Not too many people will recall the short-lived era of the “MSX” initiative which was slated to pretty much take over the non-existent middle world where consumer electronics met personal computers. It was always believed, back then, that this is where the sweet spot of profits would emerge. What emerged was instead laughable MSX. It was one of Microsoft’s greatest flops.
The MSX was one of the first computers I ever used. I did basic BASIC stuff on it when I was a kid.
SVI-728 alumni here.
Still sorry I didn’t ask for my family to invest the extra FIM for floppy disk drive – could have run CP/M and maybe have had access to programming languages besides BASIC.
MSX barely made a dent in the UK, mainly because the 8-bit home computer was already booming and somewhat crowded too. You had the awful ZX Spectrum at a cheap price (the only thing going for it really and it caused it to sell in droves), the Commodore 64 if you actually wanted half-decent sound/graphics and the BBC Micro if you simply wanted the best 8-bit micro of all time (sorry, Apple II, but the BBC trounced it). I’ve left off a plethora of other 8-bit machines in the UK too!
I remember looking at the specs of the MSX at the time and thinking “this stands no chance in the UK”. And, no the MSX BASIC was utterly lousy compared to BBC BASIC.
As a kid growing up in the early 80s in the US, I remember the Apple series, the Commodore 64, PET, and VIC-20, Atari series, Tandy Color Computers and the TI 99/4a, Amiga, Coleco Adam, and likely several others I don’t remember, including MSX based systems.
As my parents were not very well off, all of my early computer access was via systems bought used, often at flea markets or garage sales, or else borrowed from friends and neighbors. My first computer was a TI 99/4a, and I learned to program (such as it was) in TI BASIC at six years old. A few years later I got an Apple //c with a wonky keyboard, then a Tandy CoCo 2. I also played with a neighbor’s Atari 400, painstakingly keying in programs line by line on that damnable membrane keyboard. I tried to use another neighbor’s Coleco Adam, but their tape drive was screwed up and always erased whatever program tape we put in it.
My fondest memories are of learning to create programs on the TI, and playing Dungeons of Daggorath on the Tandy. I hated the Apple and Atari machines, the former because it had a defective keyboard (my father had bought it for $50 at a garage sale) and the latter because it took hours to key in a program and if I messed up one line it was hours more to find and fix the issue, with sore fingers from that cursed keyboard. I honestly wonder if that was the moment I subconsciously decided not to be a programmer.
Even though I felt blessed to have access to all of that computing power as a child, I always wanted a Commodore machine since that’s what all the cool kids had. When we got married, my wife gave me the perfect wedding gift: Her father’s old Commodore VIC-20. It works perfectly to this day, and is proudly displayed in the living room right next to the DVD player.
Edited 2014-03-10 01:48 UTC
i’m a couple years younger than you, and this is how i remember the market in the US too. i cut my teeth on an atari 400 with membranes and no cassette drive (so it stayed plugged in until i ran the program to my satisfaction, or my mom unplugged it!). it was on the top shelf of my math teacher’s closet and he let me take it home.
after bitching about the keyboard and no storage, he brought in his tandy Coco with cassette drive for me to borrow. this allowed me to get cruisin’ and start saving allowance money for my own atari 130xe with disk drive and shitty transfer printer. i soon after bought a modem (maybe 9600) and got on the BBS’s and freenet around 1987.
BTW i disagree all the cool kids had commodores. most the computer kids had commodores, so the cool kids had atari xl’s or xe’s, like me ;-). rich kids had apples and even an occasional 286 from their parents.
i remember my buddy and i had the same game, his the com64 version and mine the atari-xe version, both on floppy, and mine loaded in 2 minutes while his took 19 minutes! that commodore disk drive was the slowest thing made.
i also remember reading the mags at the time, lusting after an Amiga or an Atari1040st!
Edited 2014-03-10 14:12 UTC
I had an Atari 800XL and loved it, learned to program on it and learned to do hardware mods on it too. But the C64 did have many advantages over it which I became envious of back then when I’d be writing little programs for them both. Things like better BASIC in general (string handling for a start), better colour and sprite handling, and don’t forget abotu the SID chip.
