PC-8001 compatible font on MSX

This is trial for changing MSX font with PC-8001 compatible fonts.

PC-8001 line PCs are produced first “Personal” computer in Japan in 1979 by NEC.It is distributed mainly in Japan but PC-8001A is sold in US.

“Mycom BASIC Magazine” was one of early PC dedicated magazine which publishes type-in style games on it. Many games for PC-8001 were published there.

These games had distinctive taste because graphics were consisted by only characters generated by PCG(Programmable Character Generator) and seemed so attractive for me (at that time).

PC-8001 runs N-Basic, which was based on Microsoft Basic. Mr. Kazuhiko Nishi introduced MS to NEC and realized MS based “N-Basic”. Do you know Mr. Nishi?
Yes, he is one of founder of ASCII corporation, which is one of core company of MSX standard. MSX BASIC is also based on Microsoft Basic as you know.

Thus games on N-BASIC can be ported to MSX-BASIC with ease, I think.
Graphical devices are different between them, but not impossible.
This file is one of preparation for porting such games to MSX.

 

My trial porting (SCREEN0:WIDTH80/TEXT2 MODE of VDP)

Original fonts (cited from the net)

This test purpose file are downloadable from here.

Windows’ memopad like key bindings for Viper text editor

Text editor “Viper” has so many functions so that we don’t know what to do
for the first time. But we should not understand all because VWIN.CFG makes
limit for key binding.

VWIN.CFG is a setting file of “Viper” multi-functional text editor.
It makes viper controllable easily “as far as possible”.
It has minimal key binds like Windows’ memopad.

Text editor “viper” is included in the package of “Text editor V & Z”.
Download v&z2src.lzh at this site below.

Text Editor V & Z site

Would you try this editor with easy key binds?

P.S
VWIN.CFG itself was not attached to this page…
Download it and try. Thanks.

VWIN100

SpliceMSX script ver.0.5alpha is released

SpliceMSX ver.0.5alpha is released

This script installs Hitech-C Libraries for MSX.
Ver. 0.5 is a incremental difference from ver.0.1, 0.2 and 0.4, thus you should execute ver.0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 before ver.0.5.
* 0.3 “Installer for Hitech-C and related files for MSXs” is temporarily skipped due to technical reason.
** Patches for 0.4 are not needed but desireble to extract or patched.

Caution!!

This project is *alpha* version and we still doing trials and errors.
Read document in archive carefully before execute this script.
Version “alpha” files are series of incremental difference. Execute all of
previous versions before latest version.

Detailed(translated) documents will be announced with ver.7.0.
Documents are available in installed package or at web sites. These are written in some other languages and not easy to read now though.

References

Hitech-C ResourceKit#2 by Tatsuhiko Syoji

Hitech-C ResourceKit#2 by Tatsuhiko Syoji

MCLIB, MSX-C compatible library by Tatsuhiko Syoji

GFX Library by Rafael Jannone

Banking library, with BGM, graphic, CPU control

LIBDOS2 and LIBFIX by Arnold Metselaar

NDOS, BTM library by Konamiman

LIBPOSIX by Diederick de Vries

Download

SpliceMSX0.5alpha

What is “SpliceMSX”?

“SpliceMSX” is not a name of particular software, but project for building integrated development environment for MSX, using good softwares from all ages and countries. Cores of this project are install/setup scripts for building development environment for MSX.

Patch1 for SpliceMSX script ver.0.4alpha

Patch1 for SpliceMSX ver.0.4alpha

This is simple convert script for bat file using gnu “sed” command.
batcpm2w.bat calls sed command and change non-pathed Hitech-C commands
into full path expressions in .bat file added by argument. As a result of
execution, “_w” is attached to file name. Generated bat file can be
executed on Windows environment.

*This file is treated as spliceMSX0.4alpha_p1

Download

spliceMSX0.4alpha_p1

SpliceMSX script ver.0.4alpha is released

SpliceMSX ver.0.4alpha is released

This script installs minimal Hitech-C and related files for emulated environment on CP/M Program Executor.
Ver. 0.4 is a incremental difference from ver.0.1, thus you should execute ver.0.1 and ver.0.2 before ver.0.4.

Binaries are based on original and for CP/M(not patched for MSX), thus users other than MSX might use it for your Z80 based computers.

