*** M E M O R U M ***

For anyone who wants one of the VGA adapters, one supplier is here

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/23314702636 ... 2630084698

(Not tried it myself though)

@stephen_usher: looks great. Really looks like a manufacturer-designed add-on. It's the way it looks so well integrated into the MTX, definitely a step up from the CFX-II (which is still a great device), it just lacks this level of attention to detail in the finish; which for me isn't a dealbreaker (and probably wasn't a design goal of the CFX series anyway), I just wanted to applaud the extra effort and thought that has gone into the MFX.

It looks like a culmination of years of expertise and the previous ?FX series releases and prototypes.

Indeed. The only thing which probably needs addressing is the storage. Being limited to the original SD card specification is a headache as hardly any small SD cards exist. Also having it as raw storage limits things. Maybe a future upgrade could be to encapsulate the drive image into a file on a FAT filesystem and support the ubiquitous SDHC cards?

Moderator : I've split this post from this thread to its own thread as an Enhancement Request

http://mtxworld.dk/memorum/viewtopic.php?t=574

gunrock wrote: ↑04 Sep 2022 20:24 @stephen_usher: looks great. Really looks like a manufacturer-designed add-on.
. . .
It looks like a culmination of years of expertise and the previous ?FX series releases and prototypes.

Hi Steve,

thanks for the kind words.

Yes, the form factor is definitely a step up from CFX. For MFX, I wanted the device to be internal, it just looks so much better than having an external device hanging off the end of the MTX. The downside to that is cost though.

To allow the I/O connectors to be accessible through the end plate, which does away with the need for any breakout cables etc., the PCB needs to be about 50% bigger than it would otherwise need to be. The cost of the extra "real estate" is not really a problem, the bigger issue is the cost of the edge connectors. There only seems to be a single manufacturer for the type that's needed, so it was always going to be an expensive component. Unfortunately, after I placed my initial order for connectors, the price more than doubled, so, once my initial small batch of connectors is used (assuming of course, there are more orders for MFX), there will need to be a bit of a price hike. Still, with the features that are included, I still think that the price is more than reasonable.

regards
Dave

It is indeed an excellent price and I was surprised how low it was given the features.

I'd call the MFX almost the ultimate MTX upgrade.

Hi Stephen,

More nice words - thanks!

Some comments on the current price . . . . . . .

It's pretty obvious that I'm not a good businessman

I wanted to make MFX available at a price that would be fair to everyone, particularly when all of the "smarts" were made freely available by Martin, Bill and Andy, but I also needed to cover my costs.

I was pretty confident that 10 pieces would sell and, to keep the unit cost down and expedite availability, I did some “pre-investment” based on that number to allow me to take advantage of the typical price breaks (often at 10) that seem common for most components (apart from the connectors). I basically added up the cost of the parts, added a little for my time doing the ground work and assembly, then divided the cost by 10. For the initial run of boards, that will work out OK and I should recover the many hundreds of pounds that I have invested so far once the first 10 have sold. (There is some risk in there that there is no slack to cover any faults/failures that might lead to a return being requested.)

However, I didn’t give enough thought to what I would do after that. I really don't want to splash out a few hundred £ more in advance when future sales of MFX are not gauranteed. Although the current price is really good value, bearing in mind MFX's features, it is still quite pricey for an add on with such a small potential market and, given the current economic situation, I think that sales are not likely to be high when people have to prioritise real world expenditure. Once the first batch has sold, I think that there are probably a few options that I need to consider, e.g.,

1. Buy in another set of components/modules at the already increasing prices. This will likely mean that the MFX price does not increase too much,apart from with component price inflation, but will require another big chunk of cash to preinvest in the components with no gaurantee of sales. (Not my favourite option!)

2. Put the price up to reflect the latest component/module costs and base it on buying parts on an "as needed" basis. This will make MFX more expensive, but reduce the preinvestment that I need to make and is probably the most likely option.

3. Start a waiting list for prospective purchasers. This will give an MFX price in line with option 1, the downside being that people will likely have a considerable wait before their boards would be ready. I'd probably need to take a deposit to guard against people not following through on their order, but I'm not keen on taking people's cash in advance, so don’t really want to go that way.

Options 2 and 3 likely come down to whether prospective future buyers are more focused on price or delivery schedule. The uncertainty of an open ended waiting list may lead people to favour option 2.


Of course, what I should have done is to have charged more for the initial batch to allow me to build up a reserve to fund future sales but hey-ho, hindsight is wonderful isn't it

Anyway, this is all hypothetical until the first batch are sold. But, economics aside, I’m happy that we have at least been able to make MFX available to others. The minor (?) criticisms aside, I think it is pretty damned good

So I finally got to unpacking the MFX and fitting it into an MTX I could find that worked and hey presto I now have a rock steady VGA output to work with.

I will echo other comments as to the quality of this board, it really does look like it could have come straight from a major manufacturer as far as looks and layout are concerned and all involved should feel very proud of this fantastic piece of kit. Quite simply anyone who has an interest in using their MTX for more than a 5 minute play every once in a year when its taken out of the loft should get this.

Jim

So my MFX arrived last Friday. It was a drab, rainy day in the Copenhagen suburbs and luckily, I saw the forecast, thought about the bike journey to work and decided to work from home.

