That PC tradition is not something we should want to imitate. MSX has always been a run-and-go computer, and it should stay that way.

So, all ppl who have a harddisk or a CF wasted their money ?

What's wrong with installing to a bigger medium?

these are the technical advantages when installing to a HD or CF:
- if your product is -like- 5mb in size, then you have access to the complete 5mb at once, w/o ever changing disks
- HD or CF is way faster, reading bigger datafiles such as big wavekits isn't a real pain anymore
- for producers: making 1 cd with a label is way neater than multiple DD's with a label


Esp. the 2nd point is worth consideration. Traditionally MSX games are based on small files (and a normal DD would fit here), but with the opl4 with its wavekits being around, as well as the gfx9k with it's possibility for big files, the MSX slightly moves towards being a larger-scale system. On a larger-scale system you'd prefer a larger storage/usage medium such as a harddisk or -in this case- CF .


The creative advantages are obvious as well: tons of extra space for bonus-stuff, such as audio-tracks, pictures, helpfiles, additional editors (map editors, etc.) etc. etc.


Besides, eventually the disks will fade away, esp. since Bill Gates wants the diskdrive to be gone.

interesting...

Is there any emu that can emulate a hard disk/CF? (as a disk image e.g.)? Or maybe even a real HD!

openMSX supports Sunrise IDE emulation.

Anyways, on this topic, I understand the advantages of giving out CD's instead of disks, but I'm still not a really big fan of it. To me the main advantage would be points 1 and 2 (though the latter is more like a choice for the user), option 3 is actually a really bad one, because CD's + home-made labels == trouble. It causes CD imbalance, and sooner or later the labels will start to come off, etc. Well if you have er... 'Sunrise/Bombaman'-style CD labels I guess that kind of quality can be relied on. But still, disk labels are easier to put on than CD labels. Ask the Sunrise people ;p.

Anyways, about those first two points, the real issue is in my eyes not the medium, but whether such a software should be 'playable out of the box' (from disks, including issues like disk swapping e.d.), or needs to be installed first. In the latter case, you could basically distribute the software on any medium... cd, cf, disks...

About DD disks being hard to get by... Sure, but if you search and ask around for a bit they can still found without too much trouble. And a CD would be kind of a bother as my MSX setup doesn't have a CD player included, at least, it is not connected (it does have CF, so that would be less of a problem to me... would actually be rather cool ;p).


~Grauw

About labeling. You could use a printer and print straight on printable cd-r's.
(Verbatim(Datalife Plus) printable, Maxell printable to give 2 excellent examples)

Now like I said befor I think CD-R can be a very ussefull option however I have some mayor doubts about how it will work in the end.

Since some people allready here said well cd-r's can lost longer.
Good cd-r's can. However the market contains still a large amount of crap which will simply won't last as long as a 2DD.

Quote:

And it also requires special software... And I've searched several pages, but I couldn't find it.

Quote:

Doesn't Sunrise IDE support CD-Rom ?

Yes it does, you just need to run IDECDEX by Jon de Schrijder, available at the Sunrise website.

Well

i think a hd and a cd rom drive r the standard

i have a 2GB hard disk
and a 12x scsi cd rom

cd is the best medium its the cheapest and its easyer to create a demo on cd with the new standards.

i'm bussy with a opl4 music cd for msx its 100 MB of files thats 142 disks

so its easyer to carry 1 cd instead of 142 720kb disks

ofcouse the cf cardridge is nice buts its to expencive if it was cheap it would be a great storage device

besides if you have a gouda scsi interface you can link it in a scsi network!