MSX-o-mizer v1.0 is an adaption for the MSX of Magnus Lind's Exomizer Windows cruncher which was originally made to pack c64 files.

MSX-o-mizer's main features and differences:

• Minimal set of parameters (compared to the original exomizer)
  
• Handles MSX binary files (not MSXDOS ones)
  
• Creates MSX executable files by inserting a depacker routine and a binary files header
  
• Tuned to work with MSX having at least 64 kilobytes of memory (it may work with 32k ones but only for smaller files and provided that the loading address of the original program to pack would be above 0x8000)
  
• Should work on a reasonable amount of MSX computers (Turbo-R included)
  
• Allows the loading of bigger executable files with the ROM based MSX Basic loader (depending on the datas i would say around 50-52k depacked / 16-17k packed, the depacker is located behind the packed datas so a bit of overlapping is possible and depacked programs can have a start address as low as 0x0)

Relevant link: MSX-O-Mizer

Marcelo Teixeira Silveira from Brazil has created an English translation of his MSX Viewer Appendix. This is a PDF document which explains MSX screen modes in their fullest detail while still being understandable for beginning MSX'ers, it's a valuable document for novice MSX developers!

Relevant link: MSX Viewer Appendix - English

On the rapidly expanding 1chipMSX information page new tutorials have been published as a result of continuous requests from a part of the 1chipMSX community: a tutorial about using disk images, a tutorial about the ESE-RAM and ESE-SCC and a tutorial about loading ROM images.

Relevant link: 1chipMSX information page

Source: MSX Forum

Yesterday a new version of Eduardo Robsy's Z80 cross-assembler asMSX was released with the following new features:

• Fixed a bug that prevented local symbols from working correctly in PHASEd code
• Improved conditional assembly: new IFDEF conditional statement
• Generates CAS files
• Generates WAV files
• Minor adjustements to improve stability

Apart from that, it comes with two open-source games: Pong and Minesweeper. You can also find them as ROM files at Robsy's website. The source code of these games can be very educational to novice assembly coders. The program documentation is only available in Spanish as of now.

Relevant link: Robsy's MSX Workshop

Source: MRC forum

Prodatron, the developer who never seems to take a break from expanding SymbOS, currently has his driver for the Graphics9000 nearly ready. Two videos of SymbOS in action, using the Graphics9000 configuration, have been placed on YouTube. With this driver, an often outspoken wish of many MSX fans seems to have become a reality!

Relevant links: video 1 and video 2

Valken has informed us that he has set up an MSXplug mailing list for people who wish to exchange ideas and experiences about KSS files and/or MSXplug development with others.

Relevant link: subscribe to the MSXplug mailing list

Daniel Vik and Arturo Ragozini have just released a new version of PCM Encoder, a toolkit that allows you to encode WAV samples and playing them in crystal clear quality on MSX, using the standard PSG soundchip. Sample rates of 8kHz, 11.025kHz, 22.05kHz and even 44.1kHz are currently supported. The release package contains an encoder application (with source) and replayers so that you can use the resulting samples in your own productions.

You can listen to an example of a 44.1kHz sample played on a Philips VG-8020 MSX1 over here. For more information you can check out this forum thread or the extensive documentation included in the release package.

Relevant link: PCM Encoder

Source: MRC Forum

Néstor Soriano, aka konamiman, has just added to his website a new section dedicated to MSX-UNAPI (MSX unified API definition and discovery standard), a proposal for a coding standard aimed to hardware and software developers which provides a standarized way to define, implement, discover and use APIs, so that devices with the same function made by different developers have compatible APIs.

You can discuss anything related to the developement of the MSX-UNAPI specifications in this forum thread of our active MSX Forum.

Relevant link: Konamiman's MSX site

ARTRAG has sent us a nice utility which we have just added to our MSX downloads corner. It's a SCREEN 2 converter based on MSX Screen Conversor by Rafael Jannone, but coded in C this version is a bit faster and more accurate.

Relevant link: Screen 2 converter

Karoshi's PSG tracker, Karoshi's Caruso, is now fully functional. To celebrate this, another beta version has been published for debugging purposes, named Manic Monday.

The tracker itself is still being developed, but now both the pattern editor and the track editor are fully operative. A Win32 tool has been included to convert the data files into asMSX compliant source code. The assembler replayer, that now supports, music and SFX using the same core routines, has been included in a tiny demo as well.

At the moment, the application itself is an MSX-BASIC bloadable binary. The final version will be an MSX-DOS application. An English document has been added to explain the basic features of the editor. The author encourages PSG musicians to give it a try and produce some nice tunes for it. You can learn more about Caruso and discuss it at Karoshi Corp's forum.

Relevant link: Karoshi's Caruso - Manic Monday