Caution!!

This project is *alpha* version and we still doing trials and errors.
Read document in archive carefully before execute this script.
Version “alpha” files are series of incremental difference. Execute all of
previous versions before latest version.

References

Retrocomputing Archive

CP/M program Executor by Keiji Murakami

LIBF.LIB by Cybernostra Inc.

Hitech-C resource kit#1 by Tatsuhiko Syoji

Hitech-C resource kit#2 by Tatsuhiko Syoji

Download

SpliceMSX0.4alpha

What is “SpliceMSX”?

“SpliceMSX” is not a name of particular software, but project for building integrated development environment for MSX, using good softwares from all ages and countries. Cores of this project are install/setup scripts for building development environment for MSX.

SpliceMSX script ver.0.2alpha is released

SpliceMSX ver.0.2alpha is released

This script installs CP/M Program Executor. Ver. 0.2 is a incremental difference from ver.0.1, thus you should execute ver.0.1 before ver.0.2.

Caution!!

This project is *alpha* version and we still doing trials and errors.
Read document in archive carefully before execute this script.
Version “alpha” files are series of incremental difference. Execute all of
previous versions before latest version.

References

MS-DOS Player

Download

SpliceMSX0.2alpha

What is “SpliceMSX”?

“SpliceMSX” is not a name of particular software, but project for building integrated development environment for MSX, using good softwares from all ages and countries. Cores of this project are install/setup scripts for building development environment for MSX.

SpliceMSX script is released

SpliceMSX is released

“SpliceMSX” is not a name of particular software, but project for building integrated development environment for MSX, using good softwares from all ages and countries. Cores of this project are install/setup scripts for building development environment for MSX.

What can it do?

It can install MS-DOS Player(16bit dos emulator on Windows 32/64 bit) and MSX-DOS1 emulator on MS-DOS (semi) automatically. It uses some emulators to realize MSX environment (32 or 64bit windows > 16bit MS-DOS > 8bit MSX-DOS or CP/M).

MS-DOS and MSX-DOS(1) applications are executable on Windows after installation.(Details should be refered in documents or official sites of these applications).

References

MS-DOS Player

MSX-DOS emulator

Caution!!

This project is *alpha* version and we still doing trials and errors.
Read document in archive carefully before execute this script.

Download

SpliceMSX0.1alpha

Does Windows 10 support MSX floppy disks

“Does Windows 10 support MSX FDDs?”

Answer is “Yes & No”. I explain this.

 

Here is help message of windows 10 format command.

C:\Users\kumo>format /?
Formats a disk for use with Windows.

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/L[:state]] [/A:size] [/C] [/I:state] [/X] [/P:passes] [/S:state]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size] [/P:passes]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors] [/P:passes]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/P:passes]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, exFAT,
NTFS, UDF, ReFS).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format. Note that this switch overrides /P.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/R:revision UDF only: Forces the format to a specific UDF version
(1.02, 1.50, 2.00, 2.01, 2.50). The default
revision is 2.01.
/D UDF 2.50 only: Metadata will be duplicated.
/L[:state] NTFS Only: Overrides the default size of file record.
By default, a non-tiered volume will be formatted with small
size file records and a tiered volume will be formatted with
large size file records. /L and /L:enable forces format to
use large size file records and /L:disable forces format to
use small size file records.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
ReFS supports 64K.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
exFAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
128K, 256K, 512K, 1M, 2M, 4M, 8M, 16M, 32M.

Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a volume:

FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526
FAT32: 65526 < Number of clusters < 4177918

Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that
the above requirements cannot be met using the specified
cluster size.

NTFS compression is not supported for allocation unit sizes
above 4096.

/F:size Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (1.44)
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.
/P:count Zero every sector on the volume. After that, the volume
will be overwritten “count” times using a different
random number each time. If “count” is zero, no additional
overwrites are made after zeroing every sector. This switch
is ignored when /Q is specified.
/S:state Specifies support for short filenames (enable, disable)
Short names are disabled by default
/I:state ReFS only: Specifies whether integrity should be enabled on
the new volume. “state” is either “enable” or “disable”
Integrity is enabled on storage that supports data redundancy
by default.
/DAX[:state] NTFS Only: Enable direct access storage (DAX) mode for this
volume. In DAX mode, the volume is accessed via the memory
bus, boosting IO performance. A volume can be formatted
with DAX mode only if the hardware is DAX capable.
State can specify “enable” or “disable”. /DAX is considered
as /DAX:enable.

