website/content/museum/sony-hit-bit-f700.md

---
title: Sony Hit-Bit F700
categories:
- Computers
types:
- Home Computer
origins:
- Japan
years:
- '1985'
cpus:
- Zilog Z80A
params:
  name: Hit-Bit F700
  image: /media/museum/photos/sony_hbf700_1.jpg
  company: /companies/sony
  company_name: Sony
  specs:
  - label: NAME
    value: Hit-Bit F700
  - label: MANUFACTURER
    value: Sony
  - label: TYPE
    value: Home Computer
  - label: ORIGIN
    value: Japan
  - label: YEAR
    value: '1985'
  - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE
    value: MSX Basic
  - label: KEYBOARD
    value: Full-stroke keyboard with separated keyboard
  - label: CPU
    value: Zilog Z80A
  - label: SPEED
    value: 3.58 MHz
  - label: RAM
    value: 256 KB
  - label: VRAM
    value: 128 KB
  - label: ROM
    value: 64 KB
  - label: TEXT MODES
    value: 40 x 25 / 80 x 25
  - label: GRAPHIC MODES
    value: 9 graphic modes, the most used is 256 x 212 with 256 colors
  - label: COLORS
    value: '256'
  - label: SOUND
    value: 3 voices, 8 octaves
  - label: SIZE / WEIGHT
    value: Unknown
  - label: I/O PORTS
    value: RGB, 2 x cardridge slots, Centronics, Floppy Disk, Joystick, Mouse
  - label: BUILT IN MEDIA
    value: 3'5 disk drive unit (720 KB double side, double density)
  - label: OS
    value: optional MSX DOS on diskette
  - label: POWER SUPPLY
    value: Built-in PSU
  - label: PRICE
    value: Unknown
  tabs:
  - photos
  - emulators
  - links
  photos:
  - title: FRONT
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/sony_f700_front_1.jpg
  - title: CLOSE-UP
    subtitle: ''
    text: Built-in disk drive, controller ports and keyboard connector.
    image: /media/museum/photos/sony_hb700s_front_2.jpg
  - title: REAR
    subtitle: ''
    text: ''
    image: /media/museum/photos/sony_hb700s_rear_1.jpg
  emulators:
  - title: fMSX for MS DOS Homepage
    url: http://www.komkon.org/~dekogel/fmsx.html
    platform: MS DOS
    text: ''
  - title: BlueMSX
    url: http://www.bluemsx.com/
    platform: Windows
    text: Excellent free MSX emulator
  - title: BrMSX
    url: http://www.lsi.usp.br/~ricardo/brmsx.htm
    platform: Windows
    text: A Bresilian MSX Emulator written in 100% assembler
  - title: CompuJunk's MSX Emulator
    url: http://ftp.castel.nl/msx/
    platform: Windows
    text: A MSX1 and MSX2 Emulator
  - title: RuMSX
    url: http://members.ping.at/lexlechz/msx.html
    platform: Windows
    text: A MSX Emulator for Win95 and Win NT + Direct X
  - title: Virtual MSX
    url: http://www.msxnet.org/vmsx/
    platform: Windows
    text: An other MSX 1 emulator for Win 95 / Win NT
  - title: fMSX for MAC OS Homepage
    url: http://www.emulation.net/msx/index.html
    platform: Apple
    text: ''
  - title: fMSX official Homepage
    url: http://www.komkon.org/fms/fMSX
    platform: Other platform
    text: 'fMSX is a portable MSX emulator ported on : Amiga OS, Mac OS, MS DOS, OS/2, Sony Playstation, Risc OS, Towns OS, Unix / X, Win95 / NT, X68K.'
  - title: fMSX32
    url: HTTP://WWW.RETRODEV.INFO/
    platform: Other platform
    text: The excellent fMSX, but ported onto the GamePark GP32 handheld console.
  - title: openMSX - The MSX emulator that aims for perfection.
    url: http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/
    platform: Multiplatform
    text: This new MSX emulator can reproduce, among many other MSX, MSX2and MSX2+ machines, both Panasonic Turbo-R models. Be sure to get the catapult frontend and the system roms from FUNET.
  links:
  - title: MSX Faq
    url: http://www.faq.msxnet.org
    text: Here, you can find near all hardware pieces related to MSX.
  comments:
  - author: Oscar (Canada)
    date: Friday 19th June 2015
    text: I have this exact computer and monitor for sale. They are in their original box with all accessories and were hardly used. i am the original owner. Contact me at oscart@total.net if interested in buying. Thanks.
  - author: A. Trent Phillips (United States (Great Lakes))
    date: Sunday 8th April 2012
    text: |-
      This computer looks like it has just enough capacity to support a simple GUI, like the old Commodore 64 could support a variant of GeoWorks.

