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Philips MSX 2 NMS-8250

March 22nd, 2010 2 comments
Philips MSX 2 NMS-8250

Autopsy:

The Philips  NMS-8250, (NMS is short for “New Media Systems”) was a professional MSX 2 home computer for the high end market, with two built in floppy disk drives in a “pizza box” configuration. It featured professional video output possibilities, such as SCART for a better picture quality, and a detachable keyboard.

from Wikipedia:

MSX was the name of a standardized home computer architecture in the 1980s conceived by Kazuhiko Nishi, then Vice-president at Microsoft Japan and Director at ASCII Corporation. It is said that Microsoft  led the project as an attempt to create unified standards among hardware makers. Despite Microsoft’s involvement, MSX-based machines were seldom seen in the United States and Britain, but they were popular in other markets.

Eventually 5 million MSX-based units were sold worldwide. It’s unclear why this attempt would be based in Japan rather than in the US or why Microsoft would not mention this involvement in its history while giving well known coverage to IBM-PC  and Apple’s Macintosh, except for Nishi being the true sponsor and not Microsoft.

Nishi proposed MSX as an attempt to create a single industry standard for home computers. Inspired by the success of VHS as a standard for video cassette recorders, many Japanese electronic manufacturers along with GoldStar, Philips and Spectravideo built and promoted MSX computers. Any piece of hardware or software with the MSX logo on it was compatible with MSX products of other manufacturers. In particular, the expansion cartridge form and function were part of the standard; any MSX expansion or game cartridge would work in any MSX computer.

source: wikipedia msx.org msx.retro8bits.com sharksym.egloos.com