They did totally balls that floppy drive interface up though – some idiot left some of the data lines off the motherboard when it went for manufacture and they had to work around it in software using what remaining lines they had, hence the super slow speed. It’s a miracle they could use a floppy drive at all!
wow didn’t know that, cool info. you are nerdier than me;-) i was typing programs in from the magazines, not totally understanding what i was doing yet (still?).
it’s funny all the platform wars over the years, i can think of like 5 others where it was 1 brand verse the other, arguing details, killing time basically.
do you know who wrote the basics for atari and commodore back then? or any other cool random details about those platforms? i know i had digitized audio of bon jovi or something on my 130xe, that was pretty amazing for the time. it was like 12 bit or something, haha!
C64 BASIC was done by Microsoft. The C128’s too, where this is mentioned on the powerup screen.
C64 BASIC was very limited, with no support for sound and graphics (you had to use ugly POKE statements). Simon’s BASIC fixed this. It came on a cartridge and added a bunch of commands.
I’ll take that as a compliment so
Yeah, if they’d got it right, that floppy drive would’ve wiped the floor with any other system. It had the same CPU as the computer itself so it could do a lot of the grunt work involved in reading disks, leaving the main CPU free to do other things. Early multitasking I guess. But it was not to be.
If you’re interested, you should have a read of “On the Edge” by Brian Bagnall. It’s full of interviews with the old Commodore engineers who designed the systems, and there are plenty more stories of bad communication or management crippling otherwise excellent systems in there.
thx i’ll check that book out.
I worked the summer of 82 to buy my own Atari 400. I got the 32KB ram expansion (going from 16KB to 32KB), the A410 tape drive, and the crowning jewel for any A400 owner – the BKey full stroke keyboard for the A400. I wasn’t about to use the stock membrane keyboard. The Atari cassette was actually pretty good, being about as fast as the floppy drive for the CBM line, and able to play sound off one track while the other was used for data (novel use of the stereo tracks on cassettes). The next summer, I got a Percom DD disk drive to replace the cassette, and the Mosaic 64KB ram expansion.
That was a great time for 8-bit home computers. I sold my first commercial program to one of the Atari magazines. I spent my time programming, or hacking the games I bought to remove copy protection and add things like infinite lives. Most of the schools I attended at the time all had the Trash-80, so I also learned the z80 as well. My dad eventually got a Trash-80 portable for himself, then got a 286 PC, passing the TRS-80 on to us kids. I still remember when he brought home a HUUUUUUUGE 20MB harddrive for his PC.
ya no doubt! you were ballin, selling programs in 1982!
i used both the original CoCo (dark grey with chicklet keys) and the CoCo2 (white with real keys). the coco 2 had a tape drive but i barely recall it.
once i got my atari xe i would go up to the computer store at the mall because they had amiga’s and ST’s on display.
i think i worked on my first IIgs shortly thereafter, then avoided computers for a few years (girls sports and cars!!!) – then in college i saw mac running something like system 5 or 6, and it was killing the windows 3 machines and the old crashing amigas.
then when i finally bought my first mac it came with system 7.5 i think. paid nearly 20 million dollars for that thing, ok exaggerating a bit.
The Spectrum really wasn’t that bad. The main issue was the colour palette/attribute clash. The Spectrum kick started as many, if not more, UK IT careers than any other machine bar the BBC.
It was okay – it wasn’t all *that* good. I owned one and I’m going to be honest, quite frequently the Speccy conversion was more fun to play. The original Speccy games were often way better also from a “fun” and playability angle.
No, just no. The BBC was good at what it did, but it was a rich kids/schools computer. The stigma of it being a “educational” machine never washed off, so that even the Archimedes range suffered the same problems – and arguably, they actually deserve credit for being half decent machines and spawning the ARM processor.
Tangerine Oric 1/Atmos, the Camputers Lynx, the Newbrain, Jupiter Ace, Dragon 32/64, Enterprise (ELAN/Flan) 64/128, Sinclair QL, Cambridge Z88, Memotech MTX range, Amstrad CPC range, Tatung Einstein…
Then you also got the Commodore Vic 20/C64/C16/+4, Atari 400/800/800xl/65xe, Tandy Coco’s, TI99 4a’s… pretty much any model you can think of. I never really saw any Apples though.
We had a load of them at school, controlling robot arms. No idea why. Sony HitBits I think. Most of the rest of the machines were BBC, just those ones in the CDT department were MSX.
BBC Basic only had 2 real advantages –
1) Inline assembler. But that is a seriously advanced feature for an 10 – 16 year old programmer at school.
