Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The Daewoo Zemmix

Daewoo Zemmix Turbo, from msxarchive.nl

Background/History:
In the US, the "IBM" home computer architecture (originally introduced on the IBM PC in 1981) has long been the dominant standard. It has been massively updated over the years, but is still in use. In Asia, a dominant standard of the 1980s and early 1990s was MSX. MSX was introduced in 1983 as an attempt to unify standards among computers around the world. Although it saw very little success in the US, it became the premier computer gaming platform in many countries in Asia, and even saw some success in parts of Europe. Like the IBM standard, the MSX standard saw upgrades over the years: the MSX2 standard in 1985, MSX2+ in 1988, and MSXturboR in 1990. The final MSX computers ended production in 1995.
Daewoo is a massive South Korean company that is primarily known in the US for cheap cars and cheap electronics, but their products also include heavy machinery, ships, construction, and many diversified activities.
The Zemmix is basically a scaled down MSX computer, intended for gaming. The first models of the Zemmix, the original and "Victory" model, were released in 1985. In the late 1980s, the "Super Victory" model, compatible with the MSX2 standard, was released. The "Turbo", the final Zemmix model, was released in 1990 and was compatible with the MSX2+ standard. As the MSXturboR standard was only released in Japan, no Zemmix models used it. The Zemmix was discontinued in 1995.
One notable feature of the Zemmix is the color options. Models were available in a white/silver, red/black, or blue/yellow/black color scheme. There were also numerous peripherals available for the system, including keyboard, music box, RAM expansion, MSX2 upgrade expension, and even a "Family Card" which allowed the system to play Nintendo Famicom (NES) games.

What Makes It Obscure?
Despite the system's ten year lifespan, information on it is scarce. The system was only released in South Korea. They are said to be reasonably common over there, but extremely rare elsewhere.

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