THE MSX TURBO R


4.1 MSX Turbo R (Standard) definition and remarks

Due to lack of interest in marketing of MSX-machines and growing interest in game consoles and powerful PC alike computers (for word processing purposes mainly), companies were not so enthusiastic about creating a new MSX-machine. The biggest software supporters of MSXdeserted to Nintendo and other computers/game machines. Sony chose to make their own game console as well ASCII in cooperation with Yamaha and Panasonic created the 3DO (Three Dimensional Objects) game console, based on the new Yamaha V9990 Video Display Processor, which in some peoples opinion was in the beginning meant to be used in an MSX3 computer.

[3DO]

The PANASONIC 3DO game console with V9990 onboard

Before the support of MSX system ended, Panasonic released two excellent MSX2++ machines. They were not the long awaited MSX3 but an extension of the MSX2+ standard.

4.1.1 MSX Turbo R FS-A1ST

[MSX TURBO R FS-A1ST]

Panasonic MSX TURBO R FS-A1ST

4.1.2 MSX Turbo R FS-A1GT

[MSX TURBO R FS-A1GT]

Panasonic MSX TURBO R FS-A1GT

Sales of Turbo R machines were nothing to complain about due to the big amount of sold machines in Japan. Despite the interest in such computer, Panasonic closed its doors after launching a 3rd TR machine (FS-A1XT ????) with built in V9990 chip, thus this machine was not fully backward compatible. Due to wrong programming of the V9990 and incompatibility the production was quickly stopped and never resumed.
There was created an expansion or evaluation board with the V9990 chip for MSX/PC and PC98,but it was quite expensive and probably not many were sold. Can someone supply more info about it? As mentioned Panasonic stopped with MSX and went to game console world, thus they used the powerful V9990 Video Display Processor for other purposes than MSX3.

But fortunately Henrik Gilvad from Denmark designed a graphic card which uses the V9990 video chip so the MSX users worldwide got again opportunity to upgrade their systems :-D. It's called GFX9000, and is sold by Stichting Sunrise. Mail to Rob Hiep for more info!


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