What do you do with your MTX?

[davesnowdon]

Hi folks
I've been pretty quiet since Memofest 2023 - life has just been getting in the way of retro computing.

However, I do now have a working MTX with a MFX card installed (thanks Dave) - it arrived in January so it "only" took me 8 months to get around to it.

Now that I have a usable machine I have a bunch of work to re-learn how to write software for it. I already have an RC2014 (any other RC2014 users on here?) with CP/M (actually RomWBW) so I'm tempted to spend more time in the SDX BASIX environment with my MTX. In order to give myself a target I need to find a couple of fun MTX projects and I was curious what everyone else uses their MTX for these days.

Ideas I have so far

• home automation - maybe create/find an i2c interface and see what I can get working
• really terrible machine learning - implement some basic ML algorithms in z80 assembler and see how much I can get to work (and how bad the performance is). Given RAM constraints this would have to be classical algorithms like linear regression or very small neural networks (definitely not deep learning)
• demo scene - see what I can do with my very rusty graphics programming knowledge
• chip tunes - see what players are out there and/or write one

I'm not really a gamer so have left games off the list.

[Martin A]

I tinker! Every now and then something "useful" appears as a result of the tinkering.

The "development" MTX has one of the PS2 keyboard interfaces fitted, so can run permanently with the case open, and give me access to the guts! The original Memotech fitted EPROMS have been replaced with an ever so slightly modified ROM image to support the PS2 keyboard without the usual software patch.

It the moment it has the MTX500 GAL fitted, left over from testing the MFX memory GAL. There's a MTX512 GAL in the box if I need to test anything with 64k.

The MFX has a highly non standard FPGA on it at the moment, and I've been experimenting with some hardware add ons. Those add ons need ROM support so the MFX ROM has a few tweaks in it as well, it's a good job that the MFX has a ZIF socket fitted.

The current project is trying to get Dave to allocate me MFX serial number 40, then I can call the experimental board "Wider Development" and have WD40 on the boot screen.

I've tried game programming, developing on the Raspberry Pi, and using FTP to push the code over does make life easier than coding on the MTX. It didn't make me a game programmer though, after 6 months gave up and transferred all the files and graphical data to Jim to give to a "real" programmer.

[davesnowdon]

What sort of hardware add-ons are you thinking of Martin?

[Dave]

What sort of hardware add-ons are you thinking of Martin?

We're running out of (feasible) ideas - you already have the latest product in the list of ideas - MFX

[Martin A]

What sort of hardware add-ons are you thinking of Martin?

I mentioned it in passing elsewhere (the MFX thread I think) I had a MAX10 FPGA board connected to the heavily modified MFX prototype. It had well over 10x the capacity and internal ram of the Cyclone2 on MFX. I had it running 512x256 in 256 colours, and it was totally impractical.

The Z80 just can't update a screen that size through I/O ports in any sort of reasonable time frame. My VHDL coding skills aren't ut to writing a complete blitter/GPU so that one got put to one side. Dave wasn't too keen on funding a "product" based on a £150 dev board either!!

I currently have an I2C real time clock conected to WD40. It won't work on a standard MFX though, not enough spare I/O pins. It works, and seems to be keeping pretty good time, but there's no a whole lot of uses for it.

[Bill B]

Sadly I don't make much use of my MTX now Only when collaborating with Martin and Dave on projects. Even then I tend to do most of the software development using MEMU rather than real hardware.

You may want to play implementing cellular automata. I have spent many MTX hours in that way in the past.

Otherwise my main use of my MTX was in developing electronics projects. See Dave's site for details of a number of these. I tend to use Raspberry Pis for this now.

[gunrock]

My main MTX is currently being used for testing my MTXLib experiments.i build and test them.on the PC with MEMU as the main tested, then for sanity checking on the real thing.

Unfortunately, the MTX is not permanently setup, but over the summer, some work has been going on to make a safe, dry space for my office and retro computing, so maybe by February I'll have a nice man-cave to pursue these things in a more fixed setting.

[1024MAK]

I have one operational MTX set up. However, due to having more "retro" computers than space, often it's got Sinclair computers on top of it and in front of it

And let's not talk about trying to find a way to have enough monitors/TV's in a small 'computer' room crammed full of "retro" computers... And three PCs... (it doubles as the location where I do Zoom video conferencing and used to do work).

I mostly tinker. Either with the hardware, or trying things out with my own snippets of code.

It's not getting much love at the moment, as I'm busy with other things (laying a patio is not as easy as they make it look in the videos, especially as mine is a repair of an existing patio). But as summer becomes a memory and the long dark nights arrive, as I no longer have to go to work, I may be able to give it a bit more love and attention. Or more likely, fix my those that are not fully functional.

Mark