MSX Home Computer

By Xah Lee. Date: .

MSX home computer, began in 1983.

It's a standardized home computer Microsoft defined. Popular in 80s in Japan, S Korea, Argentina, Brazil. It's made by different companies. The keyboards are standardized in layout but varies in shapes quite a bit.

Panasonic FS-A1 MSX 83b67
Panasonic FS-A1 MSX

MSX is a standardized home computer architecture, first announced by Microsoft on June 16, 1983,[1] and marketed by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation. Microsoft conceived the project as an attempt to create unified standards among various hardware makers of the period.[2]

They were popular in Japan and several other countries. It is difficult to estimate how many MSX computers were sold worldwide, but eventually 5 million MSX-based units were sold in Japan alone. Despite Microsoft's involvement, the MSX-based machines were seldom released in the United States.[3]

Before the great success of Nintendo's Family Computer, MSX was the platform for which major Japanese game studios, such as Konami and Hudson Soft, produced video games. The Metal Gear series, for example, was originally written for MSX hardware.[4]

2018-09-30 Wikipedia MSX

Talent MSX computer 369f6
TALENT TPC-310 MSX2 computer, made in Argentina by Telematica (1988), based in Daewoo design, In Spain were sold as Dynata brand (White case). MSX Talent DPC-200 in other hand, the most popular computer in Argentina trough the '80 and early ยด90. [image source 2018-09-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Talent_MSX.jpg ]
Canon V-20 MSX computer 2fff0
Canon V-20 MSX [image source 2018-09-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Canon_V-20_MSX_computer.jpg ]
Sharp HotBit MSX computer 04d6c
Sharp HotBit MSX. Brazilian Z80 MSX computer from the 1980s. [image source 2018-09-30 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sharp_HotBit_MSX_computer.jpg ]
Sony HitBit HB-10P MSX c6645
MSX Sony HitBit HB-10P keyboard b709e
YAMAHA AX150 MSX 1f794
YAMAHA AX150 MSX 48C85