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I think you meant "Animal Farm" (book link), not "Animal House."

But the mental image of wikipedia admins as insufferable pigs is something I can totally get behind.

While they are still functional...

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/1984.htm

http://msxnet.org/orwell/1984

http://www.ministryoflies.com/1984.pdf

"In the middle of the summer Moses the raven suddenly reappeared on the farm, after an absence of several years. He was quite unchanged, still did no work, and talked in the same strain as ever about Sugarcandy Mountain. He would perch on a stump, flap his black wings, and talk by the hour to anyone who would listen."

"'Up there, comrades,' he would say solemnly, pointing to the sky with his large beak -- 'up there, just on the other side of that dark cloud that you can see .. there it lies, Sugarcandy Mountain, that happy country where we poor animals shall rest for ever from our labours!'."

"He even claimed to have been there on one of his higher flights, and to have seen the everlasting fields of clover and the linseed cake and lump sugar growing on the hedges. Many of the animals believed him. Their lives now, they reasoned, were hungry and laborious; was it not right and just that a better world should exist somewhere else?."

"A thing that was difficult to determine was the attitude of the pigs towards Moses. They all declared contemptuously that his stories about Sugarcandy Mountain were lies, and yet they allowed him to remain on the farm, not working, with an allowance of a gill of beer a day. link

It's pushing to expect Americans to know there is another side of the world.

Isn't that where all the Commies live?

Seems like it...

Oop, there's no consensus about "MSX-DOS" and MSX in general. Officially, Microsoft denies any involvement. MSX's dad came with some different meanings himself (see "The exact meaning of the 'MSX' abbreviation remains a matter of debate", also here). Special notes to "starting from zero" in http://www.faq.msxnet.org/kay-nishi.html

Other than that, thanks for the interesting history lesson!

Let's try this instead:

wget http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks/1984.pdf

or 2 page layout:

wget http://www.planetebook.com/ebooks/1984-2.pdf

wget http://www.msxnet.org/orwell/print/animal_farm.pdf

I have mod points. Happily sacificed. Now on the count of three - everybody wget 'em ;)

"License to read" == bullshit.

Grandparent might have assumed that a Film has to be from one of the big Hollywood productions or it does not qualify.

If you look at netflix online movies they have 'only' 12,000 titles available, yet quite a few people (including my wife) think the selection is limited which is true since they have about 100,000 titles on DVD, most of it are American titles, and while their foreign selection is ok they miss a *lot* of things. I pretty sure that many countries produce more than 160 movies each every year, heck Tokyo alone might produce that many 'features' every month (not stuff to show to your grandma though).

I think the grandparent tried to show he was smart by proving his ignorance and this is just your typical american that see the world like this. A few miles from where I live we have The Language Capital of the World, The Garlic Capital of the World and the Artichoke Center of the World.

My point ? For many people in the US the 'World' ends at the county line.

p.s.: before the grammar nazis show up let me say that English is my third language, ... and it's 4AM.

Yes it is! Take a look at the map!

duh - idiot.

If you haven't already.. now would be a great time to read George Orwell's book 1984, because it seems we're getting closer and closer to the state of corporate spying and invasion of our private lives.

For those interested, here is the entire book in pdf format.

The MSX had the AY-3-8910 PSG sound chip as default indeed. But since the MSX2+ (1988), the Yamaha OPLL was default. The same chip in a cartridge was also a very popular extension cartridge (called FM-PAC). Then there is the MSX-AUDIO (Yamaha Y8950) sound extension, the SCC which Konami put in some of their game cartridges and some other sound extensions. MSX users became very active on the sound department due to this. So, it's a bit simple to state what you did about the sound in MSX.

Secondly, the disk drive. Indeed, most first generation MSX models did not have a disk drive, but most second generation (MSX2) models did. Also, you could buy an external disk drive, which works on any MSX.

About the memory: the Sony HB-F700P was a very popular MSX2 machine in Europe, which had 256kB main RAM, plus 128kB videoRAM (this is 1986). THe last MSX model, the Panasonic FS-A1GT turboR, released in 1992, had 512kB main RAM and 128kB VideoRAM. The RAM could easily be expanded, and this was done a lot in Europe, too. Unfortunately mostly to play cracked ROM cartridges, but OK.

We can say that the MSX2 (1985) was really the most powerful 8 bit computer at that time, with the hardware accelerated graphics chip. Many great games were made for it, like indeed the Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake games.

In total, there are about 3000 games for the MSX, see http://www.generation-msx.nl/msxdb for a list.

The aforementioned Wikipedia page lists some more details, as well as The Ultimate MSX FAQ: http://faq.msxnet.org/

OK, I hope I set some things straight here :)

And what about the ill-fated MSX? (Extended Microsoft Basic-based) Then, all 'hobby'computers were so ddifferent there was little or no chance you could interchange programs between say a C64 and an Apple. MSX was set up as a standard, and various companies released computers under the MSX moniker. Yamaha, Spectravideo, Philips, Pioneer, Soni, Toshiba... Too little too late, though, too epensive compared to the existing computers and (IMO at that time) underperforming. Later there was the MSXII standard, but it didn't save the day... It didn't help most of the 'Standardized' computers weren't 100% compatible with eachother, the very goal of MSX got killed by each manufactur embracing the standard... And extending upon it. Sounds familiar? http://www.faq.msxnet.org/

Well... The list is biased and severely americanized. There is not a single movie on it shot outside the US. Hello yanks? Ever heard of Solaris? Stalker? It is also missing what is for me possibly the best sci-fi movie of the 90-es. Gattaca.

