Hello its blogging time once again and its vintage computer time again! And for this entry were taking a look at this lovely little system, The Sony HitBit HB-55.
Originally released in Japan by Sony in October of 1983, retailing for ¥54,800, or around $245 at the time (Or around $745 today adjusted for inflation), and was Sony's first true game console.
Yes, this computer is considered a game console, long before the PlayStation was a twinkle in Ken Kutaragi's eye, Sony started experimenting in the gaming computer market with the HitBit Series. It wasn't the first time Sony attempted to enter the game market, as they had briefly conceptualized a game system all the way back in the 1970's, but that never left the early development stage.
The reason that the HitBit line are considered gaming computers was because they use the MSX Standard. Which was very popular with Japanese gamers.
Now I have briefly mentioned the MSX a few times in the past, but never went into full detail until now. Because although the standard is somewhat unknown to the general public, it definitely does have significance in video game history.
To tell it's tale,we need to go back to 1977 for a moment. 3 personal computers had made their way to the US market, the Apple II, TRS-80, and Commodore PET. these were the first personal computers available to the average consumer instead of just computer hobbyists, scientists and engineers. These computers became known as the 1977 Trinity and paved the way for many more machines of a similar ilk to follow.
However this was only the case for the U.S., across the world, it was a different story, and one of those countries that were different was Japan. While kit computers like the NEC TK 80 and the PANAFACOM Lkit-16, and fully assembled computers like the Sord M200 and the Sharp MZ-80k existed, they didnt spark quite the same kind of flame as the kit and fully assembled computers of the west.
Japan didnt get it's own Trinity of computers until 1982, with the introduction of the NEC PC-8801, the Fujitsu FM-7, and the Sharp X1. It was the introduction of these computers that the popularity of personal computers in Japan truly blossomed.
However once it did, a familiar problem occurred, There were a number of computers from different manufactures that were completely incompatible with each other, leading to a confusing and fragmented market. Enter Kazuhiko "Kay" Nishi, An entrepreneurial businessman interested in the personal computer market.
Nishi's computer career began in the late 70s while attending Waseda University when he got a job as both the co founder and an editor for I/O Magazine, an early computer magazine for the Japanese market. But as the magazine shifted its focus from computers to video games, Nishi decided to strike out on his own and form his own computer magazine. On May 24, 1977, Nishi founded ASCII Publishing Corporation with his friends, Keiichiro Tsukamoto and Akio Gunji, and the company published its first issue one month later in July.
By 1978, Nishi began to follow a new interest. He wasn't just writing about computers, He was helping people build them! After attending the National Computer Conference, he met and befriended Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. Gates was interested in expanding Microsoft's products internationally, Specifically to Japan. So in a partnership with ASCII, the two formed ASCII Microsoft, and by 1980, ASCII made 1.2 billion yen of sales from licensing Microsoft BASIC. Nishi also worked with NEC on designing the PC-8001, and with Kyocera to design the Kyotronic 85, which was sold to Radio Shack as the TRS-80 Model 100, which I've talked about previously.
By 1983, Nishi was both the director of ASCII Corporation and the Vice-President of Microsoft Japan, and it was obvious to him that the home computer market in Japan, while fragmented, was a great opportunity. He realized if he could come up with a standard that all manufactures could follow resulting with hardware and software that could work on any machine, the success could be huge.
Now you might ask yourself, "Well why not bring over the IBM PC standard rather than reinventing the wheel?" Well there's a number of different reasons for this, The first is that the IBM PC wasn't powerful enough to process the far eastern languages like Japanese, Nor was the resolution of IBM PC's available MDA, Hercules, or CGA displays high enough to show the complex characters of the Japanese alphabets like Katakana and Kanji. The second problem is that the Japanese market was fiercely competitive, Although IBM did sell systems like the 5550 (The Japanese equivalent of the IBM 5150) and the 5511JX (The Japanese equivalent of the IBM PCjr), they barely made a dent in the Japanese market.
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IBM wasn't the only western manufacturer wasn't the only western company to face these problems companies like Apple and Commodore faced the same problems when bringing their own computers to Japan.
Meanwhile in America, The company Spectravideo was attempting to get into the computer market. They were founded in 1981 By Harry Fox and Alex Weiss and got their start making games for the Atari 2600 VCS, the Commodore VIC-20 and the Colecovision. They also made the world's first ergonomic joystick, the Quickshot, developed by Harry Fox and Peter Law, and patented and released in 1982.
