# openMSX FAQ

## Contents

## 1. Why is openMSX so difficult to install?

openMSX used to be difficult to install, but it isn't difficult at all, nowadays! At least: it shouldn't be.

If you're using Windows, the easiest way to install openMSX is by running the installer. It's the .exe file you can find in the downloads section of the openMSX SourceForge.net site. After this, you should have a working openMSX and openMSX Catapult.

If you're using another operating system, there is no installer available. If your system has a package management system, it's easy to install openMSX by using that, of course. If you have to install it from source, it's also not very difficult. Just read the Compilation Guide.

Note that in any case, there are no system ROMs installed, so only the C-BIOS machines work out-of-the-box. See also the next couple of questions.

If you still think openMSX is difficult to install, please tell us why! Contact info is in the manuals.

## 2. Why is openMSX so difficult to use?

Since openMSX comes with the optional GUI dubbed "openMSX Catapult", it is not difficult to use either! The Windows installer installs it by default. For other systems, the same counts as for openMSX itself. Check out the Catapult manual for more information. For basic usage, you just select a machine to run and click on "Start"!

Catapult doesn't give you access to all features of openMSX, though. You can do a lot more by using the openMSX built in console. You can read a lot more about this in the User's Manual.

If you still think openMSX is difficult to use, please tell us why! Contact info is in the manuals.

## 3. Why doesn't openMSX come with system ROMs?

The MSX system ROMs are copyrighted. In other words: it's illegal to include them in our software package without a license. See also the Setup Guide.

## 4. Where do I install the ROMs?

For version 0.5.0: you can put all the ROMs in a ROM pool, which is a central ROM directory. The default location is `share/systemroms`.

You can also do it in the way of the older versions: put the ROMs for the machine called WHATEVER in `share/machines/WHATEVER/roms` and for the extension called WHATEVER in `share/extensions/WHATEVER/roms`. See also the Setup Guide.

## 5. All I get is "Cartridge not found." or something similar. What's wrong?

You are probably talking about this (older C-BIOS):

or something like this (newer C-BIOS):

openMSX doesn't come with any system ROMs, see 2. Why doesn't openMSX come with system ROMs?. To have something to be able to run some software, openMSX comes with a free replacement of an MSX BIOS ROM called C-BIOS, written by BouKiChi, Reikan and nowadays the C-BIOS Assocation. This is also what you can see in the screen: C-BIOS 0.20 (or 0.17 if you use an older version).

So, the message is not from openMSX, but from C-BIOS, which tries to start a cartridge that is inserted in the MSX that is being emulated by openMSX. And it seems you didn't insert any cartridge for it... So, either run openMSX with a ROM image or install real MSX system ROMs for a certain machine and run that one.

Note that the current version of C-BIOS can only run cartridges and does not support disk or tape usage. More information can be found in the Setup Guide.

## 6. The sound quality is quite bad in the 0.4.0 release, is that normal?

Unfortunately, we made a small mistake in the Windows release of 0.4.0. However, the problem can be easily fixed by editing the file `share\settings.xml` with Notepad or some similar text editor. Look for the section marked "Audio mixer settings" and change the 'samples' setting from 512 to 1024 or 2048. You can play around with the setting: just save the file and restart openMSX to test it. Note that later versions should have this fixed.

The effect of a wrong setting is that if it is too high, you will get an irregular tempo of the music (high latencies) and if it's too low, the music will sound choppy.

At the moment, it is not clear what the default value of this setting should be. It seems that the perfect combination of samples and frequency depends on the system. So, feel free to experiment with them.

## 7. What is the openMSX harddisk support?

This is explained in the User's Manual.

## 8. Should I download the ZIP or the EXE for Windows?

You probably noticed that the ZIP file is a little bit bigger than the EXE. The reason for this is that the EXE file has better compression! The actual contents is exactly the same.

We strongly recommend to use the EXE. It contains a very comfortable installer (see also above) and really won't touch your Windows registry if you don't want that! The price you pay if you want the registry unharmed: you can't use the built in uninstaller...

With the EXE, your openMSX experience is only about 3 clicks away. The ZIP file is meant for experienced users mostly.

## 9. It seems the MSX hangs when running GFX9000 software; what's wrong?

The real GFX9000 has an external video connector to which you can connect a second monitor. Because of limits of the SDL library we used to create openMSX, we cannot have more than one window for openMSX, so we cannot emulate a second monitor. To see the GFX9000 in action, you need to switch the videosource setting, which equals to a so-called SCART-switch in the real world: `set videosource GFX9000`. If you started openMSX without GFX9000 extension, this videosource is not available. To get your normal MSX screen back, you should type `set videosource MSX`. If you want to toggle with a hot key between them, it might be useful to bind a key for it. E.g.: `bind F6 cycle videosource`. `cycle` is a TCL command that cycles through the options of the setting in the parameter.

Note that GFX9000 emulation does not work with the SDLGL renderer yet and that it's incomplete, slow and buggy anyways...

## 10. Great, those new OSD LEDs! How do I get rid of them?

Open the console with F10 and type:

load_icons none

If you have `autosave_at_exit` set to `on`, this change will be permanent, until you load another icon set. This gives you the default for openMSX 0.5.1:

load_icons set1 bottom

$Id: faq.html,v 1.19 2005/02/20 15:55:50 manuelbi Exp $