5 ms·
I wrote a lot of code for Yamaha MSX systems back in the day. It was truly a delight to be able to see ones programs running on different machines with .. most
by mmjaa 8y ago
I wrote a lot of code for Yamaha MSX systems back in the day. It was truly a delight to be able to see ones programs running on different machines with .. mostly .. ease.
For me, the thing that made MSX fail was over-standardisation - it was very difficult for manufacturers to stand out from the pack. Often, the machines all felt the same, so consumers would buy the machines on the basis of style - and there were some truly atrociously ugly MSX machines being designed in those days. (In some ways, its quite similar to the situation with, say, Android today.)
And then, there were the places where standardisation hadn't quite worked. Subtle differences between systems often mean that developers had to have a fleet of MSX machines to test on, to be sure. (Again: Android)
And in the midst of all of this, along comes IBM and the rest is history .. but for a while, MSX (and MSX2) were really intriguing technologies. Working on MSX in Japan led me to becoming an ITRON adherent, which led to me becoming a systems/OS developer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_project
.. which put me in the right place, at the right time, to become an early Linux adopter ..
- endemic 8y agoYour comment reminded me of some amazing photos of a Sony MSX machine: https://mobile.twitter.com/AttractMode/status/1103852208192409600 https://mobile.twitter.com/AttractMode/status/11038522081924... I wish PC makers today would branch out from their "copy Apple" sterility.
- bane 8y agoSome of Sony's MSX machines are some of the most beautiful computing devices ever made IMHO.
- puzzle 8y agoSony had probably the most stylish designs among MSX manufacturers. They were not afraid of using curves compared to e.g. Philips' boxier style. There was some other interesting stuff in the 80s, like the systems from Apricot (formerly ACT). There was the Portable http://s11.photobucket.com/user/ballsandy/media/Computer%20related/Apricot/100_2162.jpg.html http://s11.photobucket.com/user/ballsandy/media/Computer%20r... (uncropped at https://cs9.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2016/10/15/5/1476517900137950723.png https://cs9.pikabu.ru/post_img/big/2016/10/15/5/147651790013... ) which also had voice recognition, or the Xen http://www.1000bit.it/lista/a/act/apricot_xen-i.jpg http://www.1000bit.it/lista/a/act/apricot_xen-i.jpg which had programmable keys and LCD screen on the keyboard.
- mmjaa 8y agoGoodness, those Apricot machines are absolutely delightful. I wish there were manufacturers with the balls to try such things again ..
- JohnBooty 8y agoOh my goodness, that's incredible.
- Annatar 8y agoBeing a Linux adopter is nothing to be proud of: Linux ISO's on crap PC-bucket hardware is what undercut all that beautiful, elegant SGI, hp and Sun Microsystems hardware and their elegant operating systems. If one compares the Linux internals with any of those one loses the will to live because it becomes apparent just what hacked-together piece of garbage Linux is... case in point: cgroups versus zones, TCP/IP zoo versus Crossbow and the FireEngine, iptables versus IPFilter, RPM and dpkg versus inst and PSF, systemd versus SMF, no equivalent to FMA, tracing zoo versus DTrace, ext4 versus OpenZFS, clustering zoo versus NUMAlink, fiberchannel mess versus COMSTAR, NFS mess versus reference NFS implementations, ... the list could go on and on and on...