Spectravideo's answer was the SV-318, launching in January of 1983 for $299. It was a reasonably specd home computer with 16 color graphics, 16k of RAM, and 3 voice sound. But due to Specravideos poor marketing and the fierce competition, the system didn't make much of an impact in the U.S. Spectravideo also released the SV-328 which had a full travel keyboard and 64k of RAM.
After overhearing the development of the system, Nishi flew to Spectravideo's international headquarters in Hong Kong to see the prototype and give some pointers. When he saw the prototype, He thought it would be the perfect computer to base his new standard on. He approached Harry Fox to ask if he could borrow the design from him, to which Fox agreed. Inspired by the similar standard of the VHS format and the MX Missile, He called the standard the MSX Standard, With MSX being short for Machine with Software eXchangeability. The format was announced on June 27 1983, and the first machine to use the standard, The Mitsubishi ML-8000, was introduced on October 21 1983.
That's right, The MSX is turning 40 today! So taking a look one of these machines would be quite appropriate. And being that the system was also developed by Microsoft, It also marks Microsoft's entry to the video game market too. In fact there were even actual game consoles using the MSX technology, which ill discuss more in a future post.
But back to the HB-55. As previously mentioned, the HB-55 was introduced in October of 1983, retailing for ¥54,800, or around $245 at the time, and was available in 2 colors, red and grey. Sony called their MSX line the HitBit. Now you would think the name comes from the computing term "Bit" which is a unit of measurement for things like CPUs and "Hit" was chosen as a pairing, but apparently the name is actually a play on the word "Hitobito", which means "People" in Japanese. Clever!
The HitBit name was also used for Sony's line electronic typewriters as well as the SMC-777 computer (SMC means Sony Micro Computer) also introduced in 1983.
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The Sony SMC-777 was effectively a more advanced version of its predecessor, The 1982 Sony SMC 70. That was Sony's first computer sold to the general public, It was an Z80 based business computer running CP/M and was the first Computer system to use the 3.5 inch floppy disk format (which was also invented by Sony), And although its was a well designed machine, It barely made a mark on the industry. However it, along with its 70G and 70GP counterparts, did manage to be picked up by the video production market.
Inside the box was a HitBit BASIC guide, a HBI-55 cartridge (more on that later) the required cables, and of course, the computer itself.
The machine itself is typical for a home computer of the time, an all in one unit with a chiclet keyboard. The layout is pretty standard for an MSX, unlike later Japanese computer keyboards that use the JIS layout which is more or less the same as a traditional PC keyboard layout, the MSX uses a layout influenced by its SV-318 counterpart. The control and caps lock keys are separated, there's a graph key right of space for entering special graphics characters (Much like Commodores PETSCII graphics) as well as a select key right of that, a "Kana" key in place of the return key below it, which allows the user to type in Japanese Kana characters, and of course a massive set of cursor keys, which are used for both editing text and for controlling games. Above the keyboard is a set of 5 function keys (with 5 more available by holding shift) Home, Stop, Insert, and Delete keys to the right of those, and a Reset button. on the top is the quite nice and chunky Power button, a pleasing little diagram showing the peripherals plunging into the computer (which reminds me of the similar graphics on the front of the Sega Master System), the cartridge slot, and a small warning message in red saying to not swap any cartridges while the computer is turned on.
On the side are the two joystick ports labeled Controller A and Controller B which are your typical DB-9 joystick ports of the time. While you can plug Atari 2600 Joysticks into them, some MSX games were designed to use 2 buttons, much like the Sega Master System and the Genesis, Though the Sega Master System and the Genesis controllers are wired slightly different so they aren't fully compatible out of the box without an adapter.
On the back is the cassette port, RCA video and audio out, an RF output for TV's (with the channel selection switch to the left), An I/O connector (More on that later), a Centronics Printer Port, a power plug, and a extra power plug to plug your monitor into.
It's worth noting that, Although this computer was designed for the Japanese market, You can use the HB-55 (As well as other Japanese MSX computers) In North America, because the Japanese use NTSC video, just like in the United States. Unlike say computers from countries like the UK and Australia which use the PAL video standard and run on 240v power supplies. They do have a 100v power supply though, so while it looks like a standard 2 prong power cord, you can't plug it unto a 120 volt socket without a step down converter, So keep that in mind!
For monitors you had the option of using either a TV or a composite monitor. Sony advertised the HB-55 with their Trinitron line of TVs with tubes ranging in size from 14 inches to 27 inches.
