Yamaha CX5M
Yamaha MSX The Music Computer

The MSX computer range was the Japanese answer to the 8-bit Commodore 64 or Sinclair Spectrum.  Actually in many ways it was more functional as it had lots of expansion possibilities.  (Or maybe I should have said it was the Japanese answer to the BBC Model B which was used by many of us in the UK of a certain age in our school!)

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Many Japanese manufactures adopted the MSX standard and produced machines ran an early version of Microsoft Basic (version 2.0) allowing for interchangeable hardware and software applications.

 

Yamaha released a specific version of the MSX computer (which we in the music community know as the Yamaha CX5M) in 1984 with a 4 operator FM Synthesiser, (in effect a Yamaha DX21 / Yamaha FB01) included in the package. The Yamaha CX5M could run a range of both cartridge and cassette based software that allowed the computer to program sounds and run sequences on both the internal synthesiser and external instruments using MIDI.

 

And like most machines of this era you saved your programs and data to a cassette tape, data cartridge (which were expensive) or latter in the life cycle using an optional disk drive peripheral, on a 720Kb floppy disk. 

 

Although I have to admit I do play games on my Yamaha CX5M I acquired it principle to run music related software.  

 

Yamaha release a series of music cartridges know as the YRM cartridges.  A number of other software houses released released both cartridges and cassette based software.  Over the years I have acquire a number of these music related programs to run on my Yamaha CX5M.