MSX machines bios

Resident (37)

23-09-2017, 14:34

Hi was lurking into my msx machines bios versions.
It looks like all MSX machines have a definitive bios installed when they was sold, and no other updates or revision: i'm wrong here ?

Then doing a search by the word bios in search the site, a lot of bios modification and indies releases come up.
It could be helpfull to come up with a graph tree or something like that, of all the major releases there is around.
It could be divided by argument (regular bios, C-bios, TRnewdrive, etc.).
What do you think ?
Maybe it's already out there and I couldn't find it

Por Manuel

Ascended (19465)

24-09-2017, 09:29

All MSX BIOSes are in ROM, and they're not upgradable. But there never really was a reason to upgrade them anyway. I'm not aware of bugs in any of them.

There is the msxsyssrc: https://sourceforge.net/projects/msxsyssrc/
It puts disassembled versions of MSX BIOS software online. Take a look.

I don't think there's some kind of hierarchical order in all modifications. The modifications are often only for things like:
- creating an MSX2+-BIOS for a European MSX
- diskROM modifications to make it faster

C-BIOS is a different story, it's just an open source implementation of the normal BIOS, trying to be compatible.

Por gdx

Enlighted (6213)

24-09-2017, 11:20

Several MSX have BIOS on socket but only a few MSX BIOS have been updated by the firm or MSX users. So in the majority of cases the ROMs have to be de-soldered to replace them.

This is not an update but when you remove the firmware there is no longer any need to press a key or to select one or more elements in a menu (often slow) to boot under Basic or your software. Firmware are almost all useless and support often only tape recorder to save settings.

Your idea is interesting but this would make scream the purists of copyrights.