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The MSX standard

The MSX home computer is a standard developed by Microsoft Japan and was produced from 1983 as MSX 1 and ended production with the last active company, Panasonic. developing the turboR GT model.

The MSX standard was developed by the Japanese department of Microsoft (later ASCII) in Japan and manufacturers could build machines with the MSX logo under license if the standard was followed. This way a large market was developed for software and peripherals for MSX and many companies competed with hardware.
THe MSX 1 standard computer has a Z80 at 3.58 MHz, a TI 9918/28 Video Display Processor, a AY-3-8910 sound IC and a 8255 PPI interface IC for keyboard, memory mangemetn and joysticks, 16K to 64K dynamic RAM and 16K videoRAM . Quite standard components at that time, so it was a low cost machine.

The MSX 1 was a typical home computer, well suited for games and programmable in Basic. Sound, color video, with joystick inputs The MSX 2 standard from 1986 was unearly hardweare identical and upwards compatible, all software written for the MSX standard can be used. The MSX 2 was also suited for professional work with its 80x25 character screen mode in the Yamaha V9938 VDP and 128K videoRAM, a memoy mapper for more RAM and the availability of the MSX DOS system, a nearly CP/M 2.2 compatible system. MSX 2 was introduced at about the same time as the beginning of the era of the IBM PC and its clones and failed therefore in the business market. It also failed in the USA market place where the Commodore C64, Apple II and TRS80 Tandy systems succceded as home computers.

The MSX 1 standard was a big success in Japan and Europe countries like UK, The Netherlands, France, Spain, Italy, Scandinavian countries, Germany and South American countries like Brasil, Argentina and Chili. Nearly all Japanese electronic manufacturers produced one or more MSX 1 systems, Philips was very active in Europe. The systems were affordable and many games were available.

MSX 2 was also quite succesfull in Europe, mainly Sony and Philips models. In Japan even more MSX 2 models were made by companies such as Panasonic. When the improved VDP V9958 from Yamaha became available around 1990 the standard evolved to MSX 2+ with better scrolling and graphic screen for photos, but at that time MSX was a system only sold in Japan.A YM2413 sound IC is present in most MSX2+ systems. The last model, the Panasonic MSX TurboR was a two processor system. with the custom R800 cpu next to the Z80.

See also the Wiki page on MSX and the MSX FAQ

Getting started

The site contains lots of technical information. Suitable for hardware developers and programmers. Most demand knowledge of the he MSX standard, so here are some starting documents in english.