Konix Multi-System articles

The 32-bit TXE MultiSystem aka MultiSystem 2 aka Minstrel



http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/index.php?id=msu

 

Ok, so the guy that gave me the Business proposal for the Multisystem is a bit jumpy about it, so he's going to ask his former boss if it's OK to make it public. I don't really see what the problem is - it's interesting, but doesn't have anything controversial in there...

So, on to the pictures - these bits of plastic are going to be shipped to me in a week or so! Including the unpopulated PCB and the Production ASIC (he's keeping the open prototype ASIC because he thinks it's a nice ornament - fair enough!.

The guy unfortunately took two left pedals when he "borrowed" the kit so we'll have to live with that - I'm fairly sure this is one of the only cases left anywhere in the world.

The VHS of the Power chair from the other guy is being converted to DVD as we speak, hopefully I'll be able to youtube that ASAP.

Now that I've made contact with them, it is entirely concievable that you could have the powerchair reproduced by the origional designers to the origional spec if you had the money (20,000 UK pounds was, I believe the cost of designing and producing the prototype) Since the design already exists in their plans and sketches that they still have the build of the chair could probably be conissioned for lets guess 2000 uk pounds?

Sorry for the big pictures!

 

That is pure gold! I hope you take very good care of them. You could even lown them out to special retro console expos I guess.

 

Wow!
I feel like I'm back in 1989 again! That's so amazing to see actual bits of the Konix all these years later.
I know development was well underway on the software side after viewing all those developer videos, but it's intriguing to see that the hardware wasn't just mock up shells as I originally thought.

Fantastic find nonetheless! Hopefully you come across some software or source code now!

 

Yes, that's the main goal. Software can be emulated (there's a partial emulator already and one of the designers is writing his own now just for his amusement) so a working system isn't nessecary (but it would be nice!).

I was thinking that if I could get a hold of the circuit diagram it would probably be quite straight forward to populate the empty PCB seeing as I'll have the custom ASIC that did most of the work - however:

a) that would be a huge stroke of luck
b) there isn't any code for a BIOS that I know of in the same way as we can't currently find source or binary images from games
c) I'm in two minds as to wether to populate the board or keep it blank - it has it's own unique-ness that it's unpopulated.

Now, if only there were two unpopulated boards!

It is nice to see that it really wasn't vapourware. I'm not sure how many prototype chairs or Multisystem units existed at the time, but there must have been several.
What's even more exciting then these bits of plastic though is that there MUST be at least one real machines somewhere. I won't stop until I find it.

Certain things may happen after March next year that I can't divulge just yet that will really raise the profile of the Multisystem and we may well see all sorts of bits appear!

I'll keep you all posted and share whatever I can. You'll be the first to know.

 

Awesome to hear!
I remember being intrigued by this system way back in 89 when I first saw pics in EGM. Being an American gamer, I found it extremely interesting that there was a British effort in the 16 bit format wars.

Seeing your pics and hearing the latest developments take me back to those magical years when games and consoles truly fascinated me. I hope to see more soon!

 

I've managed to get in touch with John Matheson (one of the founders of Flare) who designed both the Panther, Flare one, and Jaguar.

Do you have questions you'd like me to put to him?

I think he will be better at recalling the technical stuff (possibly) than Martin Brennan who I've already interviewed for the website.

You can talk about all 3. But I don't think he'll have data, pictures, equipment or anything like that to share - just memories.

 

Yeah, ask him if they are the same company that made a pretty poor Saturn isometric platformer called WIZZ. It just screams Euro computer style gaming design.

Yakumo

 

This was the guy that designed the custom chips - he wasn't a programmer for a games company. This is the daddy of the Jaguar / Panther / Konix / Nuon and who's now responsible for Nvidia graphics chips.

 

Bit of an update guys:

I've been allowed by Chris to share the Konix Multi-system Business plan document from 1989. This is what Konix gave to potential developers to tempt them to invest in the system.
It is interesting reading - the bit I especially like is at the back where they give the B.O.M for the Multisystem and you can truely see that the RAM is one of the most expensive parts of the machine.

Now, if only I could find a circuit diagram, we could practically build one bar a few 'special' components...

http://www.konixmultisystem.co.uk/downloads/KMS_Business_Plan.pdf


Cheers,
Mark.

 

That link gives me a 404.

edit: it works if you change PDF to pdf

 

Sorry - I used upper case for the PDF extension when I should have used lower case as the file actually is.

The link has been fixed and you should be able to download it now. Thanks for letting me know.

 

Any idea what the IC518128F is? It's the most expensive part other than the floppy drive, but a quick google search yielded nothing. At first I thought it might be the 8086 or ASIC but both of those have separate line items.

 

Yes, I believe it's 128k of memory.

 

It's probably an equivalent part to this:

Motorola Pseudo Static RAMs:
MCM518128 , MCM51L8128 , MCM51LV8128 128Kx8 Bit CMOS Pseudo Static Random Access Memory

I'm 100% certain it's RAM though as it's so gosh darn expensive and this shows really well why manufacturers were so worried about pushing up the price of their machines and reducing their potential profits by putting too much RAM in a machine - and programmers always wanted more as if there was money to burn.
It's a vicious circle though - less RAM, less impressive games (or at least less games as it wouldn't be worth the effort to try to optomise and cheat some extra capacity from storage etc). More RAM, less people can afford to buy the machines, no-one buys your software, you go out of business.

 

This reminds me I still need to write a post for a cancelled game for this unreleased system that I know nothing about except for an image.

 

Please elaborate - I thought I'd talked to most of the people involved.

 

Oh, I'm not related to the design of the project at all.

What I meant to say is that I've planned to write a smallish article for unseen64 about a TXE game ( despite I have nigh to zero information ) but never did until now.
This game attracted my attention because of the 8 planned games most of them were conversion from other format like Team Suzuki, Moonstone, Interior ( should be Scavenger 4/Novastorm) but this one I've never heard about before.

By the way 386 chip was clocked at 25MHZ, and the system was capable of display 65.546 colours.

 

Where have you got this information from, because talking to the guys who worked in-house for MSU, they only mentioned a game they were working on called 3D Space. Also, there was talk of Robocod and one of the Lotus games being worked on by external developers. But I've never seen any talk of the games you mention written anywhere for the TXE(and I've seen a lot of games magazines from the era) and no-one involved has mentioned these games.

I'd be very interested to see your source. If you would be willing to share it here I think others would be interested to - and it gives us another lead to tracking down source code, binaries or devkits.

Thanks, Mqark.

 

My sources are two articles from old mags.

For the first one ( strangely enough for me ) I haven't keep track the issue it come from but it is an italian magazine ( GamePower or Consolemania ):


For the second one I need to check my external HDD, will post later.