Yamaha CX5M
Yamaha's MSX Music Computer

The MSX computer range was the Japanese answer to the 8-bit Commodore 64 or Sinclair Spectrum.  Actually in many ways it was more functional as it had lots of expansion possibilities.  (Or maybe I should have said it was the Japanese answer to the BBC Model B which was used by many of us in the UK of a certain age!)

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Many Japanese manufactures adopted the MSX standard and produced machines ran an early version of Microsoft Basic (version 2.0) with interchangeable applications.

 

Yamaha released a version of the MSX computer (Yamaha CX5M) in 1984 with a 4 operator FM Synthesiser, (in effect a DX21,) included in the package. The computer could run a range of both cartridge and cassette based software that allowed the computer to program sounds and run sequences on both the internal synthesiser and external instruments using MIDI.

 

And like most machines of this era you saved your programs and data to a cassette tape, data cartridge (which were expensive) or latter a 720Kb floppy disk. 

 

Although I have to admit I do play games on my CX5M I acquired it to run music related software.