There is no description nether about “FAT12” which MSX supported and floppy disk sizes of  “720”, “640”, “360” and “320”.

Windows 10 does not support 2DD floppies any more?

 

I do and confirm format floppies related to 2DD options.

Results are below. There are many interesting responses.

Option “/F:720” is valid and can be formatted!

Then, does it work with other options? I tried this.

Yes. Option “/F:360” is valid and can be formatted as well, but because of FDD itself, caused error this time.

Windows does not officialy support 2DD/1DD but works!

That is very interesting for us, old MSX survivors, isn’t it?

 

MuSICA command instructions2

Voice Editor Mode

MuSICA is consisted by 3 modes.

  1. Text Editor Mode
  2. Voice Editor Mode
  3. Disk Mode

Here describes about commands of “Voice Editor Mode”

Press ESC key and then V on Text Editor Mode


Voice Editor Mode
* Voices means tone of sounds on MSX here

Voice Edit Mode has 3 modes inside it.
FM Mode
PSG Mode
SCC Mode

These commands are common through these 3 modes.

ESC Return to command mode
C Copy Voice(#of copy from->to)
S Swap Voice(#of swap from->to)
M Mode change(FM->PSG->SCC)
SPACE Increase #
N Decrease #
* Pictures are captured on 1.02A unofficial (English patched 1.02)

============
FM
============

*MuSICA 1.02A(unofficial contains unnatural translation and unusual abbreviation because of limitation of space(and my poor English). Refer below what means these abbreviations.
Total Level(TOTALLV)
Feed Back(FEEDBACK)
Envelope Type(ENVELOPETYPE)
Atack(ATACK)
Decay(DECAY)
Sustain(SUSTN)
Release(RLSE)
Rate Key Scale(RATEKEYSC)
Level Key Scale(LEVELKEYSC)
Tremolo(TRML)
Vibrato(VIBRATO)
Distortion(DISTORT)

Means of parameters should be reffered other documents
about YM2413(OPLL) on the Web.

Voice data is not saved with MML data.
Save voice data separately on Disk Mode when you edit voices.

============
PSG
============

Atack(ATACK)
Decay(DECAY)
Sustain(SUSTN)
Release(RLSE)

Tone(TON)
Noise(NOIZ)
Frequency(FREQ)

Means of parameters should be reffered other documents
about AY-3-8910(PSG) on the Web.

============
SCC
============

MuSICA needs SCC+

Snatcher”RA004″
SD Snatcher Sound Cartridge “RA011”

*I plan to make patch for normal SCC
Atack(ATACK)
Decay(DECAY)
Sustain(SUSTN)
Release(RLSE)

SCC can set wave form.

Set wave with editing binaries.

Means of parameters should be reffered other documents
about SCC+ on the Web.

MuSICA command instructions3

Disk Mode

MuSICA is consisted by 3 modes.

  1. Text Editor Mode
  2. Voice Editor Mode
  3. Disk Mode

Here describes about commands of “Disk Mode”

 

Press ESC key and then D on Text Editor Mode

MuSICA holds MML and voice data separately.
When you worked on MuSICA, save both.

Menu 1,3 “load/save MUSIC”

Save MML as .MSD file. This file is Ascii text data
and you can read it on PCs if change .MSD into .TXT.
When you save it, .MSD is automatically added so
input 8 characters only for file name.

Menu 2,4 “load/save VOICE”

Save Voices as .VCD file. When you edit voices on
Voice Editor Mode, you should save it separately.
When you save it, .VCD is automatically added so
input 8 characters only for file name.

Menu 5 “save BGM”

MuSICA can generate binary data (.BGM files) for
embedded purpose into games.
.BGM files needs loader or player programs
when you play.
When you embedded .BGM files into your programs,
BGM.BIN is needed. This file is not provided when you
ganerate MuSICA on Dante2. Get it on “MSX Magazine
Eikyuu Hozonban 1-3” or “MSX Disk Tsushin Issue 1(’90-10)”