Pictures

[Martin A]

The "theme" for this year's Memofest was Turbo!

We started with a game competition that has been promised at previous events, but finally happened this time. The prize being a brand new car.

The Winner was Jim and unfortunately I don't have a picture of him being presented with his prize but hopefully one of the others will post a picture.

Keeping with the theme, the cake was inspired by some of the best graphics from the game, which in this instance was the tape cover

The Cake.jpg (69.72 KiB) Viewed 67429 times

We asked the game's author to cut the cake, apparently the layers of icing used to build up the car meant that the cake was more 3D than the game

Andy cutting the cake.jpg (74.93 KiB) Viewed 67429 times

The next posting will have some details of the highlight of the event, which was some seriously clever software from Andy.

However before I get to that some details of the hardware on show.

We had a look at the CFX3 and Micro CFX for which there are threads elsewhere on these forums.

We had a look at the propeller based PS2/USB keyboard interface that Bill, Dave and I had been working on earlier in the year details at:
http://primrosebank.net/computers/mtx/p ... ps2kbd.htm

[Martin A]

Back at Memofest 2017 I gave Andy a WIZ811 based ethernet interface and 40 column CPM based IDE interface that I'd named the NFX. It looked a bit like this (this is the #2 card Andy has #1)

NetworkCard.jpg (72.23 KiB) Viewed 67427 times

(Ignore the 8 pin device that a leftover from something else that happens to have been sitting on the board when the photo was taken)

What Andy has written is a webserver! Using HTTP is possible to send files to and receive pages from the drive on the NFX.

From the MTX side it looks something like this:

WebServer.jpg (62.16 KiB) Viewed 67427 times

at the PC end is a very normal looking web page.

What the browser saw.jpg (73.05 KiB) Viewed 67427 times

Technical details were, well VERY technical! Andy did try to explain it all but it's seems he's basically written a whole new system that sits on top of CPM and does all the work, all in less than 13k of code. Expect to see some details and the source code on his site sometime soon.

Since I had some "advance" warning of Andy's masterwork, I was able to prepare a new I/O board for the MTXplus that includes a version if the Wiz811 interface. That showed a substantial speed improvement when serving pages at the full 16mhz possible with the MTXplus.

Also visible on new board is the USB keyboard interface from the MTX tweaked a little to run on the plus..

[Bill B]

Thanks to Martin for hosting Memofest again this year. An enjoyable day was had.

While Martin's collection of original MTX doesn't quite match Dave's, the amount of new stuff he has built, and to a very high standard, was staggering.

Equally impressive was the spread of food laid on downstairs, enough for twice as many people.

Thanks again Martin and family.

[Martin A]

And there were other things I forgot to mention in last night's hasty write up.

Andy's video wall plans

The under £10 component tester - just Google LCR-T4

CFX4 and why I gave up on the development

Our thanks to everyone that contributed to the food mountain - Bill you missed the pizza + ice cream later in the evening

Skype managing to keep Dave more or less connected for 6 hours or so excluding lunch and cake breaks.

Jim and Andy contributing some "spares" for future projects or MTX repairs

Bill's portable MTX emulator - Raspberry Pi, Custom Memu build. 3" screen, Bluetooth keyboard and powerbank.

[AndyKey]

More pictures and a few overlapping words at http://www.nyangau.org/memotech/memofest2018.htm

[AndyKey]

And note that the above write-up has links to the detail of the NFX network code, and the VGA Videowall (as it stands so far)...

[Crazyboss]

Glad you had a nice Memofest, hopefully I will see you next year

I actually forgot it was this weekend

Nice cake Great you had some fun with Turbo I record my personal highscore to be 2900 back in year 2000

The new forum MEMOFEST 2019 already created. I previous think I saw a UK Computer museum was interested to HOST a Memofest ?

I havent touch a Memotech computer for a YEAR or so but I have a new game ready to be converted over. But I have to wait until get my Memotech hardware back from Storage.

[thewiz]

Looks like you all had a good time and, as usual, lots being done with the Memotech.

The NFX sounds really interesting. Next step is to hook it up with Node and have a Memotech network over the internet

Really sorry to have missed it this year but unfortunately I was in Ghent celebrating my wifes Birthday. Hardly on a par I know.

Roll on next year's get together.

Paul

[tjewell]

Hi, just spotted this thread. Just a quick note to say it was the Centre for Computing History (via me) that said it you're more than welcome to hold your event at the museum - we host meetups for other user groups. Not sure if Cambridge is convenient for any of you ...

Cheers, Tony