Hi,

I recently bought a Toshiba MSX HX-10. Having plugged it in and looking forward to some cool retro gaming I am finding it difficult to get anything to load up. The sample program seems to work fine, however whenever I try to load anything else all I seem to get is the "skip" message coming up!!

What am I doing wrong?? After trying various tapes and different loading methods I am about pulling my hair out!!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

Many Thanks

A quickly balding vintage gamer!!

Most common use for loading programs is using:

bload"cas:",r

or else

load"cas:",r

make sure the tape is rewind back enough

maybe you should clean the heads of the tape recorder if this does not work....

rich_thongo: you could try to increase the volume of the cassette player -- that helps sometimes as well.

or this tool might help

I have seen that Recorder Head Alignment Kit before ...

you have? such a coincidence

Why would you need more than a screwdriver and an ear to align the head? I used to do it all the time because tapes weren't always written with the heads in the same position anyway.

The SKIP message only appears when you try to load a game using a direct name, such as LOAD"PROG". To avoid that, given that you have selected the proper method (RUN/LOAD, BLOAD or CLOAD) all you have to do is to use "CAS:" as parameter.

Therefore:

If it is a BASIC program
LOAD"CAS:",R
RUN"CAS:"

If it is a Tokenized BASIC program - no need for parameters here
CLOAD

If it is an executable binary file
BLOAD"CAS:",R

If you can get an skip this means that the cassette is plugged and the azimuth is more or less Ok. So, just change the loading instructions.

Many Thanks all for you help! MSX is now working fine!! Heres to some happy gaming!! Regards rich_thongo

You're welcome.