Month: October 2020

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Bring on the Music!! Yamaha CX5M

I haven’t messed around with MIDI since my late Sam Coupe years and early 286 PC years where I used to connect a Yamaha PSS-780 keyboard up to the computer and “attempt” to get it to play some music. Usually I just ended up shoving pre-made MIDI files through it back then!

But recently I was watching a YouTube episode from RMC The Cave (loads of good videos to watch!) and he did a review of the Yamaha CX5M which is an MSX based computer with a built in Yamaha FM synthesiser.

Well, i have looked at many MSX computers recently with the aim of picking one up, and after seeing this I just knew this was the one. Not only can I experiment with an MSX but I can also go back and have a play with MIDI again 🙂

So, here she is! My very own CX5M with the YK-10 Keyboard

So whats next for this one?

Well the one small issue with it is this system has the SFG-01 addon board which doesn’t support MIDI input. They released a later SFG-05 module that had better software and more features.

Luckily you can do a mod to upgrade it. So I have a freshly burned EPROM sat here waiting to go in it over the weekend!

I have also ordered a SD mapper and 512K expansion so I can play around with some of the MSX software that is available.

Really looking forward to this and will update the site with my thoughts once I have had a play 🙂

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Oliver Twins Collection – Evercade

After backing a Kickstarter for the Fusion Annual 2021. One of the perks was a signed copy of the Oliver Twins Collection for the Evercade. This arrived today so have some great Dizzy games to play through on the Evercade now. I believe these are all NES ports so most are pretty good versions. Although the NES version of Treasure Island Dizzy seems very bland to me. Even the Spectrum version looked better 😛

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Going online with an Amstrad Notepad??

I never imagined that this would actually be possible. But whilst I was looking around retro projects recently I came accross another ESP8266 based WiFi MoDem project. This one connects up to any device using a standard RS232 Serial Port.

Reading through the project it mentioned some of the computers it works with. The Atari Portfolio was listed as compatible which is what I was searching for so I will be having a play with that once I can source the serial port adapter for it.

But also in that list was the Amstrad Notepad NC100! I knew this already had a serial port as I used to use it for transferring my school homework over to my PC back in the 90s. But I never thought about the fact that it had a terminal emulator built into it.

So I build the modem, designed and printed a case for it then turned on the NC100 and hit Function key + S. After a few config changes in the menu I was ready to go. Setting up the WiFi network was easy and is all done through a text driven menu.

Then it was just a case of using the atdt command to connect up to one of the many BBS’s still available.

Now obviously the experience isn’t perfect as the notepad has an 80 x 8 character display. But I found a few BBS’s that actually allowed that to be configured and it worked perfectly!

I wish this would have been available back in the 90s, would have made my english lessons much more bearable! I could have done it back then with a dial up modem and a telephone line, but I am guessing the teacher would have noticed that even if they had no clue what it was.