SuperSoniqs

Thanks to FRS publishing his schematics of the MSX Audio Upgrade for the Philips Music Module a while ago, it became possible to recreate his great work on upgrading the Philips Music Module to an almost full fledged Panasonic MSX Audio cartridge. This means that features like the MSX Audio Basic will become available after upgrading your Music Module. Changing the CALL MUSIC command in FM-PAC Basic listings to CALL AUDIO will play all those musics on your Music Module. ADPCM commands will also become available in Basic. Furthermore, games and disk magazines with support for MSX Audio (like those of Compile) will automatically detect and use your Music Module. The upgrade board also features a 256KB sample ram upgrade.

This project started in May this year. After some setbacks all components and PCB’s are finally in. We hope to start selling the upgrade including an DIY manual at the next MSX fair in Nijmegen. Also, we found Bas Kornalijnslijper (www.bas-ditta.info) willingly to start an upgrade service for those of you that don’t have the time nor skills to do the upgrade yourself.

Currently in development in cooperation with WORP3 is a new MIDI interface card for MSX. Based on software emulation MIDI-PAC will enable MSX users to enjoy high quality sound through their existing MIDI gear.

Output from all MSX-MUSIC compatible programs will be converted to MIDI data on the fly. This works for games, but also for trackers.

MIDI-PAC comes in a normal size cartridge and will connect to MIDI equipment through a standard MIDI DIN plug. We use a mini usb connector socket on the cartridge, but that’s only because of space limitations in the cartridge. Normal MIDI signals will be put on that connector. An adaptor cable will be delivered with the final product.

The MIDI-PAC will include a flash rom to support a modified rom so your favorite games will detect MIDI-PAC as a real FM-PAC (only IPS patch will be distributed). Software is in development to support patching the MSX-Music instruments to MIDI instruments. This way, settings can be made and loaded per game or application.

We hope to show the new prototype on the next Nijmegen fair.

Next sunday, on the 4th of October, there is a retro fair being held in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. It’s organised by game computer museum ‘Bonami’. Supersoniqs will be there, to show Franky and hopefully also sell a few! As has been reported earlier, we assembled a little more Franky cards and if we are done testing on time, we will sell the Sega Videocard for MSX!

We can’t promise it yet, but if you are already planning to go there, be sure to visit our booth first, just in case! W’ll try to inform you before Sunday if testing of all the assembled cards has been completed. Targeted sale price of first generation Franky card is 65 euro. If we are going to sell it, only 20 will be available next Sunday..

Hope to see you in Apeldoorn!

In our earlier post we explained a little about all the choices that have to be made when developing new hardware for MSX. One of those choices was whether we  should support input connectors on Franky for the MSX video output signals. After looking at all the options, we decided not to support this functionality. Let me explain this decision. First of all, there are a lot of MSX computers which have different types of output signals. We can simply not support all (TV PAL/ TV NTSC/RGB/CVBS). Second, space on the Franky PCB itself is limited (take a look at the earlier posted photo of the Franky PCB).  Third, all that extra logic to reroute input signals not only costs money in terms of electronic parts and thus the final sale price, but also makes the design even more complex than it already is. And bigger and more complex designs are more vulnerable for errors, during assembling and operation.

Now, before everybody start throwing tomatoes; we did include one thing and that might also solve a lot of problems regarding your monitor setup, namely the inclusion of a PAL/NTSC encoder for CVBS (composite) output . If you have a TV or monitor with support for switchable RGB and CVBS input signals (Like most TV’s have, and for example the Philips CM 8833 MSX monitor) you can connect your MSX to RGB and Franky to the CVBS input signals (or vice versa) and there you go.

Another option is to buy an external switch box for video signals. There’s one lying here, it costs about 15 euros  and it eats multiple SCART and CVBS input/output signals.

Well, it has been a bit quiet on our website for the last four weeks, but behind the screens we were all busy with Franky. It took our Chinese friends a couple of weeks to produce our requested sample batch and send it. You can view the almost completely assembled result here:

Currently we need to get pal oscillators, but these seem to be hard to get. Of course RGB and audio already work, but as you might have noticed, we also included a PAL/NTSC encoder so, depening on the oscillator used, you can use CVBS out no matter your regional location. What’s also cool about this design is that it support both SMS videochips made and it can handle a lot of diferrent IC’s for the video memory. Another cool thing is the included volume adjuster on the PCB.

We almost have all the parts to produce about 40 pieces of this first generation Franky card. We’ll do our best to keep the final sale price to a minimum. If you are a active developer, but with an empty pocket, let us know