Very nice! As a collector of classic all-in-one 80s home computers, I think the MSX2+ platform was the ultimate evolution of the 8-bit computer. I own a dozen or so MSX machines including a couple MSX2+ (including the Yamaha with music keyboard peripheral!). It's truly a shame the MSX3 platform never shipped as it would have been fascinating.
I think your expansion choices do get you very close to MSX3. Sadly, there's virtually no software that uses the enhanced capabilities of the v9990 graphics chip or the OPL4 audio chip. I don't use my MSX machines much as I also don't understand Japanese. I wish the MSX platform had shipped in the US so the OS was localized and more English software created. I'm sure MSFT must have built full English ROM versions in parallel with the Japanese ROMs - but there was no machine to ship them in.
In the realm of alternate-reality machines which could have existed but never did, my pick for "Ultimate 8-bit" would be a machine very much like you've assembled: v9990 for graphics, OPL4 for audio but instead of a Z80 for CPU, it'd have a Hitachi 6309 at 3.58 MHz (a compatible but enhanced version of Motorola's fantastic 6809 with an expanded instruction set (DIV!), higher clock and faster IPC). The 6809 is clearly the legendary Motorola 68000's immediate 8-bit ancestor, so it had a similarly elegant architecture with a highly orthogonal instruction set, powerful indirect addressing modes, excellent interrupt architecture as well as separate user and system stacks. This made it ideal for position-independent, re-entrant, multitasking code. It had much of the same DNA that led to the 68000 later being revered as "the most fun to program 16-bit CPU". I think it's pretty inarguably the best of the 8-bit generation - and the 6309 was the best version of it. Apple even initially planned for the Mac to be a 6809 machine, writing early versions of the Mac OS and apps on it. Unfortunately, none of the 6809 consumer machines that actually shipped (Radio Shack, Dragon, Thompson, etc) paired the CPU with anywhere near then-current state-of-the-art graphics or sound chips.
That would have been some machine if it had shipped in 1988 - basically an inexpensive 8-bit Amiga Jr. I imagine the demo scene would still be having a field day with it.
I own quite a few, what's now called retro, machines and a lot of games. However, I still "need" to get two - msx(2) and x68k. If you could have one MSX2+, like the ultimate MSX, which one you'd get? I was eyeing hitbit XV and pimp it out. as for x68k it'd be a XVI machine (not compact of course).
Since MSX was a standard licensed platform, the machine's internal hardware (CPU, VDP, Sound, RAM) were the same because they needed to all run the same software. This is aside from any expansions or peripherals the manufacturer may have chosen to bundle in the box. In general, such add-ons can usually be added via external cartridge anyway. The other thing would be retrofitting any video mods such as S-Video or component out. As with most 80s machines, that's mostly handled by modern kits you buy online, so you'll just want to check that your chosen machine is compatible with any add-on kit you want to hack into it.
Otherwise the key difference is down to which external form factor, design, colors and keyboard ergonomics you prefer. As for x68k, that's not an all-in-one so it doesn't fit my collecting profile. So, I know little about it (though I'd certainly love to have one anyway). It's a pity I was selective in my profile because I acquired my collection in the late 90s when most of these machines were free or near-free. :-) As it is, I managed to get clean, complete, working examples of every Commodore, Atari, Sinclair, Amstrad, Dragon, Thompson, Radio Shack, etc that were all-in-one - as well as most of the MSX machines and many clones and one-offs. Well over a hundred unique models and I never paid more than $20 + shipping for any of them. In fact, I haven't acquired any retro computers in the last 20 years since my collection was already complete by then. :-)
Almost the same story. I mostly stashed away computers I had like comodores, amigas, spectrums etc or exchanged with fellows in same hobby. I also had luck that I worked with SGI machines, even though I love my amigas (3d work at the time). My primary interest are consoles, of which I managed to get a full set of few (snes, n64) in time. I think "I'm done" though, except these two. Maybe Sam Coupe as the ultimate in Spectrum story, don't know. When you say every Commodore.. surely not the 65 too?
The Sam Coupe is cool. IIRC, I have two, one of which is some kind of special red one they sold. I'd have to go dig it out to know for sure but I do remember being fond of the Sam Coupe's funky looks (especially since I never used, or even saw one, back when they were on the market). I have all the Spectrums and, yes, a C65 (I was deep in the Amiga space and still stay in touch with some of the OG devs, so my Amigas are now signed on the bottom :-)). No Apple 1 but it wasn't sold in a case anyway. But I do have all the Apple 2 and 3 flavors.
Of course I never imagined these machines would actually become valuable collector items someday. They were just worthless trash that I was 'weird' for wanting to keep. According to my daughter, who looked up selling prices of some of the machines, the value of the collection is easily in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Oddly, this news didn't make me happy. Instead, it feels weird and somehow makes what started as a quirky nerd hobby a lot less fun. Now people act like I'm some kind of savvy investor who was secretly acquiring under-priced assets ahead of "the market". I liked it better when this was all junk no one wanted, and I was just eccentric for loving the stuff.