In the flyer they picture it with the KV-14D2, which was also sold in the U.S. as the KV-1331.
While you can use any TV or composite to hook up the HB-55, A Trinitron would be a perfect pairing, not only being on brand, but also because the Trintron was famous for its high quality. Rather than use a traditional Shadow Mask used in most CRT TVs of the time, The Trinitron used an Aperture Grill. So instead of a thin metal sheet with small slits in either circles or stripes about 1 Mm apart, The Aperture Grill uses a single thin metal sheet with slits cut vertically through it.
The result of using an Aperture Grille is a picture thats brighter, sharper, and more colorful. and the development of it was Sony's ticket out of a failed gamble. Back in 1961, Sony’s dealers were requesting them to develop a color TV. Sony was hesitant at first because their previous and first foray into the Television market, The TV8-301 (The first fully transistorized TV set), only sold in modest numbers and color TV sets were barely selling at all in Japan. But the sales department managed to convince the engineering department to actually start work on the idea.
While visiting the 1961 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Or IEEE) trade show in New York, Sony got a look at the Chromatron system developed by Autometric Inc., A spin off of Paramount Pictures. Rather than use three electron guns and a matrix of holes to create the separation like the standard shadow mask picture tube did, the Chromatron used a single electron gun combined with a vertical grille of electrically charged wires at the front of the tube, using electronics to focus the electron beam onto the correct color. The beam focused onto the vertical green phosphor stripes present at the front of the screen, and the deflecting wires, placed about a half inch behind the phosphors, pushed the beam to either side, and light up the adjacent phosphor stripes. The result was a much brighter picture than conventional tubes using a shadow mask, and required minimal convergence tweaking, allowing the tube to be configured in the factory much easier, and less likely to experience convergence problems requiring adjustment over time. Seeing the potential, Sony bought the Autometric Chromatron system from Paramount and after a few more years, the Chromatron went on sale in 1964.
However, it ended up being a disaster! While the sets sold for a decent ¥198,000, It costed ¥400,000 to manufacture. Sony figured if they just stuck with it, they could get the manufacturing costs down by perfecting the process as the production line matured, But that wasn't the case, and to add insult to injury, In 1966, General Electric had introduced the Porta-Color system.
This switched the Shadow Mask Design from a Triad arrangement to a In-line arrangement, which produced about the same picture quality as the Chromatron.
Now Sony was stuck with a money losing Color TV that wasn't much better than the competition. As a result, Masaru Ibuka, The co-founder and president of Sony, requested the engineers to come up with some kind of replacement for the Chromatron. Susumu Yoshida asked engineer Senri Miyaoka if the three in-line electron guns could be replaced by a single electron gun with three individual cathodes, to reduce manufacturing cost. It turned out that it could, albeit with some focusing issues that were solved later. Combined with the simplified Aperture Grille, and they were left with a tube that was cheaper to produce and provided a much better picture quality then the Porta-Color and the Chromatron. The result was the Trinitron, introduced in Japan in October, 1968, and the rest of the world in 1969.
It was an instant hit and was so successful, Sony even won an Emmy award in 1973, just for the invention of the Trinitron!
Sony caught on to this and eventually released their own line of Tinitron based computers displays in 1983, known as the GDM (or Graphic Display Monitor) designed for CAD work. Although Sony rarely OEM'd the Trinitron to be used by other manufacturers, they did license the tubes to companies like Digital Equipment Corporation, IBM, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and most notably, Apple, who used Tinitrons in their early color Mac monitors. In fact the monitor for the first color Mac model, The Machintosh II, was a Trinitron display.
Sony continued to sell the Trinitron until 2008, When it, along with its other CRT TV counterparts were replaced by modern LCD and Plasma displays. However are still used among retro tech enthusiasts today.
But back to the HB-55, powering up the computer is different than most MSX's. most MSX's show a copyright message then drop you into BASIC, But with the HB-55 rather than dropping you into a BASIC prompt after the copyright message, here your dropped into Sony's Personal Databank software. You're greeted by a menu that gives you 4 different options, an address book, a scheduler, a memo pad, and BASIC (the bottom message says "cursor key please select from Return). These programs are pretty self explanatory address book will allow you to enter in someones Address (or name like I did) and their phone number with a brief description at the bottom, the scheduler allows you to put in date for events and brief descriptions of those, and the memo pad, will allow you to write small notes. you can select any one of the entries in these programs by going to file and selecting them. their you will get options to print, update (or edit), delete or stop (or cancel). by hitting update, you can more text to it and then either save or cancel the edit.
