Only a week until the Retro-Comptuer Festival. Eek!

[Dave]

Thanks for the kind words

Having to remove the serial board to install MFX was a deliberate choice. We figured that the vast majority of people would not be using serial port devices and the TCP/IP communication option would be better in almost all circumstances.

[If there was a huge demand (and there obviously isn't), producing an external board with most of MFXs features would be possible, either using the FPGA which would make the board pretty unwieldy, or using discrete logic to make a sort of CFX with NFX. (Neither of these is going to happen though.)]

regards
Dave

[Bill B]

I can imagine a very small adaptor PCB, which has edge contacts on one side, and a right angle edge plug on the other. The MFX board would then be on the left hand side (and upside down). The mirror image of how the CFX or CFX-II are mounted internally.

It would mean that the SD card is the right way up

[Dave]

Technically possible, but . . . .

Ugly

[Bill B]

So it would need a nice 3D printed case.

[Dave]

And a bigger desk

[stephen_usher]

Back from the event and everything dumped in the living room.

Fun but really tiring.

About a third of the people hadn't heard of the machine, though many after prompting remembered the company when talking about ZX81 peripherals.

About a third remembered seeing the machine in magazines with many lusting after the brushed aluminium at the time but had never seen one in the flesh.

The other third either had one or had seen one before.

We may have a new person arriving on the forum as he has a machine which has some display issues, probably the daughter board. I gave him my spare CFX+memory expansions as his is an early 512 with the RAM board filched. In return he gave me an odd Epson stock control device which may be able to be persuaded to run CP/M if I get it working.

IMG_3422.jpeg (1.21 MiB) Viewed 227273 times

[gunrock]

Wow! That was super generous of you, Stephen.

As for your description of festival-goers, I was firmly in the middle third.

[stephen_usher]

Oh, and I forgot to post a picture of my "stand". With the number of original Memotech pamphlets I had it could almost have been a trade show from '84.

IMG_3419.jpeg (1.6 MiB) Viewed 227121 times

What I hadn't noticed until the end of last week when I had both MTXs side by side is how different the early manual and key caps are relative to the newer (late '84) ones. The early key caps are more conical and the return key says "RETURN", the early manual is typeset and has the PAL listings. The later machine's key caps are far flatter and the return key merely says "RET" on it. Also the manual looks to be a bound golf-ball print out and doesn't have the PAL codes on the last page of the content.

Oh, and one of the visitors on Sunday said that he used to work with Geoff Boyd in California, who had mentioned that he'd once had a computer manufacturing company.

[Martin A]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHdasy0AXuY You get 6 whole seconds in this video!

[Dave]

You get 6 whole seconds in this video!

That's mean - the opening titles get 7