Yamaha YIS-503/IIIR MSX-2 MSX-Link hardware and software
This package facilitates use of a remote MSX-2 workstation equipped with network module. The only known instance of such workstation is Yamaha YIS-503/IIIR that used to be deployed in Russian schools in the 1980s.
To operate, a hardware adapter is needed for the PC. It's a USB to Serial converter with optocouplers needed to connect to MSX workstations. KiCad schematics and PCB layout are provided.
The host software supports 3 different modes:
- CP/M upload: files can be uploaded to the RAM disk of builtin CP/M into remote machine
- BASIC send: BASIC and ROM files can be transferred over network to remote machines
- A special version of MSX-DOS can be deployed to the remote machine. Its transfers file system requests to the host machine, which then becomes a file server. Disk based MSX-DOS software can be used using this mode. MSX-DOS files MSXDOS.SYS and COMMAND.COM are not included in this package.
- Turbo Pascal 3.0
- Zork
kicad/USB to MSXNET adapter schematic + PCB layout for home makingsw/spyvspy/software that emulates server software and supports various boot protocols
If you need help, ask someone else to do it for you. There are RS-232 based variants of the adapter too. All through-hole version here and a breadboard version here.
You need Linux or Darwin/OSX and a sane build environment. wget utility is needed to fetch z80asm from savannah.
It should work in Windows with some POSIX-emulation layer but it's not proven.
- check out or download the source
- cd yamashnik/sw
- type make
- if all is well, msxnet and remote bootstrap files are in yamashnik/sw/spyvspy/build subdirectory
[ ] todo
This package is distributed as is. You can do whatever you want with it as long as you give credit to the authors.
- Viacheslav Slavinsky https://caglrc.cc
- Based on research and software by Tim Tashpulatov http://sensi.org/~tnt23/msx