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Site Computer News
2012
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2023 2024
Latest News
- June 2026
- Lee Bendall has generated a much improved copy of the Phoenix
version of the
Memotech Operator's Manual, scanned with OCR, edited
to correct typos and format errors, graphics tidied up. Available on
the Manuals page
- Lee has also generated a much cleaner copy of the
MTX Technical
Specification document, also on the Manuals page
- Alan Wilson has also updated his scanned and OCR'ed version of
the original Memotech
Operator's Manual to correct a couple of typos - also available
on the Manuals page
- Alan has also updated his "VDP
Discovered" document to correct a couple of typos and provided
copies of the sample programs in .mtx and .bas formats
- Alan has also updated his "Power
Graphics" document and provided copies of the sample programs in
.mtx and .bas formats
- Lee has generated a copy of the
MTX Service Manual to
enhance the graphics. The motherboard schematic has been edited to
show the correct values for the power capacitors which are shown
with wrong values in the MTX Operator's Manuals - available on the
Manuals Page
- Martin has made the
source code available for his port of MSX Elite
- Lee has generated an enhanced scan of the "Memotech
MTX Series" brochure
- Lee as produced a further enhancement to the
MTX Technical
Specification document
- Lee has generated an enhanced scan of the
Memotech
Operator's Manual
- Lee has created a document which describes
how to remove a
MTX memory board which was soldered in place at the factory and
would otherwise prevent the installation of expansion options such
as MFX
May 2026
- Though not specifically MTX, I have just purchased a RAM tester
for the vintage DRAMs used in the MTX. I have a small stock of DRAMs
available for sale that are "New, Old Stock" and whilst they have
proved to be very reliable, with no reports of failures to date, I
thought that it would be good to be able to test them before sale.
There seem to be a few suitable testers available, but I chose
this one.
- Of much more interest is that Martin has been working on
converting the MSX version of
Elite
to run on the MTX! You can download a copy of a Beta version from
the MFX software
page. Please note that this IS a Beta version, likely contains some
bugs and has some missing functionality, including sound.
- Martin has released an updated Beta (β3) of Elite which now
has sound, download from the MFX software
page.
- Martin has now released the "finished" version of Elite,
download from the MFX software
page.
April 2026
March 2026
- Posted a schematic for a 4 ROM
expansion board for MTX. Based on Martin Allcorn's reverse
engineering of the original Memotech ROM board add-on
February 2026
- A bit of a milestone reached today for
MFX, board number 50 was
shipped!
January 2026
- Bill Brendling had previously released updates for the
CFX and
CFX-II ROMs to add support
for the Extended Storage ABI that he developed for MFX. (This
functionality allows more efficient use of larger removable media
cards). Although, as far as I am aware, nobody actually downloaded
these updates, a problem was recently discovered in the CP/M screen
driver code. Bill has now revised the ROMs to correct this error.
Updated versions of the ROMs are available on the
CFX firmware and
CFX-II firmware pages.
- Bill Brendling has provided
a further update to the
MTX I/O Port assignments
originally documented on
Andy's
webpage to capture the changes introduced with additional recent
hardware such as MFX. Update
includes a description of the ports used by the MFX Numeric
Accelerator (based on Andy's code from REMEMORizer) and the MFX SD
Card I/O ports.
- Memotech supplied a CP/M terminal program called
Contact with the FDX. Martin has disassembled
contact.com and its support programs (h,
i, r &
t) and added comments to the listings. The source
files are available here.
December 2025
- Post a tidied up version of the original
Memotech BASIC Tutor
Reference and Operators Manual. This file has been OCR'ed and
edited to produce a really clean version of the original manual and
also includes a copy of the original SDX Disk System manual (the
version that used FDX hardware). Generously contributed by a MTX
user that prefers to remain anonymous.
November 2025
- Martin has disassembled fdxb.com, the
FDX Version of Memotech BASIC and provided some interesting notes on
its behavior. It is available on the
Tech Notes page
- Bill Brendling has provided
a further update to the
MTX I/O Port assignments
originally documented on
Andy's
webpage to capture the changes introduced with additional recent
hardware such as MFX. Update
includes a description of the ports used to redefine the MFX 80
Column card character set.
- Bill has also created a new support program for
MFX, loadfont.com.
The original Memotech 80-column card has the font programmed in a
ROM chip and therefore cannot be changed. However, when
re-implementing the 80-column display in FPGA for the MFX, the font
is stored in RAM within the FPGA. The FPGA provides Z80 ports which
allow updating the font. To make use of this feature a small
program, loadfont,
has now been written to load new character sets into the FPGA.
