V9990 is not part of MSX

I think it’s nice that Nishi confirms the word on the street that the V9990 was a result of the V9978 not being finished in time for the turboR.

V9990 clearly has an MSX connection, but it was of course never part of the MSX standard. The V9990 and OPL4 are a product of, and part of, the “post-commercial” MSX scene.

I think it is a bit late now to still be sour about Yamaha’s failure to complete the V9978 in time. But then again, Nishi was not being addressed very respectfully so I could understand that would make him a bit sharp in his answer.

The essence of MSX is expandability, so as long as this new hardware Nishi & co are working on is MSX standards compliant, we will continue to be able to use all of our V9990 and OPL4 hardware.

I don’t really agree with your choice of words “alien”, since the VDP was originally being custom built for the MSX the ties are clearly there from the inception, and thanks to Sunrise it has after all been part of MSX history for the past three decades.

I don't mean to sound harsh, but my opinion on Nishi's say is very clear:

I couldn't care less.

I think it is great that we have the V9990, OPL4, Ethernet, SD interfaces, Carnivores, WiFi, MP3 and the rest of those alien hardware.

And I think it would be nice if we had a (limited) VGA card, so we could run SymbOS with more screen space.

Do you know what definetely wouldn't be in the MSX universe? A machine with which our V9990 carts wouldn't work.

People are overreacting to Nishi's statements, and I agree that he was not being properly addressed.

The MSX standard defines a computer that is open and extensible (slots), and as result of that, we have the myriad of hardware extensions in our beloved machines. Quite a lot of these extensions -like the V9990- are not part of the MSX standard itself, but I hardly see how is that a problem. You can think -for example- in SCC: it was never part of the MSX standard, but that didn't prevent Konami from developing the chip and use it in their commercial MSX games.

So I vote to stop all this non-sense about whatever hardware should be part of the standard or not. I would love to see all the community united in supporting Nishi with his new MSX project, whatever that could be; it is the least we could do for the person that we owe so much.

My humble opinion: if you think along the lines of MSX2 or MSXturboR, and especially if you hear this story, for me it becomes even clearer, that if you would want to extrapolate what was commercially released to MSX3, it would be an MSXturboR with a V9990 (it's the closest actually released silicon to what you have to the unfinished V9978). The OPL4 also makes sense, as it is/was a follow up to the OPL chips that were part of the standard.
So, to me, if we speak about MSX3, the most logical thing is MSXturboR with V9990 and OPL4. Ideally, to make this combination more like what would/may have been the V9978, the V9958 of the turboR should be superimposed on the V9990. This is the only missing thing, at least not something easy to get.

OK, that's my dreaming

The fact that Mr Nishi rejects V9990 is more like a personal thing, I think, as is pretty clear from his story. And yeah, I understand that it reminds him of some bitter times that he'd rather forget.

V9990 is a (unofficial) part of MSX!

Me too.

I agree.

I think it's impossible because copyrights/patents and he can do much better now.

As for me, it depends on the project. For now, I'm not convinced by the cartridge to put in a current MSX. It makes me think about the MA-20. One of the most bad idea as extension we had on MSX because unsuitable to the standard.