I runned bluemsx and wanted to test some strange machine configurations.I created a new profile of an msx 2 machine that has the following

Slot 0 0000-7fff Normal+cassette patch Msx2.rom
Slot 3-1 0000-3fff Normal rom Msx2ext.rom
Slot 3-2 E000-ffff 8kb normal ram

An vdp yamaha 9938 with only 64kbytes of ram

I noticed that many megaroms can run with as little as 8kbytes of ram.Megaroms tested
Nemesis 1,King's valley 2 msx1 version,F1 spirit,Maze of mgalious,Penguin Adventure.

Now if ram is just doubled to 16kbytes most of other roms and msx2 megaroms run as well.Metal Gear 1,usas,King kong 2,King's valley 2 msx2,nemesis 3,space manbow,ganbare goemon.gryzor etc.

Now with 64kbytes of video ram metal gear 2 has glitches and does not run well,there are garbage in the screen,sometimes wrong tiles,and radio communication does messages are shown incorrectly.Why is this?Isn't 64kbytes of vram for this game enough?

Now another problem with metal gear 2 is that with 128kbytes of vram the game rom works fine but if the main ram is only 16kbytes then radar is not shoing the position of ground (the black color of it) but only the location of enemies that are white or red.Increasing the ram to 32kbytes seems to fix that.

Quarth seems to have the same problem as metal gear 2 when you have a 64kbyte only vram.

My question is has there ever been an msx2 machine with only 8 kbytes of ram?Now most of other games can run fine with 16kbytes so was there ever any machine with only 16kbytes?

Seems strange to me.

I think the mimimum is 64KB.. As required for msx2.

The MSX standard dictates that an MSX2 machine must have at least 64K RAM. Therefore, a machine with less RAM can't be MSX2.

The 8K minimum is for MSX1 machines. Me too, I wonder if any such machine was ever produced.

About the VRAM, the "de facto" standard has always been 128K. Most games will not work with 64K.

There are a few 8kB RAM MSX1 machines (Casio PV-7 at least), but indeed, for MSX2 64k is required.

Min memory for MSX2 shoudl be 64k main memory and 64k vram. I know not many MSX2's around with the min. configurations. Like real 8k msx1's

Very suprising "many" japanese MSX2+ only have 64k main memory

-Claus-

At least every MSX2 model I know of has 128kB VRAM.

How many 2+ models were out? I only know the panasonic ones!

Panasonic:

• FS-A1XV
• FS-A1WX
• FS-A1WSX
• FS-VW30WSX [pretty rare, I think]

Sony:

• HB-F1XV
• HB-F1XDJ
• HB-WX2+ [never seen one either]

Sanyo:

• PHC-35J
• PHC-70FD1
• PHC-70FD2
• MPC-175FD

So that makes 11 MSX2+ models. The German Computer Archiv contains a pretty complete list of all known MSX models (and more).

The complete list is also on the MSX FAQ and the MSX hardarelist...

Note: FS-WX30WSX and HB-WX2+ probably don't exist, there is absolutely no evidence that supports their existance.

Note that the 1-drive Sanyo is PHC-70FD (not FD1).

I also doubt if the MPC-175FD exists, as there isn't a single picture available of it. Sounds like a rumour to me... no evidence either.