Hi all,

Can someone tell me how the Sony HB-F1XDJ internal software is supposed to behave?

How to start it? Is there a switch to enable/disable it? Is there a CALL command to start it?

I'm trying to emulate the machine, but it just boots to basic... No idea what is going on, as I don't have such a machine myself...

Any ideas?

No one here has a real Sony HB-F1XDJ? It's a really cool MSX2+...

I've got one, but don't know how to help as my japanese ain't that good
Tell me what to look for and maybe we can get it working.
I had a look in the manual, but again only japanese

I'll try to get it up and running and try al keys I don't understand, maybe something triggers the internal software

You can help by saying if it boots to basic or to internal software. And if it doesn't boot to internal software, see if there's some switch on it, which makes it boot to internal software. And if you have manuals, look at CALL commands, they're in English...

Thanks!

Any news yet?

'Read' the manual, only call command I can find is CALL FORMAT

Interesting, msxrestarter couldn't find any kind of switch or CALL statement to activate internal software. So, the machine has a 1MB ROM and we have no idea what it does! Does someone have any idea?

Manuel has this 1mbyte rom been dumped ?

Yes, it has. It is even emulated, but I can't verify if it really works, because I have no idea how to test that...

in this rom you can read:
SONY JFEP TINY DUMMY at 0010H
SONY JFEP2 Ver 1.00 May 31 1988

JFEP[Japanese Front End Processor]

look at E100H you see syllable of japanese language
o.e.u.i.a.ye.we.we..........
ko.ke.ku.ki.ka.........
so.se.su.shi.sa.............
and more to E910H

look at this link :

http://www.msxnet.org/gtinter/msx-je.htm

BUNSA.PMA © 1993 KIMURA,Ayumu/ASCAT
Patch for SONY's Japanese Word processor 'Bunsho-Sakuzaemon' on MSX-DOS2.

i think the Word processor program is on a Disk and call the rom for kanji

http://www.nabble.com/-Openmsx-bugs----openmsx-Bugs-961064---Halnote:-internal-software-of-Sony-HB-F1XDJ-does-not-start-t4538828.html

and this other link with a large description of this rom

Seems I need to try the "Bunsho Sakuzaemon" word processor to test it.

About that 'link with a large description': yes, that is in the bug tracker of openMSX, where I copy pasted the text myself from the Halnote description (provided by Rudolf/Atarulum). Original link is here: https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=421861&aid=961064&group_id=38274
It doesn't really explain much about the details of this 1MB ROM...

I guess we could write a program to see if MSX-JE works on the Sony, if we can't find the mentioned word processor. Is there any other software that works with standard MSX-JE, that we can download to test if it works on our emulated Sony HB-F1XDJ?

About usage of this mapper type in the Sony HB-F1XDJ MSX2+:

The HBF1XDJ.ROM indeed seems to use a mapper very similar to halnote.

a) The halnote-type (S)RAM in page 0 seems not to be present, so the ROM
appears to start at &H4000 only. Anyway: for experimental reasons the same
mapper can be used because the resulting configuration (except from the
additional RAM) would be the same.

b) Found mapping adresses are &H4000, &H6000 and &H8000.

c) The ROM-boot routine registeres an EXTBIO hook responding to calls with
D=&H10, E=&H00. This means that this bios extension provides a
kanji-driver. And really performing a CALL KANJI in MSX Basic accesses
several pages of this ROM.

d) Unbelievable that this additional driver (to MSXKANJI.ROM/32kb and
KANJI.ROM/256kb) should support Kanji only. Even the size of
HBF1XDJ.ROM/1024kb assumes that there is something else hidden in it. So it
may be worth more examination, but this would be an even harder task.
Hints: the small code starting at &H4000 contains the initialisation and
EXTBIO entrypoint only. The code starting at &H6000 seems to provide some
sort of BIOS routines (jump-table) for any unknown reason. Maybe it is
really a Kanji-driver only, but - who knows...?

a big memory block in empty (FFH) in the first middle of rom

other help with this link

http://www.1000bit.net/scheda.asp?id=1682

I doubt that the info from the latter link is correct. The machine has a separate kanji font ROM (256kB) and the 1024kB ROM can therefore not be explained using the kanji ROM. I checked this by assuming that if there would be overlap between the kanji font ROM and the 1MB ROM, it would be 8kB aligned. No single 8kB block of the two ROMs match...