A new Discord server for MSX lovers.

Hey MP83! Thanks for posting this here. So a bit more about Discord for those that haven't really tried it (I didn't until just a few months back myself) it is a low bandwidth online chat program created for gamers in the same vein as good old-fashioned MIRC and it's super easy to use. It can also be used on desktops, smart phones and tablets. You can even share images and files directly on the server which is very useful.

What gave us the idea for creating this is really for three reasons:

1) A NEC PC-98 channel was recently set up and it's really thriving now with veterans and beginners alike. Some of these beginners are as young as 15 years old and many are around 18 to 20 all the way up to my age which is 35 and the channel is really going strong with discussions about software, hardware, music emulation and game translations.

2) The second reason is that this new chat program has really taken off among newer generations of gamers and I know that one concern we've all shared on this very forum is getting new blood into the scene so that the legacy of MSX can live on after we all croak one day.

3) It's a great way to share information or ask a question and get an answer really quickly. For example, in the PC-98 Discord channel, we had a new user join up who had recently read online about a particular model called the PC-9821 Ce2 which is a popular one among the community. I own two of these myself. But he had a lot of questions about where to even get started and within the same day I was able to get him all the information he needed and he's up and running now with playing games on real hardware. Another user was looking for a capacitor chart for the Ce2 board and PSU and since I had already replaced the caps in mine, I had access to share that with him. A conversation like that might have taken a week in back-in-forth posts on a forum to get the same information. So it's a bit quicker when you can just ask experienced veterans of the system directly, which would be very helpful for newcomers to the MSX scene.

Just food for thought guys. Hope to see more people there!

-Thomas

The good thing of a forum (or something similar like stackexchange) is that you can find answers to questions back with Google

In some other communities I'm in, Discord has really taken over the role of IRC. The reasons are simple: easy to use, great support for multiple devices (e.g. phones too) and the history it keeps. Also the reason I'm hardly using IRC anymore.

Updated invite link: https://discord.gg/eNmxkUh

We have 100+ members now. :)

I have started to like Discord a lot. It's an excellent alternative to IRC and has several advantages over it. And it works better on my phone than IRC Anywayz, just updating my opinion of 5 years ago.