MSX Cartridge USB

بواسطة foody

Champion (497)

03-07-2021, 08:29

Hey guys,

My MSX 2 have two slots and one of them will be free. It is hooked directly to a large plasma TV. Because the TV is large in size, I will not be able to use my MSX 2 on the table, close distance to the TV. I want to be able to sit on my bed far away from the large plasma TV while my MSX 2 is on the table. Is there any MSX USB cartridge that allows a person to hook either a wireless or long wired PC keyboard? I appreciate any advice you can give me.

بواسطة st1mpy

Paladin (947)

03-07-2021, 11:55

Just use a long cable for the TV connection to bring the msx closer to you.

بواسطة foody

Champion (497)

03-07-2021, 17:51

Sorry, that is not a good advise. I want to minimize any risk of damaging my MSX by either: dropping it or moving the cartridge while it is powered.

I prefer my MSX stationary and safe. Your advise is excellent for someone who do not care about his machine. You make it sound like these machines are in abundance, easy to find, and dirt cheap. In fact, it is reverse:

1) I care about my machine,
2) These hardware are harder to find, each year; and,
3) it cost me a fortune to buy it.

بواسطة bsittler

Champion (337)

03-07-2021, 18:31

I have used RookiDrive NX with the MSX-USB HID driver and a wireless USB keyboard in a similar situation. It works fine in MSX-BASIC and MSX-DOS apart from a little key mapping disagreement between keyboard, driver and MSX. All the essential keys worked OK. The problem is games, some work but many don't, I think because they access the PPI directly instead of using standard API's

By contrast game controllers are very easy to make wireless thanks to adapters allowing MegaDrive/Genesis controllers+wireless controllers compatible with that standard (many good options are available including Krikzz, Retro-Bit and 8BitDo)

Between the two solutions (controller and keyboard) most games are fine, but some special functions in games might require walking across the room

If you get a modern FPGA MSX of course more is possible thanks to the PS/2 keyboard connectors. It may be possible to build adapters for using PS/2 keyboards even on an old MSX but it's a little different for each model and AFAIK not readily available commercially

بواسطة foody

Champion (497)

03-07-2021, 18:54

The RookieDrive allows me to hook a keyboard on it or it just exclusive for hard drive emulation, floppy drive emulation, etc?

بواسطة bsittler

Champion (337)

03-07-2021, 21:38

foody wrote:

The RookieDrive allows me to hook a keyboard on it or it just exclusive for hard drive emulation, floppy drive emulation, etc?

With its own RookieDrive NX firmware it's a storage device, supporting USB floppy mode and also USB mass storage Nextor and floppy disk image file modes, which mode chosen by a key at boot time. However there is separate MSX-USB firmware which can make it instead be HID interface for a keyboard. For that see https://github.com/S0urceror/MSX-USB and https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/hardware/msx-usb

A design also exists for a separate dedicated MSX-USB cartridge but I have not tried that, I only used it with the RookieDrive NX hardware

بواسطة foody

Champion (497)

04-07-2021, 00:33

Thank you, sir . I will buy it then. It is official. I will follow these links and change it's nature. It is in my list of shopping list then. Most of MSX games use joystick anyways,...huge amount. I think text adventure games and such use keyboards, hopefully the USB will work with it. But this is an excellent solution if I want to spend hours writing code in MSX-Basic. I am addicted to this part of MSX, also. Since it works 100% in MSX BASIC I have found my solution then.