The thing does seem awesome, except I don't see any mention of:
1. Hardware sprites (except in Wikipedia in regard to one TI chipset)
2. Redefinable character sets
3. Fine scrolling
4. Mixed graphics modes
These are what made the Atari 8-bits so powerful. Did the MSXs have some of those (or similar) features? Given all the other cool things mentioned, it would be odd for them not to.
Yes, it's a little confusing because these Yamaha VDPs were a mostly backward compatible product line which evolved over time, starting with the v9918 in the TI 99/4. The MSX2+ featured the v9958 which did have 8 sprites (with rotation), tilemaps plus line, row and column scroll. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_V9958. It didn't have specific hardware for per-scanline mode switches (ala Amiga's Copper chip) but you could still accomplish such effects by old-school "baby-sitting the beam". Technically, the 6309 was specced running at up to 3.5 MHz, so we'd be overclocking it by 0.08 MHz to get it at the NTSC color burst frequency making such Copper-like timing tricks even easier to do with just the CPU, but we already know it'll easily run at that. Tangentially, this is the same reason the Amiga under-clocked an 8 MHz 68000 CPU to 7.16 MHz (2x color burst).
The confusing part is that, while the v9990 was the last, most advanced chip in the line - it ended up being artificially compromised because it was supposed to ship as the backward-compatible v9978 chip that MSX3 was going to be based on. But that chip ended up being late, so as a stopgap MSX2+ was created instead, with more RAM and an additional RISC CPU bolted on but no new VDP. Shortly after, the market moved on and MSX3 was cancelled. ASCII (who controlled the MSX platform rights) was still pissed at Yamaha for being late on the design (which they blamed for largely killing MSX's chance at survival by delaying MSX3 to death). So, when Yamaha later asked if they could offer the now-complete v9978 to other manufacturers, ASCII required them to remove some of the backward compatible aspects, including the sprites, tiles, scrolling and some bitmap stuff. So, the v9990 ended up shipping with more advanced features in some ways but in other ways nerfed by the arbitrary removal of some capabilities which were already in the base v9958 design before the v9978 improvements were even added.
As it turned out, the v9990 chip was never adopted by any computer platform and was only used in some low-volume MSX expansion cards made by small third-party add-on companies (which is what OP has in his system). Thus, the only computers actually running a v9990 are MSX2 machines which already have a v9958. So those systems have the best of both (since one can overlay on the other).
So, when we talk about the fantasy "Ultimate 8-bit", what we'd really like to spec is the v9978 which existed as finished prototypes in Yamaha engineering but never actually shipped in volume. If we want to stick with a hard "must have been a shipping part" rule, then we'd be left with speccing a v9958 + v9990 (as the OP has). The v9978 was basically just the intersection of those two feature sets, except in one chip. While no samples of the v9978 exist in the wild, the datasheet does exist: https://www.datasheets360.com/pdf/1236193767330354046
Such a 6309 + v9978 + OP4 system with 128K RAM in an Atari XEGS-like hybrid console/computer design and based on the highly-evolved MSX2+ Extended Basic ROMs (the pinnacle of MSFT's ROMs for home computers) would have been a world-beater. It could have shipped in 1988 at $149 in volume ($199 with keyboard) and easily blown away it's 8-bit console and computer competition. With clever coding, games would have looked very close to what the state-of-the-art Amiga could do and in terms of multimedia images, it's 15-bit 32,768 color stills would be even better than the Amiga's 12-bit HAM mode, yet available at less than a quarter of the Amiga 500's $800 MSRP.
Best of all it would have been a game and demo coders dream, with video and sound hardware to handle best-in-class game generation (8 sprites, tilemaps, row, line and column scroll, blitter, palette cycling, scanline interrupt mode tricks, etc), DX7-type FM synthesis and noise generation AND a "68000 Jr"-class CPU running like a bat out of hell with enough headroom to render a lot of high-value real-time objects over the tilemap and under the sprites. That's a killer combination the world never got in 8-bit platforms and didn't get in 16-bit until the Sega Mega Drive (aka Genesis). In the 8-bit era, whether computer or game console, we either got good graphics and sound hardware OR we got a powerful CPU but never both in the same machine where they could work together. It's the combination of the two that unlocked such unprecedented and surprising performance in the Amiga and, later, the Sega Genesis. And at $149 this machine could easily have been a best-seller by Xmas 1988 and had runway for a terrific 3+ year lifecycle. Even at Xmas 1992 it would still have been competitive, if not class-leader, at $99 with a mature game library.
The problem with an 8-bit CPU like the Z80 will have a hard time to control all that hardware. Indeed, KAI magazine, who make lots of games that support both the v9990 and OPL4 state exactly that.
