General MSX beginner questions, regions, controllers, models?

Hi there, and welcome!

First of all:

This would make a great addition to our wiki! Maybe you can make this guide in our wiki, so all people interested in MSX can easily find it? It can be a kind of FAQ

Now, for the other questions. I hope others will correct me or help improve the answers!

Nope, there are no region codes on the games themselves.

Well, within hardware limits. Of course you can't run an MSX2 game on an MSX1 (or tR games on an MSX2, etc), and the amount of RAM should be enough. If you have a Japanese MSX2 or higher, you might have 64kB of RAM, which isn't always enough to run European disk software (mostly scene stuff tho).

Another practical hardware issue is that Japanese computers run on 110V in stead of the 220V I think you use in Finland, so you'd need an adapter.

Lastly keep in mind that PAL games run on 50Hz and NTSC games on 60Hz, and you'd need a monitor or TV that can deal with this.

I still like the Philips NMS 8245 a lot as a starting machine, as it's MSX2, not too big, has 128kB of RAM, a disk drive and 2 cartridge ports. I might be a bit biased as it's the first MSX I ever had (still have it), and I like it a lot :)

I'd say go with an MSX2 machine at least, as that gives you the widest range of games.

There's more for sure. Gamepads are quite rare (there are some Panasonic ones), but joysticks are easier. The Arcade is a wellknown joystick that works fine on MSX.

And of course NYYRIKKI (also from Finland) wrote a good tutorial on how to convert a gamepad for use on MSX. You can find his article in our wiki, here: http://www.msx.org/wiki/How_to_get_joypad_for_MSX

I did a quick read of your guide, and I have some comments and additions you might appreciate:

All MSXes have cartridge slots, so that's not an issue. Fully agree on the floppy disk drive tho.

As for the music cartridge: you'd definitely want an FM-PAC (or one of its clones, like the FM Stereo PAK or the Korean FM Ship (see more here).

The MSX-AUDIO and Moonsound cartridges you list are a nice extra, but only for games made by the MSX scene. For commercially released games you'd never need them. Another music cartridge might be a Konami SCC cartridge, but as that's only for scene games or pirated cracks of Konami games I think you can do without ;)

WRT to buying games: cartridge games are normally fine, but with floppy disk games you should keep in mind that floppies don't last for ages and there might be bit rot :)

Here I need to step in :) The MSX FAQ is deprecated. In stead it's being incorporated in our wiki, you can find it here. We still want to update all the info there and create more extensive pages for it, but at least this one is more up to date than the one you link to.

The Panasonic FS-A1FX is also without the FM chip.

Nice to meet you Noisepurge.

This is great! I've been tossing around the idea of starting a website aimed at newbies just like myself who are just now entering into the MSX hardware world and hobby, and covering that type of information intended for the would-be MSX hobbyist. I also wanted to focus on showing folks where they can go to get some tools that can be very beneficial to them, especially if they own real hardware. Eventually the goal would also be to write about my findings on how to get started in MSX game development and what the starting points would be for that. Since I'm not a programmer, I'd probably just focus on what I do know, general graphic design and arts, and how to apply it to the MSX world.

Wanna join forces at all? I've already got the webspace with unlimited bandwidth, storage space, databases, whatever is needed.

-Thomas

Hi Manuel,

Of course I agree that it should be added to an already large resource of information in addition, but I think MSX newbies could benefit from having basic or general information about how to get started from a website tailored towards begginers only. I love spending time here at MRC and reading about new updates and findings, but for someone like myself who fails at programming, the information presented here can sometimes get a bit technical and potentially work against someone trying to just discover a starting point. Of course there are always opportunities available for folks like Noisepurge and myself to ask general questions, but even that can sometimes be daunting for "those who lurk". A website done very simply and not too technical would be another angle at providing this type of information.

-Thomas