Toshiba were one of the many who jumped on the ASCII Corp/Microsoft Japan MSX bandwagon in the mid to late 80s. Initially based on the Spectravideo SV-328, the MSX standard was purely off the shelf parts and a specification that needed to be followed before you were considered part of the club. The hard and fast rule was that the ROM slot NEEDED to be compatible with all other MSX machines. The BASIC interpreter also needed to be the same, largely because Microsoft wrote it and they were behind the MSX standard.

The result was many Japanese manufactuers including JVC, Sony, Sanyo and Panasonic all leapt on the bandwagon to produce machines with 64K RAM, MS BASIC, printer port, RF and composite video, cassette, Texas Instruments TMS9916 VDP graphics, a ROM slot or two plus 4 cursor keys and any optional extras they decided to add whilst not deviating too far from the standard.

In Japan these machines were a hit, but in Europe very much less so. The only machine to sell in numbers here was the Toshiba HX-10 and I've no idea why. Thanks to collecting these things 25 years ago though I have a pair of them.

HX-10 MSX bundle with boxed tape recorder and demo software, plus a BLANK TAPE! Yes!
HX-22 twin-slot machine with built-in word processor
Joystick, tapes and carts