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However, not all of the cartidges for the MSX contained ROM, they also could could contain RAM. Remember that HBI-55 cartridge I mentioned earlier? Well that's an example of a RAM cartridge.
Its essentially a rebranded version of Yamaha's UDC-01 cartridge, which was used with Yamaha's own MSX computers, and both cartridges are interchangeable.
The HBI-55 is actually required to use the Personal Databank software, Because if you turn on the computer and attempt open up on of the programs, you'll get a message at the bottom saying: "Power OFF HitBit data cartridge Please insert cartridge and try again.".
You also have the tape recorder socket on the back. Sony provided the TCM-3000D Cassette Recorder for use with the HB-55 and the SMC-777.
The processes of loading and saving a program from tape is identical to machines like the TRS-80, Coco and Tandy 100, just insert a tape, type the CLOAD, wait for the program to finish loading, and hit run. To save a program. To save insert a blank tape (Making sure its rewound of course!) typethe CSAVE command with the name in quotes, and hit record. Once it finishes, rewind the tape to the beginning and eject.
You also have the option to load and save programs from 3.5 inch floppy disks. In 1984, Sony offered The HBD-50. this allowed you to load and save programs to single sided 360K disks. Like most MSX computers the disk drive controller plugged into the cartridge port, much like the Tandy Coco or the Commodore TED series.
Now going back to the cartridge slot again, the HB-55 only has 1, and later MSX's had 2 or more, so with the HB-55 you were stuck 1 cartridge slot for either a program on cartridge or using the disk drive. However there is a way around that. Remember that I/O connector on the back? Well it has the required pins to add more cartridge slots. In 1984, Sony also introduced the HBI-50, this plugged into the I/O connector and expanded the slots from 1 to 3.
For Joysticks, Sony provided the JS-55 joystick for use with the HB-55 and the SMC-777. This was fully MSX compatible, having two buttons and wired to the correct pins. The stick looks a bit like the gear shift lever from a car and its somewhat similar to the Arcade stick for the Sega Master System.
Speaking of Arcade sticks, there was also the JS-70 introduced a little bit later in 1986, having a classic red ball top and two buttons on both the left and right sides for left and right handed players.
There were even Wireless controllers! In 1984 Sony introduced the JS-75 Joystick. This came with the JS-C75 IR Receiver and took 2 AA batteries, with a switch to select between Player 1 and Player 2. You could also buy a second controller separately.
For printers, MSX computers are compatible with the popular Centronics standard of the time used with computers like the IBM PC. While you could use a printer from an IBM PC or the SMC-777, Sony did introduce an official 9pin Dot Matrix printer for the HB-55 in 1984, the PRN-M09. This was a rebadged Brother M-1009X.
For Hardware, Inside the HB-55 and other MSX computers lies a Zilog Z80 clocked at 3.58 MHz, 16K of RAM, 16K of VRAM, and 48K of ROM with 32K containing the BIOS and MSX BASIC V 1.0 and 16K for the Personal Databank software.
The graphics are generated with a TI TMS9918, the same chip used in systems like the The TI-99/4, The Sega SG-1000 and SC-3000 and the ColecoVision, providing graphics modes such as 40 x 24 and 32 x 24 text modes, A 256 x 192 Hires graphics mode, and a 64 x 48 low-res Multi color mode, and 32 sprites. All with 16 colors available (although the 16th is a transparent color).
The sound is generated with a Genereal Instrument AY-3-8910, providing 3 channels and 7 octaves of either mono or stereo 8 bit squarewave audio or white noise.
For 1983, those are some pretty decent specs for a home computer, putting it about on par with the Apple II and the C64 in terms of graphics. It was less suited for business uses due to its 40 column screen, but for games, it was pretty well suited. Although its biggest competior, The Nintendo Famicom had shipped 3 months prior and had vastly better graphics, It wouldn't start to take off until the following year due to the slow introduction of new titles, no third party developers supporting the system, and the early Famicoms having a defect in the CPU causing the system to crash on rare occasion and the controllers having a less than suitable set of square rubber buttons that could get stuck easily.
But when it did start to pick up steam it defiantly outshined the MSX, Especially when it came to scrolling. Compare both the MSX and Famicom ports of Tekhan (Later Techmo)'s Star Force, both released in 1985.