MSX character set


MSX character sets are a group of single- and double-byte character sets developed by Microsoft for MSX computers. They are based on code page 437.

Character sets

The following table shows the MSX character set. Each character is shown with a potential Unicode equivalent if available. Control characters and other non-printing characters are represented by their names.
Character set differences exist, depending on the target market of the machine. These are the variations:
  • Arabic
  • Brazilian
  • German DIN
  • International
  • Japanese
  • Korean
  • Russian
The German DIN and International character sets are identical, apart from the style of zero character. The international character set has a zero with a slash, while the DIN character set has a dotted zero.
The MSX terminal is compatible with VT52 escape codes, plus extra control codes shown below.

Brazilian variants

Gradiente custom charset

The Brazilian manufacturer Gradiente have initially included a modified MSX character set on their v1.0 machines to allow writing correct Portuguese. Differences are shown boxed. The symbol at 0x9E is the currency symbol for the Brazilian cruzado which is not used anymore.

BRASCII

Later Brazilian MSX models included a standardized character set named BRASCII, which solved the accentuation incompatibility problems amongst the different makers.

Japanese variant

Japanese MSX and MSX2 models used a character set extended from the JIS X 0201 standard, with hiragana, a few common kanji, and various geometric symbols assigned to codepoints left undefined in the original standard.
MSX2+ models equipped with the optional Kanji ROM added full support for double-byte kanji based on JIS X 0208, via the Shift JIS encoding scheme.