The MSX format was formally announced during a press-conference in June 27, 1983 (a date that is considered the birthday of the MSX standard) and a slew of big Japanese firms declared their plans to introduce machines. Only Spectravideo and Yamaha briefly marketed MSX machines in the U.S. Spectravideo's MSX enjoyed very little success, and Yamaha's CX5M model, built to interface with various types of MIDI equipment, was billed more as a digital music tool than a standard personal computer.

The MSX standard computer had a Z80 CPU chip (running at 3.58 MHz), an AY-3-8910 sound IC (providing 3 channels of synthesized sound plus noise generation) and an 8255 PPI interface IC for keyboard, memory management and joysticks, 16KB to 64KB of dynamic RAM, 16KB of video RAM and a TI 9918/28 Video Display Processor. Being constructed from fairly standard components, it was a low cost machine - and was produced by companies such as Canon, Daewoo, Panasonic, Philips, Sony, Toshiba and Yamaha.

The Canon V-20 was released in May 1984 at the price of £280, the V-20 was Canon's MSX offering with the Z80A Processor running at 3.6MHz and with 64KB RAM.

Our model has a serial number of 302758 and was very kindly donated by Bryan Stewart. This machine is in excellent condition and is in its original box.

Manufacturer: Canon
Date: May 1984

This exhibit has a reference ID of CH7039. Please quote this reference ID in any communication with the Centre for Computing History.