At moments when i am not able to use my msx2 computer i sometimes use my pc whit an emulator

Which one is the best?

At the moment i use bluemsx on a p4 1.5 whith 512 MB memory

who knows?

Also depends on what you want in an emulator, I guess...

I use blueMSX

no shit Sherlock..

gosh, I use openMSX

what i really want is a reliable backup in cases i can't use my real msx
because i still makeing music and i want to make sure that not all my work will be destroyed

alexworp3: it's really what you prefer. From what I've gathered, the best emulators to go for are BlueMSX and openMSX. Depending on what operating system you're on, you can use one, the other or both. E.g. for *nix, OSX and Windows there's openMSX. From my experience, it's a bit of a hassle to get it operating right, as there are no ROMs provided with the package [I don't know about BlueMSX though!] so you'll have to look them up and place them in the right directories.
For Windows, there is BlueMSX, favored by many users around the globe - from what I hear this is more the point-and-click emulator. Again, it's what you prefer that's best.

From my own experience: I've never used BlueMSX, but then again, I'm on linux. I occasionally do stuff on my virtual hard disk, I use the IDE extension and a hard disk image in openMSX a lot. Since this post may sound like a openMSX advocacy, I invite other users to say the good stuff about BlueMSX

thnx d-tail and all the others

Personally I find blueMSX a bit of a cpu-hog on my jerky old system atm, occasionally resulting in completely ruined menus and other corrupted crap, not limited to blueMSX. There used to be a time when it was *far* more lightweight. On the same jerk system OpenMSX and NLMSX run like a charm. OpenMSX is far more low level, but most ppl won't need all that (the console). The biggest nagpoint I have with OpenMSX (tho it's not that much of a bother) is that it's obviously made by Linux ppl with a Linux mindset. It's hard to pinpoint where/how/why/details tho, it's just that the complete package o' things, including discussions with the developers) screams Linux all over the place. :-)

Well you are 10 years overdue to change your computer wolf_ and you know that so stop complaining. blueMSX works like a charm on 1.5GHz and above. And I run it on my 600MHz laptop without any big issues (needed some config tweaking though).

blueMSX and openMSX are quite comparable on what is emulated. both emulate far more MSX devices than other emulators and both are way more configurable than others. They are also much more accurate than other emulators. The big difference is in the user interface. blueMSX has a quite straight forward graphical user interface while openMSX needs console input if you want to do something more than the bare basics.

blueMSX has imo much better video rendering (it does interpolation to avoid flickering caused by frequency mismatch between MSX and PC). This is to me a very nice feature but it is a bit CPU intensive but it can be disabled and then the emulator works like other emus.

The big disadvantage with openMSX is that it doesn't support save states.

blueMSX is probably easier to use for most Windows people but if you prefer a console like interface openMSX is the better choice.

NLMSX was (and still is to a few) a preferred emulator but its quite crappy compared to openMSX and blueMSX. The only emulator that I would recommend other than these two is Meisei (MSX1 only) which has some nice features for game playing.

Since you are using blueMSX already I would give openMSX a try (and perhaps also Meisei) and then you'll pretty much covered the good part of all MSX emulators. The rest is not worth trying unless you are interested in emulation.

Well I have always used NLMSX and my standard is:

If it don't work on NLMSX, it's crap.

No seriously, with openMSX and blueMSX you can seemingly modify all kinds of stuff which you can't with NL.

But in my experience, the emulator which works almost guaranteed on any (older) system, the one which you can start up fast, just load a .dsk or .rom in and play it, well that's NLMSX (for me).

But it's what it is: A pure MSX emulator and nothing to add.

Just my two cents.

DemonSeed, this is true I know. Before my linux era, I used NLMSX quite a lot (and that was too, because I was on a 600MHz system, too slow for BlueMSX/openMSX). But some of the basic things are not supported in that emulator (e.g. SCREEN 3).

I love blueMSX when running Windows, very accurate and user friendly. It has a good debugger and lot of other features.

I'm also into retro emulators and running MSX4PC on my vintage PC.