Hi there all, I finally got a MSX2...

It's not a spanish-keyboard model, which I would have loved, but i got this one:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5179251977

(Philips NMS 8250)

It says it's got 2+, but I asked the seller but he couldn't tell me what expansions it had.

Am I right supposing that a MSX2+ has 512K RAM + 7MHz? Or am I absolutely wrong??

Greetingssssss! :-)

Well, I'm totally wrong... 6MHz + 128k ram maybe?

Assuming it's a complete modded 2+ (since 'with added MSX 2+ functionality'), you'll have BASIC3.0 inside, which means you're actually be able to use it in BASIC as a 2+ machine. Presumably there's nothing special besides this, since info on it was not included. With a 8250, you can safely assume it has 128kB of RAM and 128kB of VRAM inside. The seller says the drive's working, so you won't need to worry about that either.
Its price is around 60 euros at the moment... I'd say, do it, because you won't be able to buy another neat 2+ machine with the said specs... Besides, the 8250 is easily expanded
Good luck!

FYI: Most genuine Japanese MSX2+s have only 64kB of RAM, 128kB VRAM, and some of them even come without diskdrive. Furthermore, iirc only Panasonic 2+ models (WX, WSX, ...) have the turbo mode 5 or 6MHz, dunno the exact values. Sony and Sanyo 2+s have only the standard 3.58MHz Z80A. Otoh, Japanese MSX2+s have a neat pause button, the Sanyo is even hardware controlled, so there's no handling it: pause your favourite difficult game whenever you wish

It seems to have some kind of switch to choose between MSX2 and MSX2+. I guess it has a V9958 (the MSX2+ VDP) and the switch chooses between MSX2 (BASIC 2.0) and MSX2+ (BASIC 3.0) ROMs.

If the floppy drive ever breaks down, don't worry too much since it's easy to replace it with a PC drive (shorting pin 34 does the trick, usually).

I already got it, it was 58,90€ + 23,75 of shipping and handling from Netherlands to Spain. I think it has been a great deal tho (^_^)

BTW, where can I get DOS1 or DOS2? Are they on cartridges or something?

<added> And how can I know what 'extra' mods are in the computer? Do I have to open its case, or are there any 'benchmarks' there that can tell me CPU Speed and things like that? </added>

Thanks a lot...

PS: I think this is about 'collecting' but well, mods can move this post if they think it should be anywhere else

There's a very good 7MHz benchmark... If you're playing a game and the music and sfx sound like crap, then you have a 7MHz computer The rest should be pretty easy to figure out, try getting your hands on a 'Quasar', a Dutch diskmagazine from the 90's. It has a thingy called mega-report that tells you all about your MSX, right up to the previous owner and the number of fairs it has visited The computer might have DOS2, some people that upgraded to 2+ in the good old days also offered a package that included DOS2, just a matter of checking... Just boot with a DOS2 disk and see what happens

Sonic: I/O-mod might be in place, so the music could sound right on 7MHz. Do in BASIC:

FOR I=0 TO 1000: NEXT I

When it runs in about 1 second, it's a 7MHz thing, otherwise (when it runs in 2 seconds) it's 3.5MHz

Thanks a lot, I'll try to get DOS2 disks and all that stuff...

The basic 'for' loop is nice, the only thing I didn't know was how much time it should take to loop 1000 times...

If it has NO DOS2, what should I do to add it? I think I read somewhere that Sunrise bundled DOS2 with their IDE interface or something like that... Is there any way of getting DOS2 in a normal cartridge, is it worth to get only DOS2 or should I go for DOS2+some_other_cool_thingie?

OMG I CAN'T WAIT IT TO BE HERE!!!! (Thanks again for your replies )

You really would want to have IDE-functionality as well

Using subfolders on normal floppy disks seems kinda obsolete to me... furthermore, the IDE, or the CF-IDE for all that matters, isn't really expensive.
Either way, you can ask Bas Kornalijnslijper (Bas' website), maybe he can build in a DOS2-ROM for you.
Several years ago, my dad sent his NMS8255 (as the 8250, but with 2 FDDs) to Hans Oranje, who did expansions back then. Some time later we got it again, with 1MB internal memory, 7MHz w/ switch and DOS2 w/ switch.

DOS2 switch? Just press select during booting to disable it.. or graph+code

Quote:

The basic 'for' loop is nice, the only thing I didn't know was how much time it should take to loop 1000 times...

If the difference between 1 or 2 secs is hard to count :-)

X=TIME:FOR I=0 TO 1000:NEXT:PRINT TIME-X

prints a value around 80 @ 3.5MHz machine, and about 40 for 7MHz
(81 and 38 resp. on my 8280)

Thanks Aurora, I would have looked for a TIME function, but once I had the computer... thanks for saving me the work...

BTW, why do you like so much one-line code? lol...... ':' is equal to 'new line' for BASIC interpreter or something like that? I've never seen that ':' stuff before coming to this forum