Recently I purchased the Slotexpander made by Tecnobytes. Ordered this through Mika Tahti, it costed me quite some money 235,= euro ( incl shipment ).
Yes, it is a high price, but I was willing to pay the price for a good product.
But is it an actual good product? No not all. Even worse, it's actually a disaster, that is able to harm your MSX computer.
First off, package arrived and opened during a stream on Twitch, it was well-packaged and also we hooked it up right away to the MSX, to see it in action.
A thing we noticed quite fast, every sound device's volume was decreased by 50%.
So panasoft fmpac, got replaced, by MCWF FM-Pac, and cables got ordered for the Philips Music Module, to provide output using external cables, for the stream.
Even with the other FM-Pac PSG was overruling the other sound chips, but this time much less, it wasn't satisfying, but it was a workable solution.
After using this expander for 3,5 day it even got worse. My Philips NMS8245 MSX2, got damaged.
Typical it just happens to be after using the slotexpander for a few days.
Response from "Tecnobytes" :
"There is no way for the Expander Slot to perform any kind of incorrect function on any MSX MACHINE that causes this type of problem. He's protected. Or you used it improperly."
Used it improperly?? Seriously, that's the worse answer they could provide.
How was it all setup:
Memory mapper in top slot, slotexpander, in backslot.
Slotexpander, was filled up with Nowind, FM-Pac, and SCC, I left the Music Module out since I was awaiting the cables.
The slotexpander even had it's own powersupply hooked up. So improper usage is out of the question here.
What happened? Well, the harm that has been done, results in MSX-Audio as well for MSX-Music from the FMPac aren't being outputted over the TV no more.
Only PSG, and SCC, MSX-Audio external audio ouput does work btw.
This has also been tested without the slotexpander.
Tested the Music cartridges in a different MSX everything is working fine, so the cartridges are fortunately not broken.
So thanks to Tecnobytes we now have a slotexpander that's able to harm your MSX computers.
Why was this posted, since both parties refused to offer a workable solution, I decided to go public with the harm that's been done by their products.
