Wiki editing discussion | MSX Resource Center (ページ 28/188)

Paladin (686)

08-01-2019, 10:47

gdx wrote:

According this old auction below, the MB-H50N is only written on the box not on model sticker nor on MSX case. The MB-H50 seems to be widespread because of cheap MSX2s that have arrived quickly. It had to be sold in Japan during less than a year.
https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/t616893186

That makes me wonder. Perhaps the machines themselves are identical, but the box content is different?

By gdx

Enlighted (6207)

08-01-2019, 13:22

I found the difference (It written on the box):

MB-H50N -> No joypad

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6480)

08-01-2019, 13:29

gdx wrote:

I found the difference (It written on the box):

MB-H50N -> No joypad

By hamlet

Scribe (4106)

08-01-2019, 14:54

That would have been a good question for a christmas quiz! Congratz gdx!

By sdsnatcher73

Prophet (3951)

08-01-2019, 21:15

gdx wrote:

I found the difference (It written on the box):

MB-H50N -> No joypad

Wow, a keyboard free MSX with sound illumination and an optional joypad. No wonder they sold as hot breads ;).

By Grauw

Ascended (10767)

20-01-2019, 15:27

Hey,

On several wiki pages, the 4 blocks of memory of the slot system are often referred to as banks. Quote: “MSX computers use two systems that allow to switch 16KB on four fixed areas. These area are called banks.” However, the term for these areas is pages, see:

https://konamiman.github.io/MSX2-Technical-Handbook/md/Chapt...

I tried correcting it a couple of times on various wiki pages, but it doesn’t seem to stick, it doesn’t survive subsequent edits by others. Can we use the proper terms?

The general term bank refers to what is paged in, not where it is paged in. For example, in a 256K ASCII8 ROM, it has 32 banks, which can be bank switched into 4 pages of 8K each. For memory mappers banks are referred to as segments, which is the terminology used by the mapper support routines. For the slot system, they are called slots.

In other words, the switchable areas of the address space are pages, and the chunks of memory you select in these pages by index are banks (or segments, or slots). Used in a sentence: “you select slot 2-1 in page 1”, “you select segment 11 in page 2” or “you select bank 7 in the 8000H-9FFFH page”.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6480)

20-01-2019, 16:00

I guess your last example should be "“you select bank 7 in the 8000H-BFFFH page”.

See this discussion; https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/hardware/sony-hb-g900ap-d... (gdx explanation is on page 2)

For the rest, i think gdx has already explained the choice of the 'bank' word.

By Grauw

Ascended (10767)

20-01-2019, 16:05

mars2000you wrote:

I guess your last example should be “you select bank 7 in the 8000H-BFFFH page”.

I was taking a ROM mapper with 8K pages as example.

mars2000you wrote:

For the rest, i think gdx has already explained the choice of the 'bank' word.
See this discussion; https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/hardware/sony-hb-g900ap-d... (gdx explanation is on page 2)

Well I think that’s a poor explanation. Using consistent terminology is important. If you invent your own (or rather, swap the meaning of the terms “bank” and “page” around), and then teach it to everybody by using it on the wiki, then it’s going to be confusing when cross-referencing with official documentation, and people start to mix the terms even more than they are already.

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6480)

20-01-2019, 16:06

I've just added the link. Google was required to found it.

Your last example is a good indication of the confusion. You first define a page as a 16kB block (as used in the slot map), then you switch to a rom mapper with 8kB blocks, what's contrary to your definition!

By Grauw

Ascended (10767)

20-01-2019, 16:14

The distinction is very simple: “page” refers to an area of addressable RAM. There are several page sizes, e.g. the 16K of the slot system, the 8K of various mega ROM mappers, even the 256-byte pages of the R800 memory fetch lines. “Bank” refers to what memory is paged in. Segment and slot are aliases for bank, indicating more specifically which mapping mechanism is used.

The only confusion is using “page 0, 1, 2, 3”, since that implicitly refers to the 16K-sized pages of the slot system. For other page sizes, you need to be explicit about which memory address range they span.

However changing the term “page” to “bank” does not remove this confusion at all. Rather, it increases the confusion by using different terms from the other documentation.