Background story
20 years have passed since my first MSX come to my hands, a SonyHB-75P that I still own. It wasn't the the first computer anyway, before that I had seen (and work with) a neighbour's Dragon64 and my brother's SpectravideoSVI-328. The last one shows me the potential of the incoming MSX machines, so when the standard was launched I was one of the people waiting at the shop's doors (well, in fact I was the only one waiting...) to buy one. The first machine I saw was the Sony HB-55P; but his lack of memory and cheap keyboard makes me wait a bit more, till the 94's xmas exactly, when a 64Kb machine arrives, the HB-75P, with a real keyboard and even a black stylish design.
I still remember the first games I purchase : "NinjyaKage" and "LimitedExpress SOS" both great fun; but very, very hard to beat. After that, I start to program MSX-BASIC , all kind of programs, not only games, even useful ones!. It was my BASIC version of Pacman that shows me how slow a bad programmed game can be, so after kick through the window my MSX-BASIC book I bought a Z80 machine code book and believe me, it was easy. I think that the main fact about Z80 is "easy to learn, though to master", so please me do you a favour and (if you like programming, of course) visit ThomasScherrer Z80 HomePage.
Soon I finished my first MC game, it was a "game&watch" type game where you must kill ants with a Manic-Miner-like boot to avoid bugs eating your food. I called it PICNIC and now I've no clue about where it can be. I've a pile of tapes in a corner, so one day I'll spend some months looking for it, not a great loss anyway.
My brother, after realize that the SVI 328 wasn't a true MSX, soon purchased a new SVI, the SVI-738X'Press, a great bizarre machine with a 3,5" floppy disk drive. Suddenly, there was a new world to explore for me: the tape to disk conversion. It keeps me busy for about 2-3 years and prove it useful to learn something about MSX memory bank switching, code optimization and some little cracking knowledge. In all this time I never managed to get nothing superior to a MSX1, so as time passes my brother switch to a PC (a XT with EGA graphics, thanks God!) and myself to an Amiga 500; but that's another history...
My first MSX2 comes in 1997 IIRC. I started again with the standard and amazed with the hardware scene I bought some new extras like PC-keyboard adapter, slot expander, memory expansion, etc. Of course the main problem was always the lack of modern software to take profit of all this hard developments ; but I still believe it's a matter of time. Now, after my two firsts MSX2 passed away I'm stick to my NMS8245 and more recently to a Panasonic TR.
But back to bussiness; now, the question is : What's the key in programming the MSX?. Well, for me is easy to answer, I'm looking for relax, weird, uh?. In my daily work, after battling against concurrency, error handling and source code wrote by unknown bastards, I need a rest and believe me or not, programming MSX helps me to reduce stress. Someday I'll learn to cultivate my own home tomatoes but for now I'll keep fighting with mnemonics.
Blah, blah, blah,......
Stop nonsensing!, I've been talking about my MSX software, so, here they are some of my programs:
...and for PC too :
Hope you like it!,...anyway I'll continue programming such crap...
Links (MSX related)
Lots of technical info & tools!