RE:birth
Posted by Javi Lavandeira in Fun, Gadgets, Hardware, Japan, MSX, Retro, Technology | January 15, 2015Today I had to go to Akihabara for work and something caught my attention in an electronics shop not far from the station:
What’s is this sorcery!!?? MSX cartridges? Sound boards??
In the background there was playing one of Salamander‘s themes, with perfect timing and perfect instruments. Initially I thought this was a custom-built MSX computers, but it wasn’t.
Keep reading for the details.
RE:birth
I asked the shop owner, Mr. Nakagawa, and he very politely explained that this is his project, RE:birth. In Japan there are many users of old computers (X68000, PC-98, MSX…) who enjoy listening to their favourite game soundtracks. However, not everybody keeps their old hardware, and many people find that using software emulators isn’t a very good solution.
RE:birth solves this problem by using the actual sound chips that came inside these old machines, and it sounds awesome. Thanks to its modular design the user can choose among a series of FM sound generators, even many at the same time. The basic module is the RE:birth motherboard. This board (pictured at the bottom in the photo above) connects to a Windows computer via a USB cable, and receives power via an external A/C adapter. It doesn’t run via USB power because of the power consumption of the other components.
The Windows computer controls the sound hardware using a dedicated player application (SPFM Player for Windows, freely available from this site) that sends the appropriate instructions directly to each sound chip in order to generate the original music.
To the motherboard you can plug either a single sound module (with one of several FM chips available), or an extension board (second board from the bottom in the photo) via a flat cable in order to plug up to four modules simultaneously.
Some RE:birth sound modules. Click to enlarge
Some RE:birth sound modules. Click to enlarge
The list of available sound modules is amazing (all the chips are by Yamaha):
- YM2203 (used in many Japanese computers and also arcade games)
- YM2608 (PC-88 and PC-98 series)
- YM2612 (FM-Towns, Sega Mega Drive, some arcades)
- YM3438 (Sega Tera Drive, FM-Towns, UFO catcher machines and arcades)
- YM2610 (NEO GEO)
- YMF288-M (PC-98)
- YM3526 (Commodore 64 Sound Expander, Sound Blaster and arcade machines)
- YM3812 (Sound Blaster and arcades)
- YMF262-M (Sound Blaster Pro 2)
- YM2413 (MSX 2+/turbo R, Sega Mark III FM Sound Unit, Sega Master System, UFO catchers and arcades)
- YM2414B (Yamaha and KORG synthesizers)
- YM2164 (Yamaha and KORG synthesizers)
- YM2151 (X68000 and arcades)
- Y8950 (MSX-AUDIO and arcades)
RE:birth pamflet and catalog (front). Click to enlarge.
RE:birth pamflet and catalog (back). Click to enlarge.
Also, when I visited the shop today Mr. Nakagawa had on display the RE1-EXT-MSCCX board, which is a sound module without any sound chips, but with two MSX-compatible cartridge slots to plug any of Konami’s SCC cartridges and use the chip inside them.
RE:birth RE1-EXT-MSCCX board. Click to enlarge.
To see (and hear!) RE:birth in action, check the video below. The video is taken in HD, so feel free to make it full screen and increase the quality to see more details of these boards.
Denshi Kosaku Magazine
Mr. Nakagawa was very kind to give me an issue of a Japanese magazine about electronics (Denshi Kosaku Magazine, 電子工作マガジン). The Autumn 2014 issue features RE:birth in a 4-page article (pages 92-95), and it even mentions it in the cover. The article only mentions a few of the modules that were available when it was written.
Denshi Kosaku Magazine cover (Autumn 2014)
Denshi Kosaku Magazine (Autumn 2014, pages 92-93)
Sold as a kit
RE:birth is sold as an electronics kit that you can build yourself. According to Mr. Nakagawa there will be assembled boards when distribution of the final version starts.
The kits can be bought directly in Mr. Nakagawa’s shop (Kaden no Ken-chan), or ordered from his online shop. At this moment I haven’t confirmed yet whether he ships abroad or not.
Extra: FM chip, Z80 and VDP vending machine
As if RE:birth wasn’t interesting enough, there’s something else in Mr. Nakagawa’s shop: gachapon vending machines. What makes these ones interesting is that they’re not selling keyholders, or figurines, or other useless crap. Instead, they sell FM chips, Z80 CPUs and MSX VDPs:
Chip vending machines. Click to enlarge
Some time ago people MSX users were talking about these in the msx.org forums. Well, now we know where they are.
Relevant links
- Kaden no Ken-chan
- SPFM Player for Windows
- Legends of FM generators (page of the RE:birth project)
- Mr. Nakagawa’s Twitter account
you have to bring me there next time i go to Tokyo (which is going to be soon) :)
Sure. It’s a small shop, but with lots of interesting stuff. Unfortunately, recently there are very few shops that have MSX stuff anymore.
Nice article, I had seen some of the photos before and was wondering what that was about already :).
This Nakagawa-san has a pretty awesome project and shop! :)
Yep, and he’s also a very cool guy.
Oh my goodness, this is incredible!
I’m a huge fan of the MSX, Salamander series, and Konami’s SCC chip in general. Some of my favorite soundtracks came from that.
So glad that someone preserved all of this, and took the time to do a writeup.
Pingback: Domingão do Ag0ny: RE:Birth. | Retrocomputaria Plus