Hello i am an owner of a Philips VG 8235 one that unfortunately has only single sided drive.Upon checking the options of updating my msx i understood that it would be very risky and difficult for me to open msx replace the disk rom and change drive to be double sided.So instead i opt for the sunrise solution.

Now i want to buy one and put an ide hard disk there.I have some questions.
1)How many devices can i connect with the sunrise?I want to connect a hd and a cd rom if possible.Am i right to assume that even without a double sided drive i can load the images in hard disk and use them to load my programs or games or even images of roms?

2)What is the maximum hard disk size that dos can handle on msx?(Actually i read somewhere that the sunrise has a better version of dos rom installed one that solves the problem of the internal rom.So now my msx can have double sided drives if i install them?.)

3)About my memory,i know that my msx does not have much ram (128 kbyte video and 128 user ram).How can i upgrade my ram to 512 or 1024 ?I think my msx must have 2 cartiridge slots free ,one on top of it and one on the back.So basically if i insert the sunrise cartridge i only have one free.

4)Is there a possible way to connect a pc mouse through a convertor to the msx?Or what mouse would you recommend me to get for msx?.(i need it as i would like to install and use symbos

General i think it could be a good upgrade for me after all this years wouldnt it be?

Best regards and thank you for your wonderful forum!
Nikos

1) A Sunrise IDE interface is a singe-channel IDE interface. This means you can connect two IDE devices to it; primary and secondary. This can indeed be a HD and a CD-ROM drive. You can load disk images to your harddrive indeed (this would have to be from CD in your case), and there are programs available which can 'emulate' these disk images as if they were in a physical drive. Not all software works like that, but I believe most popular programs do work.

2) Harddisk size really depends on the OS, not so much on the interface. Normally you can have a maximum of 32MB per partition. So for instance a 200MB harddrive could be divided into 6 seperate 32MB partitions. When using the FAT16 driver you can also make one or more FAT16 partitions, to which this 32MB restriction does not apply. You will still need at least one FAT12 partition to boot from though, and FAT16 partitions cannot be used without the FAT16 driver. The Sunrise IDE interface does indeed contain MSX-DOS2, which you'll need for harddisk access.

3) You would want to expand your RAM indeed, and 512kB or 1MB is probably enough for most applications. I think a few hardware producers still carry these, tho the smaller sizes are harder to find these days. You need two slots indeed, one for the IDE device and one for the Memory Mapper. Since the VG8235 has two slots though, you're good. You could buy a slot-expander, but if you don't plan on connecting anything else there's really no need.

4) Yes, there are a few PS/2 -> MSX convertors out there. I don't know how easy these are to get though, and they're usually cheaper than a real MSX mouse. Just keep your eyes on ebay, and you should be able to find a nice MSX mouse for a few euros.

Good luck!

Thank you for your advice.I considered the options and i think it would be better to buy the Compact Flash adapter that has options to connect multimedia cards to msx.Now i am somewhat confused as i this site http://www.msx.ch/sunformsx/products/hardware/ideflash.html it has 2 options CompactFlash ATA-IDE cartridge and CompactFlash adaptor.Which one of the 2 should i buy?When i click on either of them the page that shows up is the same.What are their differences?

Best regards

Quote:

Thank you for your advice.I considered the options and i think it would be better to buy the Compact Flash adapter that has options to connect multimedia cards to msx.Now i am somewhat confused as i this site http://www.msx.ch/sunformsx/products/hardware/ideflash.html it has 2 options CompactFlash ATA-IDE cartridge and CompactFlash adaptor.Which one of the 2 should i buy?When i click on either of them the page that shows up is the same.What are their differences? Best regards

One is an interface which only accepts CF cards. It has two slots on the top, in which a CF card can be inserted. The other is an adaptor which you can connect to the normal IDE interface. This means that if you buy a normal IDE interface plus a CF adaptor, you could connect one normal IDE device (like and old HD or CD-ROM) and one CF card (using the adaptor) to your IDE interface.

Basically it's a matter of deciding if you want to use separate IDE devices as well. If you'd like to use an old HD or a CD-ROM drive at some time, buy the IDE interface plus a CF adaptor. If you think you'll only end up using CF cards, buy the CF IDE interface. The main advantage of the CF IDE interface is that it doesn't require an external power supply (you'd need one for a HD or CD-ROM) and it's generally less bulky. The downside is that you won't be able to use CD-ROMs or and old harddrive you may have lying around.

Personally I'd still go for the CF model though, just take extra care when using the CF cards on a windows PC. Windows has the tendency to f00k things up. Use two cards; one you only use on your MSX, and one you can use to transfer files between your PC and your MSX. If windows does scr00ge something up (assuming you use windows ofcoz) it'll be limited to the data on your 'transfer card'.

Heya Sonic_aka_T, sorry to use this topic for this message, but I couldn't find your email and there's no PM feature in this forum.

I saw you made a comment in one of the news posts about you having some Xak maps, you mind sending them to me too?
I want to beat the game to make the ending and it would be helpful to use those maps

Or if you want to submit the ending yourself it would be great too.
My email is reyvgm @ hotmail.com

Thanks and sorry for the off topic post.

At this site http://lpadial.aamsx.org/page3.HTM i found memory upgrades.If i buy one of those will it be the thing i am looking for to upgrade my ram?Will i be able under dos to use loadrom or execrom and load huge cartridges such as metal gear 2 ?I am opting for the 1 mbyte upgrade.What is the difference between this and this address http://lpadial.aamsx.org/page0.HTM ?It says about Memoria Flashrom?

2 things:

-without a slot expander, with a sunrise IDE interface and separate memory mapper you use up both slots so you won't be able to use additional things such as SCC or FMPAC.

-DON'T get a 4MB memory mapper... incompatibility galore - a LOT will not work. I think there should be no problems up to 2MB mappers.