The Russian Yamaha YIS-805/YIS-503 MSX computers have a rather unique feature for MSX computers. As they were used for educational purposes, they were designed to work in a student/teacher network and were thus equipped with a network module. tnt23 has recently figured out a way to connect MSX computers with such network modules to the RS232 port of a PC using a fairly easy-to build device.
To accomplish this, tnt23 has reverse-engineered a small but important part of the network protocol used in those MSX-to-MSX networks, which is mainly used for PEEKing/POKEing, exchanging memory blocks, running BASIC commands and such. A quick'n'dirty send Linux utility has been hacked, which can be used to load a 16K file in as much as 38 seconds.
For more information on the device, you can find a JPG file of the schematics of this device
over here. While
this is a .ps file of the PCB and
this is a .ps file of its layout. The main thing that is lacking for this device now is software, especially tools for Windows. Tnt23 will be happy to provide all the necessary information on the MSX network protocol/packet format he has digged up so far to anyone who wants to develop software for this device.
Relevant link:
MSX network to RS232 device - Schematics
