III MSX Fair in Madrid

One year more and although it was at the end of 1996, it was the 1997 edition, its success was worse than the last edition, there were a less number of visitors, aproximately 60 users, and the number of groups too: MSX Power Replay, Second Foundation, Majara Soft, Padial Hardware, Analogy, MSX Lehenak, Cybertouch, Ñaca Soft y Cabinet, at least there were more programmers groups.

The fair was in 7th of December, en the "constitucion" feast weekend, maybe one of the reasons of the little number of visitors was the weather conditions, altough the day of the fair there were no problems, since three days before the fair there were daily snowfalls and ice in the main highways of Madrid, it is possible than anyone dessisted to come because of the weather.

As previous years, the fair was on the same place, in the same room as background, the organization was good but not correct because we planned different shows and they were cancelled, we give an inquiry and information about the different stands, the meeting started at 10:30.

Seeing the stands we can start with Padial Hardware, at first time he presented in a MSX fair his new project for the MSX, the now called MMSX, he had the schema of the future computer, the 32 bits slotexpander, a PC Keyboard interface, so we do not depend on old MSX keyboards, within a harddisk and a Z180 board running at 20 Mhz, with several series of RAM expansions (4 Mb). There were also 1 Mb RAM cards, the new SCSI interface, the last slotexpander version (8 bits) that works in 7 Mhz computers.

At the right there was the Majara Soft and Analogy stand, the "Poder Oscuro demo" was presented, the neverending game, Pazos showed a playable demo of the game "Sonyc", with full colour covers and ready to launch in the MSX market. He presented the new SCSI interface "MegaSCSI", able to get very high speeds, up to 800 Kb/s in a TR, in that stand you could reserve one unit of that magical interface. Pazos loaded different EVA´s files in full colour and PCM sound, we get madness with "Nikorin", a great jewel very funny, we could see many Saturn intros, Pazos explained the features of MegaSCSI, partition modes, drivers and other information that visitors wanted to know. He showed a new game called "Moonlight Saga", a great RPG game for TR and Cybertouch showed a new promo version of the game "Pang", similar to the arcade version, very good.

The next stand was MSX Power Replay, representing to Miri and Hnostar, we have the GFX9000 videocard and one Moonsound ready to show several new demos, a new promo of a 3D editor with a 3D map in VR mode and different graphics converters. In the Moonsound we presented a new demo called "Jungle Symphonies" and several productions from Internet, but the best thing we could present was the IDE interface, worldwide new, using economic harddisks or CD drivers we save money, we used many IDE harddisks to show the speed and features of the new interface, in a simple MSX-2 we got a 123 Kb/s transfer speed, going up to 500 Kb/s in the TR, to test the compatibility we plug it in a slotexpander with an SCSI LP interface, the final results were very good, everything work fine, furthermore we installed several SCSI devices, Iomega Floptical, harddisk, with floptical we can read 1,44 Mb disks in MSX. We sold Xtory I, the best sold CD in the world, a complete MSX compilation with many details, the MSX history using the software. We had an italian CD called "101 Programmi" with many DTP files and one 256 Kb kit for Music Module that was used with the "Unknow Reality" demo, we sold one DOS2 CRT, Covox, Logiboot and Slider 2. We had the new Hnostar magazine and as a novelty the great music CD "Energy from MSX" and "Tetris II" from RAM group, and we showed the modem in MSX.

In the same wall there was the next stand, Ñaca Soft, a new programmers group from Granada, they brought one MIDI keyboard Alesis and play different MSX melodies, working with C-Quenser, Morente make a good musind from "Goonies", the presented a game promo of "Combat Tetris" a special version of the world-know game, and a game with no name. Zorita (Cabinet) showed a game like Galaxian called "Vader".

MSX Lehenak, with a good stand presented many demos with their TR, they put the Iomega ZIP, full of slideshows, and the novelty, the MSX Lehenak magazine in the seventh number with Christmas lottery. The best thing was the disk that the magazine includes, a disk manager, Pennant II Race with SCC slot selector in english, Penguin Adventure in spanish and SCC tapes.

Close to Lehenak stand there was a BBS stand of Second Foundation and Calavera Feliz BBS, with several erotic CD´s with "young japanesee models", more than 4000 photos. The showed the MSX BBS and how it works.

There was a second hand stand with SCC cartidges, diferent MSX-2, ink cartridges, one Telemach joystick, different pheripericals...

A good fair, interesting and complete but not too shining because the little affluence of visitors and groups, a little disorganization arount the presentations, but we can enjoy with the MSX friends.