I want to thank the MSX Italia Association for this opportunity! For anyone thinking it's far away, airplane tickets are pretty cheap and the airport is at walking distance of the Pisa city centre, the tower of Pisa, and the venue!

I'm excited to announce that I'll be speaking at the Pisa #MSX DEVCON 2024 on the 16th of November. The title of my talk is MoSX: The archeology, renovation and innovation of MSX It's going to be an interesting journey covering 50 years! Also be sure to visit the TNI booth ❤️

If you read this and enjoyed it, please support me on the Buy Me A Coffee link in my profile, so I can continue to spend time to answer #MSX mysteries like this! 😊

This copy of Konami's Monkey Academy came with a warning sheet that only applies to the earliest European #MSX models, the Philips VG8000 and VG8010. So this must be one of the earliest imported copies of Monkey Academy. See my reply to that post for details.

Bbitsofbas.bsky.socialSep 30, 2024 12:10pm

This Monkey Academy came with an unusual sheet... The non-JP keys mentioned are a lie. They don't work. The menu code doesn't look for them. Anyone got a clue as to why this sheet exists? Maybe it's from another Konami #MSX game? Were they drunk? 😅

They are not a lie, they correspond to the non-standard keyboard matrix of the Philips VG8000 and VG8010. If Monkey Academy is reading the keyboard either by doing direct I/O or reading the NEWKEY system variable, then these are the keys that will work.

As such it elegantly fits in the #MSX system, while significantly reducing the complexity of the MSX memory architecture for programmers and compilers. My solution also expands the maximum amount of slots from 16 to 64, without breaking compatibility with existing software. (5/5)

A further step to 64-bit is envisioned as a possibility, but this isn't a focus right now, because 32-bit is a sweet spot for assembly programming. The 32-bit extension also incorporates a MMU that is 100% compatible with the #MSX architecture of slots and Memory Mappers. (4/5)

After having studied and used various 32-bit Z80 instruction set extensions such as Z380 and TLCS900, I believe I've come up with a better and more programmer-friendly solution that expands the instruction set to 32-bit more powerfully and more elegantly. (3/5) #MSX

Mo80 provides extra registers and improves orthogonality, which increases productivity and performance, but also allows compilers for higher languages to be implemented more easily. Additionally, I propose a 32-bit extension. (2/5) #MSX

About Mo80, the CPU of the MoSX #MSX architecture. Mo80 is an extension of the Z80/R800 instruction set. It's designed for ease of use by assembly programmers, who can enjoy programming with less frustration. Similar to the improvement that AMD made to the x86 with AMD64, (1/5)