.Markku Reunanen.

MSX1-like boot disks for MSX2 and turbo R

August 13th, 2013

There seemed to be no sensible use for the Panasonic FS-A1 I bought recently, since it boots to 60 Hz and can’t run most of MSX2 demos because of the lack of memory. You can’t even boot MSX1 demos directly from, say Nowind. With a boot disk, however, things get a bit better:

• msx1boot.dsk – for MSX2 computers
• msx1boot-tr.dsk – for turbo R

No magic there – the floppies set up a MSX1-lookalike palette, 50 Hz screen mode and 40 columns for SCREEN 0. On a tR the CPU speed is dropped to 3.58 MHz. After that change the virtual (or real) floppy and run the actual production. Tested on FS-A1, FS-A1ST and Philips 8245.

edit: Lars the 18th was kind enough to improve the boot floppies by creating a single .com file that does pretty much the same as above. See here: MSX1DosBoot.dsk

edit2: There was a broken link to the latter disk, but now it’s fixed. The msx1.com by Lars is good stuff for running MSX1 stuff from a card reader and so on.

Filed under: laitteet,retro,softat