New Sony HB-F1DX owner, need information

Par acridAxid

Supporter (2)

Portrait de acridAxid

07-10-2010, 08:23

Hey guys, pardon my newbie questions, I did search the forums but only came away confused and with more questions..

I've been drooling over MSX hardware for several years and finally decided to make the plunge. I picked up a Japanese Sony HitBit F1DX (MSX2), and it just arrived today! However, I just realized that the previous owner has not maintained the system. When I pulled it out of the box, I opened the battery cover to discover the original Sony AA batteries still in it!

The system is very dusty. The cartridge ports have gathered some of the protective foam that it shipped with. It looks like I will need to completely disassemble the system just to get this junk out, and give everything a proper wipe down. I have also read that the drive belts on the floppy drives will disintegrate over time, so I am sure I will need to replace the belt as well. I figure while I am doing this kind of maintenance on the system, I might as well look and see what else I can do.

Reviewing this forum, I found a thread on adding S-Video output to this exact model (http://br.msx.org/forumtopic9460.html), but all the pictures have since been deleted. Does anyone have these photos, or can give me some information regarding the solder points?

Briefly reviewing the forum, I found that some MSX systems are capable of stereo sound, while this unit only has a single mono audio port on the rear. Is this something I could add?

I'm interested in a flash memory card reader as well. All the information I found on this was two years old, and some of the vendors are no longer around. What are my options currently? Are there any that I can mount inside the system (maybe on the edge of the system board to be accessible from the side or read of the casing)?

Are there any other "gotchas", or cool modifications that I should be aware of?

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Par RetroTechie

Paragon (1563)

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07-10-2010, 11:12

Welcome here, acridAxid! Smile

I assume you mean the HitBit F1XD? Nice machine... For starters: have you checked that it actually works? (before opening up, cleaning, repairing, modding).

Drive belts are available in several places: Repair-Bas on this forum has them (see thread below, or www.bas-ditta.info), and I've seen them on eBay at times. Also you might consider replacing with a (brand new) PC floppy drive, but I'm not sure how that would fit/look. And would probably need some re-wiring, which may not be your cup of tea...

Briefly reviewing the forum, I found that some MSX systems are capable of stereo sound (..)
Not in factory state AFAIK (or very rare at least). And L+R audio connectors on the back doesn't always mean stereo. But there are many sound extension cartridges for MSX, some of them include stereo (or pseudo-stereo) options, and it's very common to have the different sound sources wired up to an amplifier / mixer to give stereo sound. Look around for: SCC, MSX-Music, FM-PAC, Music Module, MIDI (and probably some more I forgot).

As for mods, if this machine still has the 64K main RAM that's common for Japanese models, you might consider buying an external memory mapper, or try an internal RAM expansion. Maybe someone else on this forum has some tips/pointers regarding this model... :-?

I'm interested in a flash memory card reader as well. All the information I found on this was two years old, and some of the vendors are no longer around. What are my options currently? Are there any that I can mount inside the system (maybe on the edge of the system board to be accessible from the side or read of the casing)?
Have a look at some previous threads - maybe it's possible to put something internally, but a safe bet is that would involve a lot of DIY/soldering... ._,

Par st1mpy

Paladin (900)

Portrait de st1mpy

07-10-2010, 12:59

I don't own this model, but I think this model usually has a floppy drive with no drive belt (so if the floppy drive does not work it is not the belt that is broken.)

Par Repair-Bas

Paragon (1165)

Portrait de Repair-Bas

07-10-2010, 13:21

This computer and for exaple the Sony MSX2+ HBf1XV are with different drives. Some have an drive belt, others not.

It is easy to replace a drive, but the biggest problem is to make it fit.
You have to look for a drive with the eject button on the right place and the place for disk at the same hight.

The cable in the sony's have 34 pins, so that is not the problem.

Par acridAxid

Supporter (2)

Portrait de acridAxid

07-10-2010, 20:03

Thanks for your replies, guys! You're right, it is an F1XD, I knew that and managed to mistype it anyway. Tongue

Yes, I booted it up and ran some quick and silly BASIC programs, everything seems OK at a glance. I have "Pyramid Warp" on cassette, and I have a cassette recorder, but no interface cable for the MSX, I assume that will all be fine once I find one (~$20 on eBay, currently, but I will keep looking). I have no floppy-based software for the machine, so I cannot test the disk drive, I'm just making assumptions about the belt from things I've read online.

This unit claims 128K on boot, it seems like only the MSX2+/TurboR systems have any more than that. Are there any MSX2 games that use or require more than 128K?

I would hope to use a SD or CF flash device to interface with the system, rather than the floppy drive. Is there anything that I need to consider writing to a floppy disk (MSX-DOS, or something)? I'll investigate those threads, they seem newer than the thread I found on the topic before (from 2008 or earlier).

As a gamer, are there any sound modules in particular that I should be interested in? Some Konami games use SCC, but isn't the SCC chip provided inside those Konami cartridges? Question

Par Manuel

Ascended (19273)

Portrait de Manuel

07-10-2010, 23:08

amazing how much people dare to ask for such a simple cassette lead... It's just a basic 8 pin DIN and a set of 3 mini-jacks on the other side. In the NL you can get them for a euro or for free if you visit MSX meetings Tongue

Floppies: just get a disk image from the net and put it on a floppy and you have floppy-based software.

AFAIK CF cards are still available at Sunrise (ask him).

Also read the Ultimate MSX FAQ: http://faq.msxnet.org/