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Talk:MSX Video access method

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Creation of this page[edit]

The text that this article was based on was integrally moved from the main MSX#History article to here, because it was deemed to take too much place in the main article, and was of a more technical nature than the rest making the main text less readable. Mahjongg (talk) 13:16, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]


This article is somewhat bogus[edit]

First, the characteristics mentioned are not exclusive to the MSX standard, but in fact it's entirely related to the TMS9918 VDP. It's exactly the same for any machine based on this VDP, like the Colecovision, the Sega SG-1000, the Memotech MTX.

Second it gives the impression that the MSX architecture somehow made the VRAM access slower, and that's false: The MSX VRAM access has exactly the same restrictions and speed that all the mentioned machines that had the TMS9918 VDP.

all good points, but as as stated before the integral text came from the MSX-1 article before being "rescued" here, and only form the MSX article there is a linke to this article.
Obviously exactly the same restrictions are true for all other TMS9918 using systems, so in fact its more that the title of the article is wrong than its contents. P.S. please do sign your contributions. Mahjongg (talk) 23:24, 21 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've changed the lead to mention more consoles and home computers using TMS9918-family VDPs. Incidentally almost everything in this article, except for the scroll limits, applies as much to the TMS9918 successors in the MSX2, Master System, and Sega Genesis, NES Picture Processing Unit, and the Super NES S-PPU. But the first things it needs are copyedits for conciseness and inline citations to make it appear less original-researchy. --Damian Yerrick (talk) 21:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Merger[edit]

I object to the proposed merger, most of this article is about the reason for the historical inadequacies of porting Sinclair Spectrum games 1:1 to MSX1, its not about other systems that use the same VDP. Mahjongg (talk) 12:52, 6 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A lot of the same issues affected ports of games from other 8-bit home computers to late second-generation and third-generation consoles that use a TMS9918 VDP (CV) or its successors (SMS, MD) or Nintendo's reportedly TMS9918-inspired PPUs (NES, SNES), all of which use this same seek-and-read principle. If you intended it to be about Spectrum-to-MSX porting in particular, then it should have been titled as such. (Move time?) As of right now, all I get out of this article is complaining that too many Spectrum to MSX ports were quick and dirty. --Damian Yerrick (talk) 03:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not "complaining", just stating the fact, and explaining the reason for it. This WAS an integral part of the MSX article. I am not aware of any similar attempts on the same scale to port games from any other platform to TMS9918 like platforms that took place, my opinion for example with NES games was that they were written from scratch for the platform, but as this is written specifically for the case of MSX, not for any other porting attempts its also irrelevant. Also, you can lift some pertinent data from the article and incorporate it in the TMS9918 article, where relevant, without deleting this article. As for the non sequitur that a different more descriptive of the problem name should have been chosen, this was simply the name of the original paragraph in the MSX article. I get the impression that you have something against the conclusions in this article, and are simply seeking a way to remove it, that means there is IMHO a non neutral POV reason for the merger. So be it. Mahjongg (talk) 12:07, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have nothing against the arguments presented in the article. But if the effort to port games from specifically the Spectrum to specifically the MSX was unique in scale, I'd like to see reliable sources documenting this scale. Then there'd be justification to move the article to "Spectrum to MSX ports". --Damian Yerrick (talk) 02:54, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Those sources do exist, in fact some of them are in the article, Ill look if I can find more. Mahjongg (talk) 17:15, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sources do indeed exist, problem is no professional journal wants to touch the issue, so mainly online there are just blogs that talk about it, like these http://www.retrogamer.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35230

http://www.icongames.com.br/msxfiles/blog-en/laser-squad-msx/ http://retroasylum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1317 http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ZXSpectrum Mahjongg (talk) 01:29, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]