One Chip MSX is to get a second chance!

yay, g00d news!

But.., there's always room for pickers ^_^

Why not all the memory the device has? Why only 256k ? I see good use for such software like Meridian.. whicch *really* seems to need serious RAM if you want to do lengty songs..

And I want the case in pink colour. Otherwise I won't buy it.

Yes, in the last part, there's a price : 20.790 yens

I presume that there's a comparison with the price of the MSX1 One Chip : 19.800 yens

Actually it's the price inc. VAT (and 19.800 ex VAT), being the exact same price as when ASCII had it on offer. Damn, those Japanese only have 5% VAT...

Umm, first off: because of the WAY BETTER specs? Secondly, they have some fame of name right now, and more people will initially react, because they've heard of it before, I assume.

I WANT IT!!

Where's the order page? Not to rash anything, just out of curiosity... ;-)

nothing..

just some VHDL-coding..

I propose: .. an ogg/mp3-decoder that doesn't take too many gates ^_^

256 aint so bad....
my vg8235 is jealous of it (it only has 128 )

I must say, 256kB doesn't make a whole lot of sense... I would expect the 4MB limit (slot), but not something below that. Having said that, it shouldn't be too hard to change, tho personally I don't see why you wouldn't wanna ship it with at least 4MB in the first place...

btw, the newspost says:

"MSX2 compatibility (256kB RAM)"

So did my 8245

Which ofcourse was: 128 RAM + 128 VRAM

So it might not even be 256k main RAM !

Ahwell it's all speculating.. bottomline is that the thing should at least come with 4MB right from the start

Happy programming

Hmm, BiFi, are you saying in a roundabout way that you'd want to finance the production in advance?

Thank you for this elaborating reaction... I would've expected a more serious answer from a Bazix official.

<serious mode> As it looks now, 5,000 One Chip MSX computers are to be produced and delivered to market in the first 3 quarters of 2006, meaning the production will continue no matter what, not depending on the success or failure of a pre-order period. More info on this to follow in the (near) future. </serious mode>

The serious answer was more helpful though!

I want to order one!

Ok, being more serious, where we will be able to order the OCM?

I'd really like to see Snout nagging in Japanese

And to answer Sunrise's question: a pre-order is quite a normal phenomenon; new gameconsoles and other products can usually be pre-ordered as well. People who are eager to get one as soon as possible, get it immediately after it has been produced. There will be little or no delay in shipping the product when it's finished.

Anyways, 256k isn’t that bad... Few things need more than that, except cracked ROMs.

..... and some demos, like thre great Sphere demo

Rikusu, I didnot asked for the explanation of a custom do so, but simply the question what is the use of pre-ordering if you want to produce it.
I would say, if you are sure , why again this circus. So no hesitation produce !

Anyways, 256k isn’t that bad... Few things need more than that, except cracked ROMs.

What if I want to load Compass, install InterNestor, and create a RAMdisk all at once, as I usually do? Sorry but 256K is VERY bad.

As I have a external 512KB ram cart, actually I don't mind about the 256 limit.

Yours,

Spl: I've an external mapper of 4096KB and I mind.. I rather keep those slots free for an opl4 and gfx9000

If it has no 12Volt then I will put it on there myself

Actually, I know that Moonsound and GX9000 are good hardware, but with few owners. Also, are those piece of hardware part of MSX standards?

spl , a gfx9000 works, that into the first place.
Furthermore it is not only a question of the Moonsound, but philips modul, thosiba modul ,rs232c, msx audio, thus talking about a fully support of the 50 pins a cartrdige has
Many people understand this, a msx-1 was built that way, msx-2, msx2+ and a Turbo-r also.
Have we suddenly lost the knowledge or what ?

I'd like to request the one chip msx to have WinXP + 256 Mb ram + x800 + 160 Gb Hard disk and a Wolf_ Sticker on it, please

Memory-wise, this OCM configuration is better than my current MSX.

So I have no problem with it, although it would be nice if it had more memory, of course.

With regard to 4 MB, were there not some software products with faulty memory detection routines which had problems with that amount? 2 MB would be fine by me as well (that’s what I currently have, and it’s enough).

