Look what we've found! A MSX with MIDI!

Look what we've just found in a galaxy far far away...

Yup, that's right! An authentic Yamaha CX5MII from 1986!

 We were wandering in a huge garage sale in south of Paris. A perfect sunny sunday afternoon.

 All of a sudden, without a warning, it was right in front of us, sitting on a table in the last corner of a street!

 It looked so dusty and abandonned, we couldn't guess what it was. Somehow, we had the feeling this poor silicon beauty was already resigned meet the cruel fate of the dumps...



But as passionate of vintage audio chips, WE COULDN'T LET THAT HAPPEN! Especially after seeing that the beast had MIDI connectivity and RCA audio output!

So we decided to take it and give it a chance for a new musical life.

We inspected the package, we saw the video cable was missing. So we don't know yet if it works.

Still, it is garnished with a nice embedded SFG-01 midi expansion card, with a lovely YM2151 on the top.

But what is the YM2151 you may say?







Well, nothing much or should I say, nothing less than the preferred music chip in almost all mid-80's arcade games! I'm sure you know how it sounds...

What? Don't you remember Snow Bros, R-Type, Double Dragon? Really?
OK! Give yourself a favor: click the video on the left to hear some nice Ghouls and Ghost tunes, and educate your ears to early FM synthesis!


Sounds delicious, doesn't it? :)




Well, that's it for now. Or at least, until we're finished with the  soldering of the A/V cable.
Will it be mute to death or bursting in glory with cool FM tunes?
We'll let you know the outcome soon!

Ah, garage sales, how much we love them!

Stay tuned folks!