Yes, I agree. That's why I specced the 6809/6309 instead of the Z80. Clock for clock the 6309 is nearly twice as performant as the Z80 even though it's also an 8-bit CPU.
I don't know, get out of retail hardware and potentially increase market share by allowing manufacturers to tailor devices to their respective markets? I'd just like to see more variety tbh (look at the plethora of handheld PCs), brought with a heavy dose of nostalgia for the home computer days.
The "OS and infrastructure", alongside whatever certification program to call it a "XSX", would require the use of Microsoft's XBOX game store. Microsoft would make a cut on any sales plus their own first party titles.
So basically the Steam Machines or the 3DO concepts. We know they don't work for the manufacturers because they can't be priced competitively against regular consoles that can subsidize hardware with game sales.
Maybe it could work if you're a registered XSX manufacturer, you get a cut of game sales. Since it'd probably be a digital only system, it's possible to administer in a way that the 3DO couldn't. AFAIK, Valve didn't do this for Steam Machines.
Sure some of these ended up in landfills. But way, way less than 99%.
~10y after release, such old computers had use-value. Broken? Repair or use for spare parts.
As they get older, owners understand they have collector's value. And they do - see eg. eBay prices. Even a lowly ZX Spectrum easily fetches >$50 these days.
On top of that: the machine discussed never was a cheap one. Not when new, not now. Not that many MSX2+'s were built.
Never mind that most old home computers are Robust. It's usually mechanics like connectors (easy to fix), keyboards (not so easy) or power supplies (many options there).
>> Even a lowly ZX Spectrum easily fetches >$50 these days.
Because there are fewer and fewer of them left. Look at something like Pokemon Yellow GBC carts - huge collector item, yet still selling for very cheap on ebay. Why? Because Nintendo made 500 billion of these things and they generally don't break down. Old computers however do, and while it's usually something "simple"(if you know how to use a soldering iron) like a burst capacitor, most people wouldn't even bother.
> Sure some of these ended up in landfills. But way, way less than 99%.
It's a guess as good as anyone's, but I'd say the 99% is pretty close to the truth - either in landfill or forgotten in the attic, unused for many years/decades. Only a small number of enthusiasts would continue using them.
No, the CPU is still an 8-bit Z80. It does have an upgraded graphics card in an expansion slot with a Yamaha v9990 - the next version of the v9958 graphics chip built into all MSX2+ machines. Both chips have some clever display modes which can generate "16-bit type" graphics (really 15-bit + overlay (if supported in hardware)). Those modes work by using YUV-like encoding and are similar in concept to the Amiga's HAM mode. Remarkably advanced stuff for an 80s 8-bit home computer!
Sure, that was my takeaway too but my disliked half-arsed quip about graphics fidelity would apply to the 16-bit graphics aspect :)
I remember reading about MSX back in the old days, when I was transitioning from a Spectrum to an Amiga, but I genuinely had no idea how far that ecosystem evolved. A shame for it, and the Amiga, that they shared the same timeline as the in-hindsight-unstoppable MS-DOS PC-Compatible juggernaut... .
I think your expansion choices do get you very close to MSX3. Sadly, there's virtually no software that uses the enhanced capabilities of the v9990 graphics chip or the OPL4 audio chip. I don't use my MSX machines much as I also don't understand Japanese. I wish the MSX platform had shipped in the US so the OS was localized and more English software created. I'm sure MSFT must have built full English ROM versions in parallel with the Japanese ROMs - but there was no machine to ship them in.
In the realm of alternate-reality machines which could have existed but never did, my pick for "Ultimate 8-bit" would be a machine very much like you've assembled: v9990 for graphics, OPL4 for audio but instead of a Z80 for CPU, it'd have a Hitachi 6309 at 3.58 MHz (a compatible but enhanced version of Motorola's fantastic 6809 with an expanded instruction set (DIV!), higher clock and faster IPC). The 6809 is clearly the legendary Motorola 68000's immediate 8-bit ancestor, so it had a similarly elegant architecture with a highly orthogonal instruction set, powerful indirect addressing modes, excellent interrupt architecture as well as separate user and system stacks. This made it ideal for position-independent, re-entrant, multitasking code. It had much of the same DNA that led to the 68000 later being revered as "the most fun to program 16-bit CPU". I think it's pretty inarguably the best of the 8-bit generation - and the 6309 was the best version of it. Apple even initially planned for the Mac to be a 6809 machine, writing early versions of the Mac OS and apps on it. Unfortunately, none of the 6809 consumer machines that actually shipped (Radio Shack, Dragon, Thompson, etc) paired the CPU with anywhere near then-current state-of-the-art graphics or sound chips.
That would have been some machine if it had shipped in 1988 - basically an inexpensive 8-bit Amiga Jr. I imagine the demo scene would still be having a field day with it.