openMSX

Features

Here are some highlights of the features of the latest release (0.6.3).

Legend

• New! New feature since last release
• Unique! Unique feature for an MSX emulator
• 1st! openMSX was the first MSX emulator to have this feature
• Cool! Particularly cool feature

General

• Unique! Command interface via pipes or a (UNIX domain) socket: control openMSX with any external application
• Unique! TCL scripting: enhance openMSX with powerful scripts
• Unique! System ROMs are specified and found with their SHA1 sums or file names as a fall back
• 1st! `Real time timing', using the specially developed EmuTime model
• 1st! Pixel accurate rendering: horizontal screensplits are rendered almost correctly (Unknown Reality, Verti-demo)
• Cool! Debian and Gentoo packaging, shortly after the release
• Cool! openMSX Catapult: the optional GUI for openMSX
• Cool! On Screen Display, with LEDs for e.g. power, FDD, capsLock and Rensha Turbo
•   For Linux, Windows, MacOS X (also support for Tiger with GCC 4), FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD systems
•   Installer for Windows
•   Advanced build system
•   Manuals online and in distribution
•   More than 70 MSX machine hardware configurations included
•   More than 35 MSX extension hardware configurations included
•   MMX and extended-MMX optimisations for rendering
•   DirectSound sound driver for MS Windows

MSX hardware emulated

•   192kB VRAM (extended VRAM)
•   ADVRAM
•   Magic key dongle
• Unique! Sunrise GFX9000
• Unique! Slot expander
• 1st! Tetris II Special Edition dongle
• 1st! MSX Bunsetsu Henkan Jisyo ROM (National FS-SR021/FS-4000/FS-4500/4700F)
• 1st! 12×12 dot kanji (National FS-4600)
• Cool! Interlacing, real or deinterlaced
•   Almost all MSX systems
•   Different CPU clock speeds, including those for the Panasonic MSX2+ machines
•   Almost all known cartridge mapper types via autodetection or the included ROM database, including:
  • 1st! Panasonic FS-CA1 MSX Audio
  • 1st! National mapper type used for internal software
  •   Panasonic FS-A1FM internal mapper, with firmware switch
  •   Panasonic mapper type used for internal software (e.g. MSX-View)
  •   ROMs with special headers or which start from basic, like Nausicaa, Pairs, etc.
  •   All (?) ROMs with SRAM (Hydlide 2, Xanadu, Wizardry, many Koei games, Daisenryaku, etc.)
  •   Cross Blaim
  •   R-Type
  •   Harry Fox Yuki No Maou-Hen
  •   Korean multi-game ROMs: Zemmix 126, Game's 80, Zemmix 64 and MSX90-collection
  •   Playball with sample replay
  • New! Super Lode Runner
  • New! Halnote
•   Almost all MSX sound devices:
  • 1st! MSX-MIDI (turboR)
  • Unique! PCM input (sampling) for turbo R via a .wav file
  • 1st! PCM output and hardware PCM mute (turboR)
  • 1st! SIMPL/Covox (sound via the printer port)
  • Cool! Moonsound
  • Cool! "Moonblaster Stereo": MSX Music on one channel, MSX Audio on the other
  •   Konami's Majutsushi and Synthesizer DAC
  •   SCC and SCC+
  •   Checkmark FM Stereo PAK
  • New! VLM5030, the chip used in the unrealeased Konami game Keyboard Master
  • New! Yamaha SFG-05 (partial/experimental), which has an YM2151 chip
•   Many MSX storage (disk/SRAM) systems:
  • 1st! Sunrise IDE interface with harddisk and CD-ROM (audio tracks not supported yet)
  • Unique! MegaRAM Disk
  • 1st! PAC (Panasonic SW-M001)
  • 1st! Sony HBI-55 datacartridge
  •   MegaRAM
  •   MSX-DOS2
  •   Floppy disk controller (WD2793 and National MB8877A fully supported, including formatting); also partial support for TC8566AF and Microsol based FDCs (DDX 3.0 diskROM works, e.g.)
  • New! Experimental: Gouda SCSI (Novaxis), MEGA-SCSI, ESE-SCC, WAVE-SCSI and ESE RAMdisk
•   Overscan
•   Kanji JIS ROM 1 and 2
•   Mouse and joystick (with option to use the keyboard as joystick) and additionally the ninja-tap multiplayer controller, so that you can use up to 4 joysticks for software that supports it
•   Tape via CAS and WAV files (real recorded tape image); CAS files can be converted to WAV on the fly, cassette sounds are audible, cassettes can be rewinded and one can record to a new WAV cassette image
•   MSX RS-232 (8255 UART)
•   MSX printer support for characters by logging them to a file
•   Dot-matrix graphical printer emulation
•   Joystick emulation for mouse (a feature that the Philips SBC-3810 and Sony MOS-1 and similar mice have)
•   Rensha turbo auto fire support
•   turboR pause (button and hardware) support
•   run time insertion and removal of cartridges and other extensions
•   support to emulate any non-colour monitor, like monochrome-green, amber or white