What strikes me is that no matter what they do, people always find new stuff to complain about. So now it’s got an MSX2 config, but ‘I still won’t buy it, because it has too little memory’. Whiners! ;p

>With regard to 4 MB, were there not some software products with faulty memory detection routines which had problems with that amount?

Yes. I have a 4MB memorymapper and some programs lock up when using it.

Something tells me VRAM won't be as easy as RAM tho. The expansion RAM could prolly be done, but that's of not much use anyhow... You'd pretty much have to re-rig the whole V9938 for more VRAM than that...

Wolf_: I'm not sure what you mean by 'FPGA-RAM', but just in case: adding more memory to the MSX does -not- cost you any LE's/gates. You can use the 32MB SDRAM on-board for that. However, I do think 256kB of memory is sufficient as a default configuration and just because you don't like it doesn't mean everybody doesn't. If the One Chip MSX had been static hardware, I would have agreed with you, but the One Chip MSX isn't static. If you want 4MB RAM, make it so (or let someone else make it so). Actually, I would be quite happy if people started developing VHDL upgrades for the OCM the day they received the device.

Since ASCII are allowing you to update VDHL from MSX-DOS maybe we could have a memory driver? along with a USB mouse driver? a USB printer driver? since a MSX-DOS driver for OCM will not work on a real MSX does that mean it isnt a true MSX program ? or course it is! future generations offer compataility upwardly.

If USB drivers are produced for OCM, perhaps some hardware genius could bring out a compatable USB cartridge for previous MSX versions? That would be neat!

I don't think that 4MB RAM by default should be a good choice. On the real machines, there are no problems with such RAM size if you use a MSX2 or MSX2+, but incompatibility problems happen on a Turbo-R because the Turbo-R memory mapper acts differently from the 'Philips" MSX2 memory mapper for example.

As the logic evolution in the future of the OCM is to support also Turbo-R, I don't advice to chhose 4MB as RAM size by default. Again , to avoid complaints ....

The question is btw whether future developments of the ocm should be compatible with the old msx'es. I dunno a bit about that tR RAM issue .. but should we always stick to <4MB just because of a tR ? Question is whether the ocm should go forward taking the style of the old msx with it, but not the flaws of it.
Once you start VHDL'ing the machine, and improve the sprites or palette or whatever, then it's already not compatible with old machines anymore..

About the idea of the MSX3 .. it does raise some MSX-ethical questions ^_^

* what to inherit?
* what to drop?
* do we care about backwards compatibility?
* should the ocm really take-over the current MSX'es as 'main computer', regarding software (as in: OCM-only software that really can't run on old MSX'es)

err.. there already is a tool to load and save the PLD code (from and to the FPGA chip)... so that's a couple of ppl happy I suppose

SCC shouldn't have been in there in the first place... I can imagine FM to be added from MSX2+ since these machines (at least the japanese versions) tend to have it internally anyway.

I think it will when you insert one in a cartridge slot.

Development and sales of the OCM is one thing, getting people to create VHDL for it to make it worth its status as non-static computer is something else. If the OCM comes standard with 256kB RAM and many people wish to have more, this may be a good incentive to start exploring the possibilities of VHDL. Imagine the satisfaction you get (especially when you're a n00b) if you succeed in giving the computer as much RAM as you wish it to have.

Little people will buy an MSX2 of approximately 200 euro; there will be more who are willing to buy a computer they can tweak themselves. Factors like these were taken in serious consideration when determining the out-of-the-box configuration. It was even an important reason for the original OCM to be no more than an MSX1 out-of-the-box.

Samor : indeed, mth answer in this thread is more complete about memory mapper problems :
http://www.msx.org/forumtopic4600.html

Development and sales of the OCM is one thing, getting people to create VHDL for it to make it worth its status as non-static computer is something else. If the OCM comes standard with 256kB RAM and many people wish to have more, this may be a good incentive to start exploring the possibilities of VHDL. Imagine the satisfaction you get (especially when you're a n00b) if you succeed in giving the computer as much RAM as you wish it to have.
Still, as wolf_ pointed out already: there's something wrong if 99% of the buyers upgrade their OCM memory config first thing after unpacking the thing. And really, in the time that we're discussing this whole memory story, MSXA's VHDL programmer could get himself a coffee, read the internet, have a vacation and replace the "256" by "4096"!

Anyhow, I'm really anxious to see how many people will start developing VHDL stuff for the OCM and very curious about the actual applications!