      But then again, it was quite an effort to get that to happen (required hand written 6502 Assembler). Would have been neat though...
  - author: Rita H arris (Racine Wisconsin)
    date: Saturday 15th June 2002
    text: If you want to sell the Sony Hit-Bit plaese contacact me.
  related:
  - /museum/canon-v-25
  - /museum/jvc-hc-95
  - /museum/kawai-kmc-5000
  - /museum/msx-2
  - /museum/panasonic-fs-a1
  - /museum/panasonic-fs-a1f
  - /museum/sony-hit-bit-f1xd
  - /museum/sony-hit-bit-f500
  - /museum/sony-hit-bit-f9
  - /museum/sony-hit-bit-g900f
  oc_id: 137
  source:
    url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230503135018/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=137
    date: '2023-05-03'
---

The Sony HIT BIT 700f was the successor of the Sony [HIT BIT 500](/museum/sony-hit-bit-f500/). It met the [MSX 2 standard](/museum/msx-2/).

It was sold as a semiprofessional computer; it came with a program on disk called HiBrid, which can be seen as a graphical shell around MSX-DOS. It had a saved CMOS memory, which held time, date, password or screen definition.

It also came with a MSX-DOS floppy, the MSX operating system, made by Microsoft, which looks like CP/M.

**Ewout van Duursen reports:**\
This computer has 256 KB RAM. But it only uses 64 KB in MSX-DOS. This was the only MSX2 on which you could play "Nemisis 2" from a disc ("Cracked from cartridge of coarse"). The memory was divided in 4 banks of 64 KB, Which where divided in 16 KB. The first 16 KB was used for BIOS. The next 16 KB was used for MSX-Basic. The next two banks where "free", except for the last couples of bytes. You could switch banks by "peeking" at adress &hFFFF. To play most games you had to peek 255,-1 for proper memory configuration.

More information from **Bramman**:\
• All hitbit series had a country code. The HB700f was the US version. I had a HBF700-D with a german keyboard.\
• The exact peek for games was poke -1,255. Which was irritating, because all other MSX's in Holland used Poke -1,170 (mostly Philips MSX's). On that peek the HB-700 rebooted, for every copied game the autoexec.bas had to be changed ;)\
• The 256 KB RAM was called *256 Memory Mapper*. It was built-in the HB-700, but you could buy a separate one as a cartridge.\
• The machine was supplied with a GUI, installed separatly from the disk. This Gui looked alot like the Atari and Apple GUI's.\
• The MSX-DOS was in ROM. Normal MSX's I've seen had MSX-dos on a disk. On this one you could switch to normal MSX-basic with a command.

**Manuel Bilderbeek** corrects and specifies:\
\- MSX-DOS and other OS's are always loaded from disk, never from ROM except for a few rare Russian Yamaha machines that have CP/M in ROM.\
\- MSX-DOS can only handle 64kB RAM, because of the Z80 and CP/M.\
\- There's no such thing as 4 banks of 64kB RAM, unless the author means the physical RAM chips, but I don't know about that.\
\- This machine contains indeed 256kB RAM, and as is the case with all MSX machines with more than 64kB, it uses the memory mapper mechanism, which works with blocks of 16kB that can be switched.\
\- Under MSX-BASIC operation, the lower 32kB of the Z80 addressing space have the BIOS and BASIC ROM switched in, as with all MSX machines.\
\- Address 0xFFFF is not for switching banks but for selecting the secundary slot of that slot. And one does not PEEK there to do that, but one POKEs.\
\- The POKE that is mentioned should be POKE -1, 255. Here -1 is the same as 0xFFFF. This is to select the sub slot (3) with the RAM (memory mapper) in slot 3. Some old/bad software fails to select the RAM and hence this needs to be done from BASIC before loading. There's also a generic POKE to 0xFFFF to select the right subslot with the RAM that works on any MSX.\
\- There never was a US version of this machine.\
\- The 700F is the French version. The P is the PAL (international) version. D is the German version indeed.\
\- Many external memory mapper cartridges to expand the RAM were sold.\
As you can see, most of this info is also valid for many other MSX machines.

<table> <tr> <td></td> <td>We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system, please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.</td> <td></td> </tr> </table>