We can continue, but frankly, this poll is best ignored.

Typical "the world according to America" http://www.msxnet.org/humour/america

Hear, hear.

Also, it is generally thought that MSX was the brainchild of Kay Nishi, a japanese businessman sometimes called "the Japanese Bill Gates". The only influence Microsoft had on the machines were that they created some of the built-in software, such as the BIOS, BASIC, and DOS (called, appropriately, "MSX-DOS"). The rest - the hardware, the compatibility concept, etc. - was in no way their idea.

The MSX standard specifies what an MSX machine is in terms of minimal requirements, and adding extra features was considered appropriate at the time (indeed, it was one of the charms of the system). And while there were some compatibility issues with software (mostly related to different memory layouts - MSX used bank switching extensively, and RAM could not be relied on to be in a specific bank), mostly all MSX software did indeed run on all MSX machines. Instead, the reason for their eventual disappearance is related to MSX being underpowered compared to newer machines that appeared in that era (MSX2 appeared in 1985, same as the Amiga. The Amiga absolutely blew it away in terms of performance and capabilities).

At the time, everyone I knew (and every book I bought) told me that MSX stood for "MicroSoft eXtended". Only recently did I hear about the Sony-Matsushita-X story, while attending a talk by Kay Nishi, whose word obviously carries a lot of weight in this matter.

Finally, MSX was a fun system that had some great software. If you have the chance, there are lots of great games available for emulation.

I mean, fuck- Britons live in Orwell's 1984 made flesh.

Have you actually read 1984 in order to make such a risky remark?

I have, and at least IMHO 1984 is much worse than anything we have now anywhere in the world. But rest not - judging by the current threats on civil liberties, it likely won't take long till we have Miniluv and all the other stuff.

well, microsoft (sorta...) already did this the first time they dabbled in computer/console gaming with the msx (though they didn't have involvement other than providing a basic for the machine). but yeah, lots of folks have had this idea but there are too many problems that need to be solved before this kind of thing can become a reality. a basic interpreter woulda been fine for simple homebrew games back in the day, but today you need graphics and sound libraries and a shitload of drivers... not to mention a no brainer autoconfig utility.

I just wrote the following e-mail to the author of the article:

Hello Frank,

I just read your SNK article on GameSpot.com. A very nice in-depth article!

Although, I think you forgot to mention that SNK also produced software for the MSX system, which is virtually unknown in the USA, but used to be very popular in Japan and certain parts of Europe, as well as Brazil.

For some more information about this home computer system, you might want to check out these sites:
The Ultimate MSX FAQ
The MSX Resource Center

The only MSX product of SNK I know is Ikari Warriors. For some information about the game, see this page: Ikari Warriors on Generation MSX.

In short: it was released in 1987 for the MSX2 system (the second generation standard of MSX). It's a 2Mbit game.

Some scans of the cover in a higher resolution: front, back, side.

I'm also in posession of this game myself. :-)

I hope you will update the article!
(At least pages 2 (near the bottom) and page 31 should mention the MSX port of Ikari Warriors, I think.

Oh how quickly they forget. MSX? Windows 1.0? MS Xenix? The not-so-compatible 1980s MS-DOS Compatibles? The list goes on and on...

"A funny remark was that when MSX seemed to be succesful, Microsoft said MS in MSX means MicroSoft, but after 1986, when MSX seemed not as succesful as Microsoft had hoped, they denied that..."

For those who are not really familiar.. A summary

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life -- the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth. Ultimately it is by means of doublethink that the Party has been able -- and may, for all we know, continue to be able for thousands of years -- to arrest the course of history.

Not to worry, they thought of that. That's why they when they calibrated the machine, they had all their subjects wear a cage of starving rats on their face.

Would this have any use in an embedded system?
[...]

Interestingly, Zilog just released a new eZ80 microprocessor specifically designed to be embedded in Internet-connected devices. Apparently it is code-compatible with the Z80, so porting CP/M should be a breeze.

A quote from the site: "The eZ80 executes Z80 code four times faster than traditional Z80s at the same clock speed, and can operate at speeds up to 50 MHz. Unlike most 8-bit microprocessors, which can only address 64 KB, the eZ80 can address 16 MB without a Memory Management Unit."

Might also be interesting for hobbyists wishing to build a super-CP/M machine, or maybe revive the MSX, that other CP/M derivative of Microsoft, a Z80-based home computer standard which never really made it to the US but became quite popular in Japan and Europe... but that is a whole 'nother story of its own.

Two of my favourite machines at home are MSX computers (one Expert and one Hotbit), powered by Z80's at 3.5 MHZ with 64K of RAM.

They're still pretty impressive machines even by today's standards. Have you ever seem and MSX 2+ (also powered by a Z80 at 3.5 MHZ) with 128K of RAM playing a 1 hour long video, "streamed" from a IDE CD-ROM drive, with sound, at 12 FPS? Amazing!

In fact, I've just got a brand new motherboard for the Expert, powered by a Z80H (or Z84C) at 7 MHZ, with 1 MB of RAM (expanded through a Memory Mapper). The extra speed helps a lot, even more when connecting to the Internet with a serial cartridge trough a 33.6 sportster external modem, browsing the web on UZIX.