Well Ivan, it would seem I overestimated your level of intelligence. I think Guyver is in need of a more detailed explanation as well... maybe he was still sleepy too...

A digitizer was named accordingly since it serves only one purpose. It is used to digitize images. This particular digitizer does a piss-poor job too, compared to the cheaper more modern rivals. Since you can do nothing else with a digitizer, we can therefor assume it has become pretty much obsolete and is therefor a collector' item only.

To a certain degree, yes... the same goes for MSX. You feel the same way too, I don't care what you say... If you're gonna tell me you're one of those sad idiots that writes a text in TED only to print it on a 3line/minute matrix printer... well... I'm just not buying it. If you need to write a document and you have a PC, you're gonna write on that PC. Why? Because it's better at it. And you do it with style too! On your fat Pentium 4, with 1000! times more memory than your humble MSX, with your Windows OS installed, eventhough we all hate microsoft, while typing your little TrueType letters and adding 24bit color images only do a quick spell and grammar check in the language of your choice before printing it on your big fat HP printer that spits out a full color document at 600dpi in less than a minute. And so you should... We all do. Let's be honest, who's been posting messages on this forum using FudeBrowZer?

So don't I like MSX? Yes I do, but I'm not gonna be writing documents on it nor will I be surfing the WWW, making my spreadsheet calcutations nor will I be digitizing images on it. Why? Because it sucks at it. I only use my MSX for three things... the things that it's good at....

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Why to play old games when the games for PC can use trillions of colours+3D effects?

I don't know Ivan, have you ever played any of those games?!?! Because if you think a gazillion colors and 3D effects make a good game, you're sadly mistaken. For me, a game is made by whatever it is I experience while playing it. And ofcourse, I did try PC games and even own a few. The fact of the matter is though, that 95% of them suck. This is one of the reasons I use my MSX for games... I don't give a crap about how many colors the graphics are, all I care about is playing a good game. The MSX system has tons of them, some of which I've played over 10 times without getting bored. When is the last time you played a 'trillions of colors + 3D effects' game twice? Not as often I bet...

Another thing MSX is good for, is expressing your creativity. I use it often for this purpose. I have created countless little things with much joy. Some of them I have even been able to share with other people. This gave, and gives, me great joy. Since this is something MSX excels at, I use it for that purpose. A PC does not invite to be creative, at least not for me, so I use MSX instead. Because it is better for this purpose.

Another thing I like to do on my MSX, is to see what other people are doing. It gives me great joy to see other amateur developers creating things. They do it not because they are paid to do so, they do it because they feel like it. They often achieve better results than professional/commercial programmers did. I like that.

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Why to use a MoounSound when you can buy for less a 5.1 channels PC soundcard?

Oh, but I have a 5.1 channel sound card in my PC. I also have a Moonsound in my MSX. Had it been possible to connect a 5.1 sound card to my MSX I would have probably done so. But every time I tried, smoke came out of my computer... And again Ivan, you seem to be missing the point. Music is not about how many channels you here. I have heard PSG tunes that outclass the latest PC game music. Music is about rhythm and melody, not about how many channels of sound you're hearing. Ofcourse, if you have a great tune it'll sound better on a Moonsound than on the PSG, but having a lot of channels does not make a great tune by itself. But like I said, you cannot use your 5.1 PC card for your MSX. You can however use your PC digitizer to digitize something for your MSX.

The last reason I still use my MSX is probably nostalgia. I know it not a real reason, but I do have sentimental values towards this system. I have no feelings of any particular nature towards my PC. To sum it all up... I don't feel much like using my MSX for something my PC can do better, faster and easier. Blame me if you want, I don't care. If your fail to understand this is logical, well, I'm sorry for you... you'll waste a lot of time in the process. This does not mean I've discarded MSX as a whole.

If wanting to type my documents in Word and surfing the web on my PC make me an MSX hater or something of the kind... well... guilty! Good luck typing your next essay in TED and trying to print it on your 1985 matrix printer. Perhaps you can send it to the university using your 1200baud modem while using UZIX! I on the other hand will use the computer that serves the goal best.

Toby

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<sarcasm>Hey, my PC mouse has more buttons, maybe I should sell my MSX mouse...</>

<realism>I don't know, can you connect it to your MSX?</realism>

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Well Ivan, it would seem I overestimated your level of intelligence.

Are those the words of a MRC moderator?
Nice going, guys!

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This particular digitizer does a piss-poor job too, compared to the cheaper more modern rivals.

You forgot to add: ON PC.

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you're gonna tell me you're one of those sad idiots that writes a text in TED only to print it on a 3line/minute matrix printer... well... I'm just not buying it.

You seem to be misinformed, as you can use your MSX to print on a modern inkjet printer just as easy.

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Let's be honest, who's been posting messages on this forum using FudeBrowZer?

FudeBrowZer is nice, but it's also MSX1.
A MSX2 browser would already be a lot more useful.

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This is one of the reasons I use my MSX for games...

You don't have to use your MSX for games, they run fine in an emulator too.

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If wanting to type my documents in Word and surfing the web on my PC make me an MSX hater or something of the kind... well... guilty! Good luck typing your next essay in TED and trying to print it on your 1985 matrix printer. Perhaps you can send it to the university using your 1200baud modem while using UZIX! I on the other hand will use the computer that serves the goal best.

You're really pathetic! My MSX has a 28k8 baud modem, which isn't all that bad at all, given that most PC's still only have 56k modems...

You need get out of your cave and look at reality!

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Well Ivan, it would seem I overestimated your level of intelligence.

Okay, maybe I'm a little too edgy today... Sorry Ivan. Hope you're not too offended. I just pisses me off beyond belief that someone who puts in 50+ hours a month just in translating posts on this site alone keeps getting branded as anti-MSX just because they realize certain facts about MSX that some other people aren't quite ready to face yet.

You're the one who needs to be facing facts.
The stuff you say in your post is way outdated.
If you think MSX is still stuck in 1985 you're badly mistaken.

Ofcourse, a PC digitizer card can digitize at much higher resolution (although... you're limited to the resolution of PAL/NTSC, usually). But, when you want to digitize a picture for use on MSX, a demo or game for example, I don't see why you shouldn't use an MSX digitizer. At least the Video9000 yields results just as good as a PC counterpart, as far as I have seen. The Sony thing probably looks 'bad' compared to a PC digitizer, because it digitizes in screen 8 with low resolution and a small, fixed set of colours (which is not strong in blues). If you'd use a PC instead and scale down the image to screen 8 size and colours, I doubt it will look that much better.

About touching up images... One could ofcourse just get it right the first time , but if not in screen 12 changing stuff like luminance or colour balance should be fairly easy.

That said, I can understand one wanting to sell his Sony Viditizer... I wouldn't use it anyway, and if my PC already has a digitizer card, well... for the occasional job might aswell use that. PC does have better tools available. The 8280 never excited me, and nor does the Video9000 (well, not much at least ).


~Grauw

p.s. for the HP Deskjet 540 (ok, some years old already now ) and its PCL print language, some tools were written for printing even beyond the default monospace font. There was a tool for printing with a proportional font, and I myself have programmed a screen 5 image colour printer.

Another important point is most MSX digitizers offer RGB input for the digitization. PC TV cards usually only offer composite and RF input, which is greatly inferior.

It's similar to the situation with the Moonsound. While a PC soundcard is cheaper, the quality of the output is usually inferior (noisy).