/me envisions www.1cmforge.net (like sourceforge.net :D)

To those worrying about MSX-MUSIC: have no fear, the OCM is still delivered with MSX-MUSIC on-board, as expected. As for pre-ordering: somewhere betewen now and the end of the first quarter of 2006 ^_^.

Grauw: Didn't I say I would fix any programs with 4MB problems

indeed.. those who don't know VHDL have just bad luck..and are stuck with 256k ... o_O

indeed.. those who don't know VHDL have just bad luck..and are stuck with 256k ... o_O
Nonsense.

Grauw: Didn't I say I would fix any programs with 4MB problems

Somehow it seems easier to me to just have 2MB. Really, would you miss the other two? If you do, you can always choose to have the VHDL map 4MB, but at least everything would work out-of-the-box for everyone else.

~Grauw

Upgrading from a 256kB configuration to 4MB doesn't require every single One Chip MSX owner to tweak the VHDL code on his own, it requires one single person releasing the code needed to do so. Everybody else can use that code as an upgrade. Furthermore, as the vast majority of (legal ) MSX software easily runs on 256kB memory, I don't think of it as a bad out-of-the-box MSX2 config. Most MSX2 computers had 128kB or even 64kB memory. Once again, the whole point behind the OCM is that -for the first time- you can develop the computer far beyond its default configuration without making a single physical hardware adjustment. Just because a few of the elite members of the MSX community would appreciate 4MB by default, doesn't mean 99% of the potential customers are lost, it doesn't even mean that 99% of the customers would upgrade the OCM to 4MB first thing. It means that a couple of OCM owners would like to upgrade -and will- to 4MB, some of them making their first steps in VHDL design, others using the result of those first steps. Sounds like a good 'hey this FPGA stuff actually works, lets see what else I can do with it'-experience to me.

The beauty of the One Chip MSX is that you have to worry less about your audience. If you want your product to use 4MB, distribute the needed PLD code with it (or auto-update and restore-to-previous-state). Same goes for supporting 6 PSG channels, more sprites, more colors, other resolutions, ADVRAM, whatever...

If the OCM in the end gets restored in its original state I see no reason why not. Of course you'd want to run safe software only, so on the MRC we will make sure and double-check software that changes the PLD restores the PLD in the end before posting it online... but that's quite a lot of steps ahead already...

Hm, somehow, I think that you've just lost about 99% of your potential buyers
As I said, some people can only see the bad things. MSX1 wasn’t good enough. Now it’s MSX2, it still isn’t good enough. They seem to just look for excuses not to buy it.

What’s with all this milling on and on about the same lame thing. It is new hardware, it is cool, it is going to be produced (yay!) and it will be easy to tweak for everyone who has got different demands.

On a side note, if this device is meant for the ‘general public’ and not just for the ‘MSX freaks’ (which I think is the case, because I don’t believe there are still 5.000 active MSX users around), then 99% of the users will use it for the 99% of the games that work just fine with 256kB of RAM.

So, stating that 256k is enough for everyone reminds me a bit of uncle Bill. ^_^
Actually, uncle Bill never really said that, it’s an urban legend.

~Grauw

Yes, the RTC is not implemented yet but the code was written some years ago. RTC needs a battery (which is not present in ESE MSX System 3). Another problem is that the FPGA power cosumption is too high for a normal battery. They just need to decide if it is better to implement a RTC that works only when the EMS3 is ON, or increase the production costs adding an external RTC.

As I said, some people can only see the bad things. MSX1 wasn’t good enough. Now it’s MSX2, it still isn’t good enough. They seem to just look for excuses not to buy it.
MSX1 was good enough for me for many years and would still be good enough for me today for that what I have in mind to do with it. Yes, I would like to have an OCM for replacing my MSX1 computers which are defective. Yes, I would like to contribute to improve the OCM if I can do it. For me, it doesn't matter if the OCM will have 128KB, 256KB, 2MB or 4MB, I would be glad to have one with 64KB RAM and 16KB video RAM! Everything beyond that would be good, yes, and we should talk about what would be best approbriate to our needs. But, as the memory is available and -- obviously -- can be accessed via VHDL code modifications, everything concernig memory will get solved when the OCM will be available.

I'm sure uncle bill would appreciate that!