The SV-318 is the first computer from Spectravideo, a New York company that came from video game accessories, released in early 1983. An entry-level home machine, it is recognisable by its rubber-key keyboard and by the small cursor joystick set into its left-hand side, used both to move the cursor and to play. The SV-328, released right after, is its serious counterpart: a real mechanical keyboard, 80 KB of RAM and a numeric keypad.
Its historical importance goes far beyond its sales. Its architecture — a Z80, the Texas Instruments TMS9918A video chip, the AY-3-8910 sound generator and a Microsoft BASIC — is exactly the one chosen a few months later to define the MSX standard. The discussions between Spectravideo, Microsoft and ASCII around this machine led directly to the standard, to the point that the SV-318 is often described as an MSX before the fact.
The SV-318 is however not MSX compatible: its cartridges and tapes are its own. Spectravideo went on to build true MSX machines, starting with the SVI-728. Its modest library consists mostly of arcade conversions from the early 1980s.
The MSX standard, born out of this machine, has its own system in Recalbox: see MSX 1.
It is the only emulator offered for this system, and it is available on every board, from the Raspberry Pi 3 and Pi Zero 2 up to the PC. Recalbox automatically sets it to an SVI machine profile. Netplay and softpatching are not available with this core, and RetroAchievements are not supported. CRT output is handled.
A keyboard is mandatory on this system: the machine boots into its BASIC and many programs expect a specific key or a typed command. A pad is recommended for action games; the mouse is not used.
blueMSX will not start without the ROMs of the machines it emulates. These files all come from the official blueMSX v2.8.2 ("full" edition) package: get it, then copy its Machines folder as-is into /recalbox/share/bios/, keeping folder and file names unchanged, spaces included. The eight files below are mandatory for this system.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-318/svi318.rom |
SV-318 system ROM | ee6ad7ea29e791b03a28a9443e622648 | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328/svi328.rom |
SV-328 system ROM | 2cebd1db9dda475a011b7bce65c984a2 | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 MK2/svi328a.rom |
SV-328 MK2 system ROM | 352f054ab09605070bdff49d73f335cc | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 MK2/svi806.rom |
80-column board ROM | 82f7bc9c08f43db1d79bcb565a0de12b | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Column/svi328a.rom |
SV-328 80-column system ROM | 352f054ab09605070bdff49d73f335cc | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Column/svi806.rom |
80-column board ROM | 82f7bc9c08f43db1d79bcb565a0de12b | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Swedish/svi328a.rom |
Swedish SV-328 80-column system ROM | 352f054ab09605070bdff49d73f335cc | blueMSX |
Machines/SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Swedish/svi806se.rom |
Swedish 80-column board ROM | 6a5536c1eb4f0477c4f76488cd8ca3ad | blueMSX |
/recalbox/share/bios/
└── Machines/
├── SVI - Spectravideo SVI-318/
├── SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328/
├── SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 MK2/
├── SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Column/
└── SVI - Spectravideo SVI-328 80 Swedish/
This
Machinesfolder is shared by every system using blueMSX: MSX 1, MSX 2, MSX Turbo R, Spectravideo, ColecoVision and SG-1000. It therefore only needs installing once. Folder names contain spaces and dashes: do not rename them. The BIOS checker lists what is missing.
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/spectravideo/
Accepted extensions: .bin .cas .zip .7z
A few pointers about these formats:
.bin is a cartridge image;.cas is a tape image;.zip and .7z archives run without being extracted.MSX games do not run on this system, and vice versa: the two machines are close but incompatible. Keep each library in its own roms folder.