into MSX-BASIC. From BASIC software can be loaded from cassette or floppy.

Software was mainly released on cartridges, cassettes and floppy disks.

Firmware

Some systems came with firmware which can include functionality like a calendar or a word processor. Most of these firmwares can be disabled either by configuration that is saved in the MSX computer itself or through a configuration switch (available through the MAME Tab menu).

Cartridge

Almost all MSX systems have at least one cartridge slot. To load the software just mount the software in the cartridge slot(s) and start the emulation. The software should start automatically.

Cassette

Software on cassette must loaded through BASIC. Software can be stored on a cassette in 3 ways:

• Tokenised Basic

- This format is stored by using the CSAVE command and can be loaded by using the CLOAD command. There is no command to start the software after it has been loaded, so a RUN command is needed once loading completes.

• ASCII Basic

- This format is stored by using the SAVE command and can be loaded by using the LOAD"CAS:" or LOAD"CAS:filename" command or started automatically by using the RUN"CAS:" or RUN"CAS:filename" command.

• Binary code

- This format can be loaded and executed by using the BLOAD"CAS:",R or BLOAD"CAS:filename",R command.

The LOAD/RUN/BLOAD commands need the "CAS:" device identifier on systems that have a floppy disk, otherwise they will try to load the software from floppy.

The entries in the software lists should already have information on which instruction(s) to use for running the software.

Floppy

The most common format used is the 3.5" floppy disk. However, there was some software released on the 5.25" floppy disks.

To use a 5.25" floppy disk, an external floppy interface (avdpf550, cdx2, ddx30d, or ddx30) must be inserted in a cartridge slot. Example: mame hx10 -cart1 cdx2 -flop1 my_525_floppy.dsk

TODO

BeeCard

TODO

Harddisk

IDE

Not supported yet.

SCSI

The MSX system uses FAT16 so hard disks are limited to max 32MB. MSX-DOS2 is required to use directories.

To create a 20MB harddisk image using chdman: chdman createhd -ss 512 -chs 615,4,16 -c none -o msx_scsi_20mb.hdd

Start the emulation: mame nms8245 -cart1 msxdos2e -cart2 nov15966 -hard msx_scsi_20mb.hdd -flop1 todo.dsk

Once booted into MSX-DOS use FDISK or NFDISK to create partitions on the harddisk. Once done copy the MSX-DOS2 system files from the floppy to the harddisk: COPY B: A:

TODO double check the above. Make sure a floppy with fdisk/nfdisk is in the softlist.

MegaSCSI

TODO

MIDI

TODO

Other hardware

TODO