Yamaha CX5M and CX5MII/128

Summary

The Yamaha Music Computer CX5M has been explicitly designed as a music computer and the sound possibilities with an 8-voice FM synthesizer can be heard. Three series were launched on the market: CX5M, CX5MII and CX5MII/128. There are different versions for different countries, such as CX5MU (US), CX5MC (Canada), CX5MF (French), which differ in the DIN connector for the video connectors. For the CX5M computers there are proprietary keyboards, such as the YK01/YK10/YK20 Yamaha Music Keyboard. The software itself was distributed through ROM cartridges.

The computer belongs to the MSX family (MSX for “Machines with Software eXchangeability”). This was an attempt to establish a kind of standard of home computers. It specified a Z80 processor running at 3.58 MHz, as well as at least 32 KiB, as video chip a Texas Instruments TMS9918 and the MSX-DOS. This allowed developers to develop software and run on the different implementations of the MSX platform. The MSX design for a family of computers was very common in Japan and Korea, in Europe as well. In the USA and England, hardly any manufacturers relied on MSX, which is actually strange, because Microsoft works with the standard and also wrote the MSX-DOS, which is similar to MS-DOS and also file compatible with CP/M.