ESE SDisk a new MMC/SD interface from Japan

When most of us thought that regarding mass storage devices for MSX we had been seen everything, the Japanese user NigaHP introduces the ESE SDisk cartridge in cooperation with other members such as Hiroyuki, Yūkun, Takeda, Mikasen, OKEI and Lefty who provided technical support.

ESE SDisk is based on MegaSD by ESE Artists' Factory (Kazuhiro Tsujikawa), well-known developer of the Mega-SCSI interface and 1ChipMSX. It mainly consists of a MMC/SD interface with SRAM. The main features are:

MSX/MSX2/MSX2+/MSXturboR compatible.
2 MMC/SD card slots.
1024kB SRAM with battery backup (128kB Nextor + 896kB ESE Ramdisk).

What makes this product special is the improvement made at card reading level which allows to play videos like this with a regular MSX2 computer (Z80, Screen 5 256x192 pixels, about 30 fps and PCM 15.7 kHz through OPLL soundchip thanks to the technique developed by Grauw). Original tools created by the Japanese user Ryun.

This product is already on sale on Kadenken for the price of ￥14,740 (about 115 €).

Relevant link: ESE SDisk manual (Japanese)
Relevant link: Niga's website

Comments (14)

By Pac

Scribe (6960)

07-02-2021, 17:37

Thanks Guillian for help.

By hamlet

Scribe (4105)

07-02-2021, 18:30

This is nice. And fast.

By PingPong

Prophet (4093)

07-02-2021, 19:34

screen 5? did you mean screen 2 i guess... there is no bandwidth to push 24kb of data 30 times / second on vram = it means 720 Kb/sec!

By Louthrax

Prophet (2436)

07-02-2021, 19:39

Was about to say the same thing. Or the cartridge can be programmed to send directly SD Card data to the VDP port without going through the CPU ??

By PingPong

Prophet (4093)

07-02-2021, 20:06

in every situation the vdp would not sustain a such fast data transfer rate. plus, msx was not created to allow a DMA like operations despite the z80 had the ability to tristate itself.

By tfh

Prophet (3315)

07-02-2021, 20:21

PingPong wrote:

screen 5? did you mean screen 2 i guess... there is no bandwidth to push 24kb of data 30 times / second on vram = it means 720 Kb/sec!

Maybe they don't redraw the full screen, only the changed pixels/tiles?

By alexito

Paladin (761)

07-02-2021, 23:02

I try to buy one but NigaHP homepage say is SOLD OUT!!!

DAMMIT!!!!!!!

By djh1697

Paragon (1696)

07-02-2021, 23:46

Nice product, although I have no spare slots, just a thought, why didn't they use a none battery based system for the SRAM?

By Grauw

Ascended (10707)

08-02-2021, 00:35

PingPong wrote:

screen 5? did you mean screen 2 i guess... there is no bandwidth to push 24kb of data 30 times / second on vram = it means 720 Kb/sec!

You don’t need to update every pixel every frame. The Bad Apple video works with differential updates. Other than that I do not know the details of the technical improvement at the card reading level, and would be interested to read more about it .

By gdx

Enlighted (6104)

08-02-2021, 02:18

alexito wrote:

I try to buy one but NigaHP homepage say is SOLD OUT!!!

DAMMIT!!!!!!!

You might be lucky because I'm waiting for a new Sound cartridge. I spoke with Popolon and he said that we can quite easily add a supercapacity in its Sound cartridge. Popolon has provided this feature only for himself at the last minute to test the cartridge on MSXs without drive. So i will do it for me too. If it is successful, I will put a tutorial in the forums. A MegaSram SCC+ of 2048kB would be great.
I am already working on a Rom loader.

By Ivan

Ascended (9341)

08-02-2021, 20:29

The legendary Japanese ESE Artists' Factory are back? It's really good news

By inchl

Expert (76)

10-02-2021, 12:17

Grauw wrote:

PingPong wrote:

screen 5? did you mean screen 2 i guess... there is no bandwidth to push 24kb of data 30 times / second on vram = it means 720 Kb/sec!

I have been watching those videos with great interest. Do you know the technique used to determine what pixels are considered moving/delta pixels?
In NOPs MMM-reboot we also use full screen animation using partial updates. The most difficult part is analyzing the source video. Some videos have noise pixels which need to be ignored by the algorithm (we intend to use real videos fragments from woods, grass closeups etc.). I was hoping to improve our algorithm. Knowledge about stuff like delta thresholds is what I am looking for...

By gdx

Enlighted (6104)

14-08-2021, 15:28

Ivan wrote:

The legendary Japanese ESE Artists' Factory are back? It's really good news Big

I did not pay attention but it's a deceit. ESE-RAMDisk from Niga-HP is not an ESE-RAM at all but a MegaFlashRom with ASCII mapper (8/16K). It contains no SRAM.

https://www.kadenken.com/view/item/000000001141?category_pag...

Here is the PCB of the ESE-RAMDisk Maximun:
https://twitter.com/zan2zanjp/status/1326475377552752640

The ESE-SDisk is the same think with an SD interface (double slot). FlashRom size is 1MB instead of 2.
https://www.kadenken.com/view/item/000000001150?category_pag...

By gdx

Enlighted (6104)

15-08-2021, 14:22

Sorry, I was misled by pictures and a description. This is indeed ESE-RAM compatible.

ESE SDisk a new MMC/SD interface from Japan

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