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

title, categories, types, origins, years, cpus, params

title	categories	types	origins	years	cpus	params
Sony Hit-Bit F700	Computers	Home Computer	Japan	1985	Zilog Z80A	name image company company_name specs tabs photos emulators links comments related oc_id source Hit-Bit F700 /media/museum/photos/sony_hbf700_1.jpg /companies/sony Sony label value NAME Hit-Bit F700 label value MANUFACTURER Sony label value TYPE Home Computer label value ORIGIN Japan label value YEAR 1985 label value BUILT IN LANGUAGE MSX Basic label value KEYBOARD Full-stroke keyboard with separated keyboard label value CPU Zilog Z80A label value SPEED 3.58 MHz label value RAM 256 KB label value VRAM 128 KB label value ROM 64 KB label value TEXT MODES 40 x 25 / 80 x 25 label value GRAPHIC MODES 9 graphic modes, the most used is 256 x 212 with 256 colors label value COLORS 256 label value SOUND 3 voices, 8 octaves label value SIZE / WEIGHT Unknown label value I/O PORTS RGB, 2 x cardridge slots, Centronics, Floppy Disk, Joystick, Mouse label value BUILT IN MEDIA 3'5 disk drive unit (720 KB double side, double density) label value OS optional MSX DOS on diskette label value POWER SUPPLY Built-in PSU label value PRICE Unknown photos emulators links title subtitle text image FRONT /media/museum/photos/sony_f700_front_1.jpg title subtitle text image CLOSE-UP Built-in disk drive, controller ports and keyboard connector. /media/museum/photos/sony_hb700s_front_2.jpg title subtitle text image REAR /media/museum/photos/sony_hb700s_rear_1.jpg title url platform text fMSX for MS DOS Homepage http://www.komkon.org/~dekogel/fmsx.html MS DOS title url platform text BlueMSX http://www.bluemsx.com/ Windows Excellent free MSX emulator title url platform text BrMSX http://www.lsi.usp.br/~ricardo/brmsx.htm Windows A Bresilian MSX Emulator written in 100% assembler title url platform text CompuJunk's MSX Emulator http://ftp.castel.nl/msx/ Windows A MSX1 and MSX2 Emulator title url platform text RuMSX http://members.ping.at/lexlechz/msx.html Windows A MSX Emulator for Win95 and Win NT + Direct X title url platform text Virtual MSX http://www.msxnet.org/vmsx/ Windows An other MSX 1 emulator for Win 95 / Win NT title url platform text fMSX for MAC OS Homepage http://www.emulation.net/msx/index.html Apple title url platform text fMSX official Homepage http://www.komkon.org/fms/fMSX Other platform 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 url platform text fMSX32 HTTP://WWW.RETRODEV.INFO/ Other platform The excellent fMSX, but ported onto the GamePark GP32 handheld console. title url platform text openMSX - The MSX emulator that aims for perfection. http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/ Multiplatform 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. title url text MSX Faq http://www.faq.msxnet.org Here, you can find near all hardware pieces related to MSX. author date text Oscar (Canada) Friday 19th June 2015 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 date text A. Trent Phillips (United States (Great Lakes)) Sunday 8th April 2012 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 date text Rita H arris (Racine Wisconsin) Saturday 15th June 2002 If you want to sell the Sony Hit-Bit plaese contacact me. /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 137 url date https://web.archive.org/web/20230503135018/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=137 2023-05-03

The Sony HIT BIT 700f was the successor of the Sony HIT BIT 500. It met the MSX 2 standard.

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.

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