Category Archives: Sample Code

PlaySoniq tips

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Some users report that their FM-PAC is not working with the PlaySoniq. Others report that the joysticks are not working. For FM-PAC support you first have to activate the FM-PAC. After typing CALL MUSIC (or add this enty in the sega.bas file) everything works. Albert Beevendorp wil release a tool with which you can activate the FM-PAC from MSX-DOS. We hope to make this available soon. For joystick support you also have to edit the sega.bas file. By default only the keyboard is active. To change this, change line 120 by entering ‘ 120 OV=4 ‘ and save “sega.bas” again. Please note there’s an overlay matrix in the manual were you can check which option best suits your needs, or the game you want to play. PCEFAN reports that overlay code 3 works best in most situations. Just try and check the results for your configuration.

If you experience soft SCC sound, there a few ways around this. First of all, there’s a volume adjuster on the PCB which you can adjust to balance the SCC mixing. Please check the manual for details. To get full control over the audio mixing, also for mixing OPLL sounds with PSG, MSX with PlaySoniq and our upcoming MIDI-PAC we bought a Behringer VMX-300 3-Channel audio mixer. These can be picked up for about 50 euros at local or webbased trade-in markets. New it’s about 120~150 euros. We got ours for 50.

You can see the VMX-300 and the MIDI-PAC prototype in action here:

Conversion tools for Franky development

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Bifi has updated his Franky development page with new conversion tools for cross development from Armando Pérez Abad. These are binaries for Linux, OS-X and Win32 of:

  • SR52SMS
    SCREEN 5 to Franky Mode 4 Tile converter (8*8 pixels)
  • SR52SMSSPR
    SCREEN 5 to Franky Mode 4 Sprite converter (8*16 pixels)
  • C sources of mentioned tools
  • Z80 sources with example code of how to use Franky Mode 4

These tools can be downloaded from http://bifi.msxnet.org/franky/

Franky Mode 4 development tools

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Albert Beevendorp (better known as BiFi in the MSX community) just informed us that he has put a developer webpage for Franky online. On this page you will find the latest development tools to program for Franky Mode 4. New tools are currently in development and will be released in the near future. Links to other Sega Master System development tools and information that is useful for developing on Franky is also present. Please check http://bifi.msxnet.org/franky/ for details. Thanks BiFi!

New version of Franky example code

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Armando has send us a new version of the Franky example code. the following routines are new or changed:
  • checkfranky changed: New version of detect routine of Franky.
  • checkrefresh: (Thanks to MKII for this code). Check if Franky card is PAL or NTSC (50 or 60hz). hz var is 1 if franky is NTSC and 0 if Franky is PAL. This code is very important for coders to control music replayers. This has to be tested with NTSC Franky cards.
  • keyint flag. You can control the interrupt with this flag. If you want the KEYINT BIOS routine enabled put value != 0 in this var.
The code and rom can be downloaded here:  fsc2v2.zip

Sample code for Franky available

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As reported earlier, Kralizec is busy with porting existing games to Franky. Kralizec also started with making code to support MSX compatible screen mode2 on Franky. We asked Armando (main coder) if it would be possible to share his code with the rest of us. Luckely Armando agreed.

His code detects if Franky is present and does all the initializations to ready the Franky screen mode (MSX screen 2 compatible mode).  Also included is the compiled rom file. You need a tool like loadrom for MSX-DOS to load the 32kb rom. The rom first detects if Franky is present, initialize Franky and then shows a snapshot of Arkanoid on Franky and at the same time shows a color rotation on MSX (on the Franky VDP interrupt). Feel free to download, study and use for your existing or new productions. Thank you Armando!

Link to Franky Example code (zip file)

To execute the example rom you need a tool like loadrom which can be downloaded here:

Link to loadrom (lzh file, can be unpacked with Winrar under Windows)

For your convenience we also put the Sega loader tool online:

Link to Sega Loader (zip file)