2) Procedural basic. But in many ways that was just syntactical sugar on the gosub/return that most other basics had.
Given the utterly awful games that the BBC mostly spawned (Elite is the exception to the rule), and how badly Acorn crashed out when they tried to actually compete in the consumer market (Electron failed hard), it pretty much was a computer for Schools, rich kids and not much else.
The Commodore 64 beat the ZX Spectrum on graphics, BUT:
Spectrum graphics left more to the imagination, which game playing kids certainly had. The better the graphics the less imagination you use and strange enough this makes the graphics worse in some sense.
(IMHO)
I can definitely agree with that sentiment. The aforementioned Dungeons of Daggorath was barely more than stick figure characters, yet my imagination made those ogres, snakes, and wizards into fully fleshed out and scary characters.
In 1994 I got my first taste of Doom thanks to a friend who loaded it on all the computers in my high school’s computer lab. A year later I received my first x86 computer, a TI TravelMate 4000M laptop, and a copy of Ultimate Doom to go with it, as a graduation present. Despite the blocky graphics, I had many vivid dreams and nightmares about the game, and while playing I would get so immersed in the game it would feel like I was living in a movie.
It was also a matter from where you lived.
In Portugal and Spain ZX Spectrum owned the space, as other systems were very hard to find outside big cities, if at all.
In Portugal, you also had the Timex TC2048, which is a fascinating model. Like a partial Spectrum upgrade. Did a TC2068 (like the US TS2068) ever get released in Portugal?
Yes, I actually owned a 2068 with the 48K emulation cartridge. Timex had a factory near Lisbon, so they were available everywhere.
Unfortunately except for the improved BASIC and better sound chip, there were little reasons to use the standard 2068 mode due to lack of software.
An old computer system with major backers, that I don’t think I’ve ever heard of before. Very cool.
I’m sorry, but the article is full of flaws. First of all the numbers are wrong MSX was introduced in 1983 and MSXII in 1986.
Not only Japanese manufacturers produced MSX machines, GoldStar and Philips where highly popular in South America, Spain, France, Netherlands, Scandinavia and the former USSR’s computer classes used MSX computers in their schools.
There is still a small, yet active MSX community:
http://www.msx.org/
An MSX-fair was recently held in Nijmegen (Netherlands) on January 25 2014.
Here is a far more accurate article on MSX:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX
At your service
Highly popular in Scandinavia? No, not at all. Scandinavia was C64 and, to a lesser extent, Atari & ZX Spectrum country. I’m sure there were MSX owners but they numbered around the same as as Ti-99 or Oric owners. In other words, a very small user-base.
I guess they were very populair amongst MSX users.
I can’t say how common MSX was. I sure saw A LOT more C64:s in Sweden as you said. But the very first computer I ever used were probably the MSX my dad borrowed from a colleague.
I also feel that MSX should be given more credit than the original article suggests.
MSX II machines were especially well built, and high end Philips models included a built in video genlock device so you could overlay computer graphics over live video. On a 8 bit machine.
It is also worth mentioning that Al Alamiyah MSX computers were the only ones to offer Arabic support in the eighties and were sold in the Middle East.
Here in Buenos Aires at least, MSX was pretty popular. C64 was #1 by far (most popular computer ever) but MSX was very common too (2nd place I think).
There was an argentinian made MSX model: the Talent MSX. I didn’t have one though. My first computer was a PC XT in 1989… but the majority of kids had a C64 or a MSX.
Last year I dusted off my MSX collection only to sadly find out only one still had a working disk drive.
I think the MSX was just too late to the market. Most people around me had a Commodore 64/128 and other people bought them because them they could get pirated games from the ones who already had them. Nobody cared much about specifications, just the “free” software mattered. Then the 16 bit era started with the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST.
The MSX and certainly the MSX II computers were pretty cool ‘n’ nice and it’s a shame they didn’t do better.
If anyone in The Netherlands wants to do a drive by (near Arnhem) they can pick up the lot. It’s a couple of MSX and MSX II computers + bunch of software.
It’s funny, that the most future-proof vintage computers turn out to be the ones with cassette tape interface. The cabling is super simple and you can play back the program from your smartphone.
Indeed and you can still easily buy tapes.
I don’t know what’s wrong with the internal disk drives. One of them makes a high pitched noise and I think the other one just doesn’t work.
My guess is dust and/or a little oil needed.
Punchcard, someone ?
