Msxbook OneChipMSX MSX2 Computer

I thought this concept looked familiar and indeed it's by the same company which makes those portable 386 and 8086 machines. LGR covered them a while ago: https://youtu.be/6bODiZ5bP84

Genuine question: is this actually useful without a cartridge slot?

I thought that the MSX kind of depended on cartridges.

> is this actually useful without a cartridge slot?

It has 2 of them actually. One standard one on the back and an internal one that I think doesn't use the standard connector that is intended for hardware expansion. Despite what the product page says, the internal slot is mapped to slot 2 and not slot 1 in the MSX mapping system, so it doesn't conflict with the external cartridge slot.

That said, most computers of this era including the MSX had a fair bit of software released on cassette tape as well. There were also disk drives and software released on disk as well.

Looking at some of the more famous games for the system: Metal Gear was released on cartridge, but Snatcher was released on floppy disk with an expansion cartridge that contained extra RAM and a sound chip. It seems this system has support for that expansion builtin though.

This looks delightful. Is it possible to get it to boot to BASIC?

I really want to get my son something which looks like daddy's laptop but recreates some of the early joys of that level of computing.

It has slots. But anyway you do bot need slots at all. MSX was mostly tapes at that time. I’m sure there is either a simulator, or you can generate the sound from binary files.