Buying an MSX — A Practical Guide

Things to watch out for when buying

1. Settle the soldering question before you settle on a machine

   Of the three faults age hands to an MSX, two are within reach of a careful owner at a kitchen table and one is not. A perished floppy belt is a rubber band. A dead keyboard is a repair kit and patience. Leaking capacitors are soldering, on forty-year-old traces, and that is where the home bench ends. Decide which side of that line you stand on first, because it quietly decides which listings you are allowed to want.

2. The kana key is not decoration

   A Japanese MSX carries a dedicated kana key and a Japanese layout — in either a JIS or a 50-on arrangement, which software can tell apart by reading a single bit on the sound chip's port. A European machine such as Philips' VG-8020 carries an international QWERTY board instead, with GRAPH and CODE keys where the kana key would be. Most cartridge games never notice. But some software reads the key matrix directly rather than going through BASIC, and that matrix is wired differently by region — so a program written for one region's machine can put the wrong character on screen, or nothing at all, on the other. If you intend to type on it, buy the region you intend to type in.

3. If it is a Sony HitBit or a Panasonic FS-A1, ask about the capacitors

   The surface-mount electrolytic capacitors on the small HIC-1 audio-video board leak with age. One Japanese repair shop puts it as near-certain rather than likely; what several independent restoration logs confirm on their own is simply that the leak is common. Sony's HB-F1II, HB-F1XD, HB-F1XD mkII, HB-F1XDJ and HB-F1XV share that board, as do Panasonic's FS-A1 mkII and FS-A1F. What you see is no picture, or an unstable one; no sound, or almost none; or a machine that will not load from tape. Left long enough, the leak corrodes the traces underneath and the board stops being repairable at all — which is why a specialist may transplant a HIC-1 out of a healthy machine, or fit a modern replacement board, rather than replace capacitors one by one.

4. The keyboard that stops answering is a known fault, not bad luck

   On Sony's HB-F1XD, HB-F1XDJ and HB-F1XV, the flexible film that carries the keyboard matrix degrades until individual keys — sometimes whole rows — do nothing. Japanese enthusiast groups have made replacement kits specifically for it, using a thin board and conductive ink in place of the perished film. It is the friendliest of the three repairs in one important way: it asks for patience rather than a soldering iron. A seller who says "some keys do not work" is describing a solvable machine, not a dead one — but the price should say so too.

5. If there is a floppy drive, the belt has already perished

   Rubber does not last forty years. On the MSX2+ FS-A1FX, FS-A1WX and FS-A1WSX, and on the turboR FS-A1ST and FS-A1GT, a rubber belt drives the disk mechanism, and by now it has stretched or snapped: the drive turns weakly or not at all, and disks will not read. Panasonic's own belt carried the part number DFWV75C0009, and shops both replace it and, on some models, fit a belt-less drive instead. Treat "disk drive untested" on any of these machines as "the belt is gone."

6. Choose the medium before you choose the machine

   An MSX can be fed from cartridge, cassette tape, or — from 1985 — floppy disk, and the three age very differently. Cartridges have no moving parts and have survived best; the one caveat is that any cartridge with a save battery inside it has a battery now measured in decades, and Japanese used dealers say plainly that saves are not guaranteed. Tape is perishable twice over: the tape itself degrades with every play, and the machine's own data recorder is a mechanism of the same age. Floppies sit behind the belt. If you want to simply switch a machine on and play, buy for cartridges and let the rest be a project.

7. The maker's name predicts less than the board inside

   The fault reports cluster by board — the HIC-1, the keyboard film, the drive belt — rather than by any maker's overall reputation. Two machines wearing different badges can share the same failing part, and two machines out of the same factory can age very differently. Learn those three boards and you can read almost any listing. The generations are harder: what MSX2+ or turboR actually feel like to use secondhand is not something we found a sourced account of. Even the size of the thing is unsettled — around nine million machines by some counts, closer to four by Nishi Kazuhiko's own. The man who wrote the standard counts fewer of them than the world does.

Shipping, customs, and what to expect

• The keyboard travels with the machine: A Japanese unit has a kana key and a Japanese layout; a European one has international QWERTY. For cartridge games this rarely surfaces. For anything you type into — BASIC above all — it is the difference between the machine you wanted and the machine you got.
• Ask which outputs this particular machine has: Video connections vary between makers and models, and we have not found a sourced comparison of them. Ask the seller to name the sockets on the back of the actual unit, rather than assuming from the generation.
• Power was built for Japan: A Japanese machine expects Japan's 100V mains. In a 120V or 230–240V country, plan for a step-down transformer as part of the purchase.
• Ask for it running, not just lit: The HIC-1 capacitor fault takes the picture, the sound, or the tape loading with it — and all three can look fine in a photograph of a powered-on machine. A short video of a game loading and playing, with sound, answers more than any description.
• Ask about the drive separately: If the machine has a floppy drive, "untested" should be read as "the belt has perished." That is not a reason to walk away — belts are a known part — but it is a reason for the price to say so.
• Import duties and tax: Whether — and how much — your country charges on used electronics from Japan changes often, and several thresholds shifted during 2026. Rather than trust a figure that may already be out of date, check your own country's current import rules before you order, and budget for the result.
• Declared value and transit: A responsible seller declares the actual sale price; under-declaring shifts the risk to you. EMS typically takes one to two weeks from Japan, with air parcel a reasonable middle ground.

Before you buy — a summary checklist

• The exact model named — the faults follow the board, and the board follows the model
• Capacitors: recapped, or the price reflects that they have not been — especially on HIC-1 machines (Sony HB-F1II, HB-F1XD, HB-F1XD mkII, HB-F1XDJ, HB-F1XV; Panasonic FS-A1 mkII, FS-A1F)
• Every key tested, not a sample — the ribbon fails in rows
• Floppy drive stated as working, or priced as a belt job (FS-A1FX, FS-A1WX, FS-A1WSX, FS-A1ST, FS-A1GT)
• Photographed powered on and running something, with sound
• Keyboard region confirmed — kana key or international QWERTY — if you intend to type
• Which medium you are actually buying for: cartridge, tape, or disk
• Save batteries in any bundled cartridges treated as flat until proven otherwise
• Shipping cost, mains voltage, import rules and declared-value policy agreed with the seller