Sanyo Wavy 70FD and loading from Cassette

Supporter (11)

27-09-2021, 11:06

Hello, I have recently bought a MSX2+ (Sanyo Wavy 70FD) from a user in this forum. The machine seems to work well, altough I was quite surprised to learn it has only 64 Kb of RAM like my old MLFX1. Anyway, the software I ran from disk runs mostly fine, but after I managed to find a cassette and some tapes the problems started.

The games seem to load mostly okay, but when load finishes, they all crash and reboot the system, I read that it could be due to a lack of memory, and the screen shows at booting that there is 23414 bytes free. I recall my old MSX1 from the eighties was showing a larger figure. Is there anything wrong with my machine?

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By Jipe

Paragon (1625)

27-09-2021, 11:19

just push the SHIFT key then start the MSX for disable the DISK and you have 28815 bytes

By Grauw

Ascended (10820)

27-09-2021, 11:32

Not all 64K is available to MSX-BASIC, only the portion of the upper 32K up to the start of the system area. This is the number that is reported by the MSX-BASIC prompt. So all seems normal.

About cassette games, disk support increases the system memory and many tape games do not expect this and overwrite the memory, causing a crash. As Jipe mentioned, to disable the disk drive boot the machine with SHIFT pressed (until the beep) before you load the game.

By Pencioner

Scribe (1609)

27-09-2021, 11:38

Also, i had 70fd in the past, and i think its cassette interface might load games with errors. I mean it is not robust. I have only one cassette game and it loads well and runs with Yamaha YIS604 (with real hw Sanyo cassette player to load, not mobile/wav/whatever) but no luck with 70fd

By sdsnatcher73

Enlighted (4291)

27-09-2021, 11:57

Hi wavemaker, I remember selling you the machine (this one, right?). Glad you are using it ;) Almost all Japanese MSX2 and MSX2+ machines came with just 64kB main RAM and all Japanese games don’t need any more. Some machines are easy to upgrade like the Panasonic MSX2+ machines which have sockets for 256kB RAM (replacing the original 64kB) or your Sanyo PHC-70FD which has 2 empty sockets (for an extra 64kB RAM). I did not know about issues with the tape loading on the PHC-70FD. I always test loading from tape but of course there are 2 other variables (the tape drive and the game), and actually the volume of playback and the phase setting on the tape drive (if it has one) also can influence a successful load. So those are some things to experiment with.

By Wavemaker

Supporter (11)

27-09-2021, 11:59

Thank you SHIFT did the trick. I read it's possible to upgrade the RAM, if I ever travel to some "MSX country" I will definately look into that.

By Pencioner

Scribe (1609)

27-09-2021, 12:50

Good to know it is fixed by shift! If i didn't sell 70fd i would check if it helps in my case

By Wavemaker

Supporter (11)

19-10-2021, 17:43

For those noobs like me who had this problem; in most cases it's not about the memory (seemed weird to me that so many games were using every bit of RAM available honestly). If your MSX2/2+ crashes right after running the loader, the actual solution is most likely the first point in this FAQ related to the POKE found in many MSX1 basic loaders:

https://www.faq.msxnet.org/miscfaq.html