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Hello

Posted: 08 Nov 2019 21:10
by PMG
Hi, I'm Paul. I thought my Memotech experiences were a long time forgotten history. After a random eBay suggestion of an old MTX512 (which is way beyond what I can afford!) came up I started searching round the net for Memotech memories. And so I found this forum and will share mine.

I am 51 years (young/old) and started with my next door neighbour's ZX81 in 1981. He hated it and let me play with it. I loved it and was soon teaching myself Z80 assembly language (the only way to do more than a simple BASIC program with 1K of memory). I pre-ordered a 48K ZX Spectrum at the Earl's Court Computer Fair launch back in April 1982. I was 14 when it finally arrived in that September. And the first one was faulty! But the second was so overused I wore it out in it's 12 month warranty period and got a brand new one. That Speccy was my Christmas and Birthday presents for 2 years! (£175 being a lot of money to me back then!).

In Spring 1984 a relative (husband of a step cousin once removed, so a bit tenuous) was working at Memotech on the launch of the MTX512. He got me one as a present (I think my parents contributed a bit to it, but they never admitted it!) for finishing my O-levels. That summer I started working on my game I had started on my Speccy - Doctor Frankie. I had seen Manic Miner and I wanted to make a game of that genre. It was hard to do games on the Speccy, what with no hardware support for sprites, limited colour pallette etc. I pretty much finished it that Summer and sent it to Syntaxsoft as they advertised for programs back then. They liked it enough to sell and I got £1 per copy they sold, I got about £100 for that game and the Paintbox program I also wrote to do all the graphics I needed for Dr Frankie. Anyone who's played Dr Frankie will see my achilles heel in game coding and design - the lack of music and decent sound effects. With the money from these sales I bought a discounted FDX and CPM system and had a really great system.

Unfortunately after A-levels I went to University (studying Micro Electronic Systems Engineering - what else?!), but needed an Atari ST to do course work on, so I sold all my Memotech gear (stupid boy!) to pay for it. I kept the floppy discs with all the code for Dr Frankie and also a Basic Compiler I wrote later on - I also offered that to Syntaxsoft but never got any royalties for that one. I don't know if they ever sold it, would love to know if anyone ever saw it.

Over the years since, the 5 1/4" disks have long since disappeared (I have no idea where). So I thought this was just going to be a distant memory from my childhood. Then in the last couple of weeks I have found MEMU and that it comes with Dr Frankie (or Dr Franky as Syntaxsoft put on the box!) PS that cassette inlay artwork definitely wasn't my work.

Anyway I've rambled on enough. I wish I still had all my source code and would love to have played around a bit more with the Memotech, but hey life moves in mysterious ways.

Thanks to Andy for MEMU and finding my old long forgotten coding past. And Memorum for letting me reminisce a bit more!

Re: Hello

Posted: 09 Nov 2019 00:16
by Dave
Hi Paul,

Welcome to the Forum!

It’s always nice to hear from folks who contributed to the MTX back in the day.

You will find a load of Memotech info on my website here :

http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/mtx512.htm

Regards
Dave

Re: Hello

Posted: 03 Jan 2020 00:12
by muldjord
Hi Paul,
Great to read your story. I'm not the most active member on here (I used to be a lot more active back when I used the moniker 'El Senator'), but I do have spurts of Memotech mania where I sit down and focus on something and it's really nice to know that I can always go on this forum to share it with like-minded individuals. These guys are doing some very impressive stuff at the Memofests, so be sure to check out their picture-filled diaries on those. The latest can be found here: http://www.nyangau.org/memotech/memofest2019.htm.

I mostly dabble in novice game restoration work and video documentation of the games running on real hardware. I also own two functional Memotech MTX512's, one of which is the same I had as a kid (I used it mostly from age 6-11 or so).

I'm a sucker for nostalgia so I doubt I'll ever stop coming back to the Memotech.

Re: Hello

Posted: 27 Dec 2020 20:31
by 1024MAK
PMG wrote: 08 Nov 2019 21:10 Hi, I'm Paul.
A belated hello and welcome to you.

Although a lot of people have had more time on theirs hands due to the current circumstances, I’ve been rather busier than normal, so visits to forums have not been as frequent or long as I would have liked.

What a wonderful bit of history you have added. So thank you for your contribution both in the mid 1980s and for you post telling us all about it. I hope you have a happy new year :D

Mark

PS if the disks do ever turn up, let us know, as Dave would love to archive the data on them (assuming it’s recoverable).