If you are a Brazilian (or Russian) geek in your thirties you must have spend a lot of your teen years in front of a MSX computer.

For a long time I have kept copies of fMSX lying around in my hard disk, in case I want to play some of the memorable games of my childhood. Problem is, I was having a hard time compiling it in recent systems. When looking for a alternative, I investigated OpenMSX and instantly recognized I had found the holy grail of MSX emulation. OpenMSX does not emulate one MSX implementation, it implements all of them. It isn't just a matter of playing the games, you can really relive the hardware with it.

For example, I was able to boot a Gradiente Expert 1.1, with the DDX-3.0 floppy controller and a MegaRAM cartridge just like it was 1988. I'm really sorry now that I haven't managed to make images of all my floppies.

As an extra bonus, OpenMSX is very Linux friendly and very easy to build. So I created a RPM package of it for Fedora, instead of just installing in my home dir. I don't know if I will be able to properly maintain it, but if you are interested check the OpenMSX RPM link in the nav bar.

Posted at: 16:45 | Category: /virtualization | permalink