-
loadfont was developed while Bill was working on a
user request for a
Telnet client for MFX. As well as other potential uses,
loadfont is able to provide MFX with the ability
to use standard character sets such as IBM
Code Page 437.
Bill has now released a Beta version of his
Telnet client program.
- Martin has created a loadable
font file based
on the Acorn BBC Master character set
October 2025
- Posted a copy of the Node ROM disassembly to the
MTX ROMs page. This source code was
recreated by Bill Brendling with valuable input from the original
author (Tony Brewer). (Originally made available on
Memorum.)
- Due to the way that they work, a number of .mtx files do not run
on SD card based systems such as MFX. In response to one user's
question
about Highway Encounter on the
MTX Forum,
Martin has converted the program to a .com file that can be executed
under CP/M. I have added it to the Highway Encounter archive on the
Software Downloads page.
- Martin has disassembled and studied ncpm.com,
a FDX CP/M program that sets up an FDX to support the Memotech Node
Ring interface. Martin has produced a description of the program
functionality and made the ROM disassembly available which I have
added to the site as an additional
Node Technical Note.
- Bill Brendling has provided
an update to the
MTX I/O Port assignments
originally documented on
Andy's
webpage to capture the changes introduced with additional recent
hardware such as MFX.
September 2025
-
Eugen Kaschubinsky has just bought an
MFX and is getting back into
the swing of writing Z80 assembly language programs. He has written
a CP/M equivalent of the MFX BASIC "USER INFO" command. It can be
downloaded from here
- Updated ROM released
for MFX with the Cyclone IV FPGA. Fixes a bug in the CP/M 2.2 80
column graphics mode present in the Cyclone IV companion ROM. The
same bug was also present, but unnoticed, in Cyclone II companion
ROM version 240114. It is possible to work around the issue in the
240114 (Cyclone II) and 250214 (Cyclone IV) ROMs by patching the
copy of the driver loaded into RAM without having to replace the
ROM.
- Martin has done more work on his port of version 5 of the Z80
version of BBC BASIC by Richard Russell.
- Versions are available for Memotech systems running
CP/M 2.2 and 3.1
- Now includes MFX numeric accelerator support and limited
sound & graphics functions
- Eugen Kaschubinsky is continuing to refresh his Z80 assembly
skills and has cloned the MFX USER RTX commands to create executable programs
that can be used to set and display the date & time
from the MFX RTC from CP/M
2.2. The programs can be downloaded from here.
- Martin has released an update to his
Z80 assembler for RISCOS.
Contains some new directives and various bug fixes
August 2025
- Martin has done more work on his port of version 5 of the Z80
version of BBC BASIC by Richard Russell.
- Oscar Toledo has released a port of
Shamus
for various machines, including the Memotech MTX (CP/M only)
July 2025
June 2025
- Martin is working on
CVPlay, a loader that allows the MTX to run
unmodified copies of
ColecoVision
games console ROMs. At this point, a small number of games,
including Zaxxon
and Donkey Kong
have been tested and are working without issue. For details, see the
CVPlay
page.
May 2025
- Created a new
I/O Adapter
board for MFX to allow an
RTC module to be plugged into the VRAM socket for MFX boards that
use the EP4CE10 FPGA module
- Martin has completed the assembly of another batch (5) of
MFX boards, now
available to order
April 2025
- Richard Russell, author of the
Z80 version of BBC BASIC, has released an updated version of the
language. This version is based on Basic V originally written by
Sophie Wilson for the Acorn Archimedes in 1987. In 2025, Richard
released a version for the BBC
Z80
Second Processor which could also be compiled for generic CP/M
systems. Martin has configured the CPM version for
MFX running
CP/M 3.1.
March 2025
February 2025
January 2025
- MFX can now run CP/M 3
(CP/M
Plus) !
- With the latest
revision of MFX, it is possible to install a Real Time Clock
in place of the VRAM chip. RTC support is included in the latest
SDX BASIC ROM, but perhaps the best use for it is under
CP/M 3
(CP/M
Plus) which supports a RTC and file date/time stamping.
Martin has been beavering away in the background porting CP/M 3
to MFX. He recently spilled the beans on
Memorum and I have now created a page about it
here.
- Owners of earlier MFX boards should not feel too left out -
Martin has also created a version that can be
loaded from disk
(SD card) in earlier MFXs, albeit that the RTC, and hence
time/date functions, are not available.
See Earlier "News"
2012
2013 2014
2015 2016
2017 2018
2019
2020 2021
2022 2023
2024
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