Kochise
Usually floppy disk drive fail by their rubber belt, which dries and break. I’ve opened several floppy drives and replaced the belts with ordinary rubber bands of roughly same length, and it just works.
Very old floppy disks work fine too. I have many floppies from 1987-1995 and they all work perfectly well; in fact the younger ones are much less reliable than the old ones.
Edited 2014-03-10 11:26 UTC
Which floppy drives had a rubber band driving them? Are you sure you don’t mean tape drives? I don’t know of any “modern” floppy drives with a belt drive, and would’ve thought the precise positioning needed would mean belts were a no-no… But I’d love to read about one if there was, some of that old tech is fascinating!
Most 5.25″ drives had transmission belts, so did most early 3.5″ drives as well. At least during the 80s.
The belt was used to generate the rotational speed of the disk platter by transmitting the rpms from the electric motor, the positioning of the head (where the accuracy is needed) is not done with a belt but rather a direct mechanical arm.
Interesting, will have to read about that! The only 5.25″ drive I’ve ever taken apart is one I still have (which still works) and it’s a direct drive like a more modern 3.5″ drive, but I never got to take apart some of the really old ones… Surely a belt can’t have been that reliable timing-wise?
Mechanical reliability was indeed an issue, although there was a bit of tolerance wrt rotational speed since the data transfer or the floppy drives were never very high anyways.
The 80s were before my time of awareness, but at least during the 90s floppies and floppy drives were a common source of headaches. So I assume the situation was even worse in the previous decades.
These were pretty popular in the Arabian Gulf. The MSX was known as the “Sakhr” computer here and was one the first that I can recall that supported Arabic. It also had cartridges with Arabic language programs.
MSX will probably be best remembered as the computer which launched the hugely successful gaming franchises that built Konami. Castlevania & Metal Gear, among others, got their start on MSX. The MSX Metal Gear series was superior to its NES port.
It would be a mistake to call MSX a failure; it did sell well in Japan, although it flopped in the US market. By 1984 the low end was flooded with bargain- basement Commodore 64’s in the US and nobody could hope to compete in that market segment.
> “the non-existent middle world where consumer electronics met personal computers.”
Today we call that market “smartphones”.
Calling the MSX ‘Microsofts biggest failure’ is typical first world halfwit bullshit; Just because it never took off in Europe or North America doesn’t mean it wasn’t the number one platform in Southeast Asia and South America for it’s time!
That’s like saying the BBC Micro was a flop because they never sold in meaningful numbers anywhere but the UK, or that the XBox was a flop because it never really got a foothold anywhere but the US.
Five million units in the ’80’s is NOT a flop; That’s how many ZX Spectrums sold — Would you call the Apple II a flop? Great comparison since they SOLD ROUGHLY THE SAME NUMBER OF UNITS OVER APPLE’S DECADE AND A HALF OF MILKING ONE DESIGN…
In fact, the MSX sold BETTER than all models of Apple II if you think about it — since Apple had a five year head start.
Admittedly, I consider the Apple II to be more myth than fact, since I’ve been knee deep in computers since 1977 but never once saw one in person until the late ’80’s… It took them a decade and a half to sell as many units as the “trash-80” color computer. Because of course, Apple was SO relevant and affordable from 1978 to 1984 they were only outsold 20:1 by TRS-80 and 5:1 by Atari 400/800
There were at least twice as many MSX sold as the TI-99/4A, which TI even sold at a loss (to try and make it back on software and expansion options, a concept that worked for Nintendo and Sega on the SNES and Genesis BTW), and I wouldn’t call it a failure.
Dvorak’s always been a bit of a nutter; but I think with this one the train’s finally gone ’round the bend too fast.
MSX was neither single product nor it came from a single manufacturer, which is what you’re comparing it against.
To fully comprehend the market context/performance of MSX you have to compare against a more similar ecosystem; e.g. the PC.
Problem with that is at the time there wasn’t such thing in terms of success… the PC brought with it something different; something that in many ways the MSX could have been considered a precursor to once the PC industry hit it’s stride circa 1998. Really from a historical point of view the only two major standards to ever be established across multiple vendors would be MSX and PC.
… and given they happened at about the same time with MSX being 8 bit only (well, unless you count some of the stranger Russian knockoffs) it’s not surprising it didn’t age well.
