| RBSC group Completed projects Projects in development Licensing Other projects |
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The RBSC was founded in the end of 2015. Several Russian–speaking enthusiasts joined together in the desire to further develop the MSX platform, which they first encountered within the educational facilities in the USSR. That was in the last century, in the distant 90s. In the beginning, the group consisted of only 3 people, but then, as the group developed, several more enthusiasts joined in.
Today the group consists of 9 Russian–speaking people from several different countries, including Germany and Russia. We have electronics engineers to create hardware and programmers to develop software. There are also testers, administrators of our network resources, 3D model designer, webmaster and technical writer. It is interesting that our real jobs do not always correspond to what we are doing within the group. For example, some of us are electricians, museum administrators and teachers of foreign languages. We are different, but all of us are united by one thing — the love for the MSX platform.
Many of us became familiar with the MSX platform in schools or colleges. During 1985–1989 the USSR's Ministry of education purchased many sets of educational computers named "KYBT" (Set of Educational Computing Equipment) and "KYBT2" for schools, colleges and universities. So we've got many Yamaha MSX computer sets connected to each other via a local network. For us, the Soviet schoolchildren and students, those computers were the epitome of excellence. And since then, the nostalgic feelings for these wonderful computers have lived within us, although we have not always been aware about that. And that nostalgia lasted until we saw those computers for sale in online markets. Now each of us has at least one Yamaha MSX computer, and some even managed to make a collection of different versions of those computers.
After buying those long–desired computers, we found out that they were quite difficult to use without floppy drives and local network. Therefore, we began to collect ideas on how to make our experience with these computers more enjoyable. As a result, we have created several electronic devices that turned fairly limited computers into fully–fledged workstations where you could not only play games, but also draw or even program. The universal Carnivore2 cartridge that we created, contains not only additional RAM, but also a hard drive with CompactFlash card as media, two sound cards as well as the FlashROM chip for keeping the games and programs in it. Other devices created by us allow you to work with floppy disk images using a drive emulator (GoTek), listen to the music and also improve your computer with various upgrades. We also cloned several original Japanese devices for MSX computers. Those original devices are very hard to come by in the 21st century and they are usually extremely expensive.
Most of our projects are open–source. That is, we post them for free with all the source files into our repository. And anyone can download our files, order the necessary components and circuit boards from China and make a copy of the device that we developed. We also have devices created for commercial purposes — two cartridge platforms for individual developers, game studios and MSX software shops. At the moment, those inexpensive commercial cartridges help several MSX stores around the world to sell newly–developed games.
We hope that our projects will help you to improve your experience with MSX computers, allow you to once again feel the pleasure of dealing with this unique computer platform and to enjoy the colorful and fascinating games created for these computers in Russia, Japan and Europe.
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