Description

Hardware

The Spectravideo SVI-2000 Robotarm is a robotic arm released in 1986 and sold in 3 versions. In addition the MSX and Commodore (C66/128/VIC20) cartridges to control the arm could be purchased separately.

Product	Title	Description
SVI-2000		Robotic arm
SVI-2000A	Alpha Pack	Robotic arm + 2 Quickshot Joysticks
SVI-2000B	Beta Pack	Robotic arm + MSX Interface cartridge
SVI-2000C	ROGO Language Card	MSX interface cartridge

The robotic arm package Includes a shovel, a gripper arm and a magnetic arm which can be attached to the robot arm.

The interface includes a 16kB ROM with the ROGO language, a kind of LOGO. It can be used only on MSX computers with at least 64kB RAM.

There are three ways to control the robotic arm:

by using the ROGO language
with two MSX joysticks connected to the General purpose ports of the computer
with two Atari compatible joysticks (including Sega Master System joysticks) directly connected to robotic arm ports. I/O ports used by the interface are 00h and 01h.

The robotic arm requires four 1.5V batteries to operate.

Launch prices:
SVI-2000A: 690 FF (France)
SVI-2000B: 950 FF (France)

Software

The original ROM automatically launches the software and does not work on computers having the RAM in an expanded slot (what's the case on MSX2 and higher especially).

Three MSX fans, Jipe, NYYRiKKI and GDX, have modified this ROM:

Jipe has made the ROM compatible with any MSX generation (except if slot 0 is expanded)
NYYRIKKI version does not automatically launch the software except if you press the R key while booting the computer
GDX version skips the ROGO software if you press the CTRL key while booting the computer

From MSX-BASIC, you can access the ROGO language with CALL ROGO or _ROGO if you use NYRRIKKI or GDX version. These versions fixe compatibility problems of the original version. However, GDX version prevents using of more than one disk drive with BASIC/ML programs.

List of built-in commands can be displayed with COMMAND and you can create new commands by using the command TO. All commands can be used to create procedures, which are temporarily stored in the computer RAM. You can save these procedures to tape and load them later from tape. The command SHOWARM allows to visualise the movements of the robot on graphic screen.