Emulator Extras

•   Optional automatical speed up during disk or cassette action
• Unique! Optional automatical loading of cassettes in CAS format
•   XML files to specify the hardware to be emulated, so you actually emulate specific MSX machines
• Unique! Debug device: write data to special I/O ports and it gets logged to stdout or a file in a format you specify. Very useful if you develop MSX assembly programs in openMSX
• Unique! Console with alpha-blended background and file and command completion and built in help for (almost) all commands
• Unique! Support for .xsa (compressed) diskimages
• Unique! Keymatrixdown/up commands to automatically push keys (like pressing CTRL at boot automatically)
• Unique! Console commands to enable demo play with timers
• 1st! Dir-as-disk feature: Use a directory on your hard disk as disk image in openMSX
• Cool! Debug command (including conditional break points, watch points, an UMR detector): read/write many parts of the MSX system; mainly useful to be used in external debug applications via the stdin/socket command interface
• Cool! Disk manipulator toolkit; transfer files from the host OS to the MSX disks (disk images and hard disk images with partitions are all supported) and vice versa, create new (hard) disk images and format them, etc.
•   Various screen renderers available:
  •   Plain SDL renderer, with support for 3 different scaling factors (1×=320×240, 2×=640×480 and 3×=960×720) and several scaling algorithms like: hq, hqlite, SaI and scaleNx
  • Cool! 640×480 OpenGL renderer that makes advantage of video hardware acceleration and has an extra special effect: afterglow
  • Cool! OpenGL 2.0 based renderer that makes advantage of the processor of advanced modern graphics cards. Supports scaling factors up to 4 (=1280×960). Extra features: TV scaler, afterglow, horizontal stretch (to get the correct aspect ratio) and a 3D monitor effect. Does not support SaI scale algorithm.
•   Scanlines, blur and noise for TV emulation
• Cool! Gamma, brightness and contrast adjustment setting
•   Option to run at maximum possible speed
•   Full screen rendering
•   (Auto) Frameskip
•   Speed setting (in percent)
•   Mouse cursor grabbing, for windowed mode
•   Tunable volumes and stereo balance for the individual sound chips
•   All read-only input files (ROM images, disk images, background pictures, XML) can be gzipped or zipped and will be transparently decompressed by openMSX
•   Screen shot feature
•   Support for IPS patches for ROMs and disks
•   Recording a video (with sound) of your openMSX actions
• New! All channels of all sound chips can be recorded separately
• New! Vibrato and detune sound effects (for PSG only)
• Cool! Extended hot keys: you can bind any host event to any TCL command, which means you can e.g. let openMSX push the MSX F1 key if you press a certain button on your PC game pad
•   Event recording and replaying: record and reply entire gaming sessions (experimental)

Coming Up …

Here are some highlights of features and improvements that are already in Subversion and are likely to be in the next release:

•   Support for direct read/write transparency when using dir-as-disk; anything that changes on both host OS and MSX sides is reflected to the other side immediately! There are options to limit this as well
•   Support for MegaFlashROM SCC and Manbow 2 mapper types
•   Universal keyboard support. You can now type on any machine with any keyboard layout with any PC keyboard layout. Much easier on a Japanese machine, for example!

$Id: features.php 7406 2007-12-10 22:03:39Z manuelbi $