Though in many ways you COULD compare it to CP/M — that was about as close to cross-manufacturer as you got, and sad to say due to ineptitude of management at DEC, CP/M is far more of a footnote in history than MSX ever will be. Apart from S-100 systems (the number of which that existed being smaller than a days print run of a local fishwrapper) CP/M was always the “other OS” on systems; putting it squarely into “also ran” territory; It wasn’t even all that good an OS — There’s a reason 5150 owners ran DOS and not CP/M-86 (even if you excluded the whole “DEC missed the boat” affair)… There’s a reason Model 4 owners ran LDOS 6.3 and not CP/M. There’s a reason Z80 cards for the Apple II and C64 are rare as hell and nobody actually used them as anything more than to tinker.
… and even then it was influential enough I’d not call it a flop either. Greatly influential systems did run it, though they were really short lived. Kaypro comes to mind.
Careful there. Digital Research (originally Intergalactic Digital Research) created CP/M, but are not the same company as Digital Equipment Corporation, who created the PDP range of minicomputers.
My bad, gah, I even did that back then… Probably because the first system I ever used CP/M on was a Rainbow… The two are linked in my mind. (Even if I did have Montezuma CP/M on the TRS-80 Model 4p)
Took me about an hour to go “*** this” and boot into MS-DOS instead; (sad since I was working in TP3 which was available for both platforms)… My experience with CP/M back then was similar to today trying to use Linsux as a desktop OS or Winblows 8 in general. “**** this” and install Win7 or XP x64 after an hour of frustration.
You know, like in the ’90’s trying to use MS-Xenix 386 for a server, and after two or three hours of dicking with vague and ultimately useless config files, you say “screw it” and install Netware 3.12
Or after several hours of hunting for the right dialog box in NT 3.x, then finally saying “screw it” and installing Netware 3.12
IMO the comparison between MSX and the PC clone market is apt because they both represent Microsoft’s attempts to establish a standardized software ecosystem.
MSX and DOS ended up their birth decade (the 80s) in two very different notes; MSX was a calculated effort which failed, whereas DOS ended up being an accidental empire.
This highlights the significant role that sheer luck has played in Microsoft’s success overall.
See, I would NOT say it failed any more than ANY other 8 bit target; that’s the root reason it ended the decade in the dust — it was 8 bit. You don’t have to look any further than that.
It’s like saying the TRS-80’s were flops… TRS-80 in particular since there WERE clones of their various systems like the LNW-80, Cyzern System 7000, System 80/Video Genie, etc… Or on the Coco side of things you had the Dragon, Microsep, CP-400; in both cases combined sold around the same number as MSX… were those flops too?
It’s reading too much into something simple. It was 8 bit … by the end of the ’80’s 32 bit was starting to hit it’s stride. You don’t have to look much further than that.
Calling it any more of a flop than the Apple II, TRS-80 Coco, TRS-80 Model 1 or 3, Sinclair Spectrum, or any other 8 bit system of that age is just ignorant halfwit bull!
Well yeah sure as long as you ignore the different characteristics and context everything is the same, I guess.
These computers were/still are very interesting for me.
It was possible to purchase one in the 80’s in Poland (then – People’s Republic of Poland), in specialized shops for scouts (Scout’s Stores), in Polish their name was “Skladnica harcerska”. Why? Maybe because MSX standard was quite popular in the Soviet Union?
However, in PRL (Poland’s name in this period) MSX was not a good choice – there were more Atari XL/XE, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and even Amstrad CPC computers on the market. All in all – the software availability is the most important factor for any computer. Also, Atari ST and Amiga (16-bit) computers were gaining attention in the late 80’s, in Poland.
Although, it is good to know that Russians has made some great stuff with MSX standard – to name a few:
1) MSX computers have been used on MIR space station:
http://msx.gnu-linux.net/msx-in-space/
In my opinion MSX was a better choice than early x86 PC computers (XT/AT standard) at the time.
2) There is a great Amstrad CPC clone with MSX compatibility mode. A computer designed in Russia: Aleste 520 (its name has something to do with Atari 520ST in my opinion):
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Aleste_520EX
So, MSX standard is definitely worth exploration. We can always learn something from the past.
Best regards,
Pawel Wawrzyniak
—
http://turingsman.net/
Surely you mean “SkA`adnica harcerska” :p (and a better translation would be probably Scout’s Warehouse)
Thanks for the link about MSX on the Mir space station.
Edited 2014-03-14 19:03 UTC