Good call! At 13.25 local time I had a somewhat wet and a little crushed box in my hands, direct from Primrose Bank. Feverishly opening it up, the (thankfully) well-packaged contents were revealed to be, the MFX main board, the SD card reader module, Wiznet ethernet module, SD card (micro sd with adapter) and 3d-printed side plate. Also enclosed there's a wonderful, personal touch; a personally addressed letter from Dave. I love that Dave, it's a great touch.
Next up was the task to fit it to one of my MTXs. I pondered on this a bit but then decided that my original Danish MTX 500 (badged as a 512) would be the recipient as I figured not too many other MFX users would be using an international keyboard and it might be good for the project to test it out. This would mean removing the CFX-II from it and replacing it with the MFX.

The CFX-II, which is an excellent piece of kit but falls somewhat short in the "practical considerations" category - namely access to the CF card and mounting of the VGA port, definitely not deal-breakers but having the VGA connector loose in one of the DART card ports, was a little less than desirable.

After removing that, I then had the task of fitting the MFX. It's a tight fit and designed that way, so that it fits flush to the end plate but also spans all the available depth in order to keep it secure. For a moment I thought I would not be able to get it in, as the tolerances were so small and the rubber feet prevented sliding the card in. Heeding Dave's recent post about being low on patience in his advanced years (viewtopic.php?p=4826#p4826), I eschewed 40-odd years of ignoring manuals and read the installation section, which recommends removing the lower rubber foot and putting it in afterwards! Then I just had to place the separately packed modules and double-check the on-board jumpers.
Next came fitting the 3d-printed end-plate. The end-plate itself is nicely made and looked as smooth as a professionally molded piece to me. It has a shrouds internally to give support to the modules, which is exactly what they need, as the modules have some wiggle room (the SD card reader especially). Fitting the screws was nearly impossible, though. I think that there is either shrinkage in the plate when it cools or large tolerances in the MTX case manufacture. I'd hazard a guess it's the former, not the latter. The holes are the right size, it's just that they need to move closer to each other along the length by maybe 0.5 - 1mm (at a guess).
Next up, was time to power up. Would this be everything I expect (and hoped for)? Would it be worth the extra customs charges (thanks Brexit!)

Now, I didn't have the ideal test environment, as my man-cave is out of action (I have a roof leak to resolve) and my WFH desk has two LCD monitors, neither of which have VGA in. So after some faffing with a cheap VGA to HDMI converter (which failed to work) I reached for my mini 7-inch LCD monitor with a VGA input. The result was just what the doctor ordered, rock solid colour VGA out. The flashing red cursor for disk access is a great touch, Martin, btw.
After trying a few games out to test the VDP emulation; which I can say is rock solid and a definite incremental improvement on the propeller chip implementation of the CFX-II, I turned my attention to network functionality. Reading a bit further in the manual, I see that I had to modify the NFX.CFG file to reflect my router IP and assign a static IP for the MFX itself. To do this I needed an editor and so opened NewWord, which was an adventure in itself, as I hadn't touched WordStar or a clone of it, since probably 1988 or 89! After mucking about a bit and getting nowhere, I download the quickstart guide from Dave's site and made the necessary changes. I could have ignored the router, but set up a static IP on there for the MFX. Next up was to run FTPD on the MTX and using WinSCP to upload a file, it worked beautifully.

Dave writes in the MFX operators manual that the networking is a "game-changer". Honestly, this sounded a bit hyperbolic to me, but now seeing it action and using it, yes, it is a game changer. I never bothered adding any files to my CFX-II because I didn't want to install CPMCBFS or faff about with cpmfuse in a Linux VM and exposing the CF card to the VM. So being able to upload a file quickly and without hassle, is a total boon.

So the file I chose to upload, was Bill's MTXLIb demo and here it is running on the real hardware.
Note, the small screen is the MFX VGA out and the large one is the vdp. You can see the sync between the two is very tight.

There is a bug, which I'm investigating but that could be in the MTXLib, which cause the demo to crash on my MFX after screen 3, but everything else (that I tried) ran perfectly. I can't recommend it enough, if like Jim says, you want to use your MTX on a regular basis. It's so much better than it's forebears - the CFX, CFX-II and at least as good as the Rememorizer (which is the basis for much of the code here) but with added NFX abilities.

My hat is doffed in your general directions, gents!

Totally sexy

A word on the end plate fixings. I could of course blame the "inferior" prrinting of the end plate. But that one looks so much sexier than the ones I did...

But I suspect there's a little variation in MTX case dimensions. The PLA printed version of the end plate fits both MTXs here without any real tweaking or forcing. However I did find when switching the protorype MFX from one machine to the other that the 160mm protoboard was pretty much impossible to slide into place on one system despite having no problems on the other. The rails are not exactly the same spacing and I had so sand down the top edge of the proto board to fit it!

As a result of that experience Dave made the MFX production PCBs a little under 160mm to stop that problem. I don't imagine anyone would be happy sanding the edge off a brand new PCB. If the rails are subtly differet sizes, the bolt holes could be slightly variable too.

I can't claim any credit for the idea of the coloured cursor, rememorizoer/rememotech does something similar.

The net module is seriously useful. I've had the NFX test modules to play with for several years now, and the gamechnager label, it suits. Add Bill's FTP server and it made testing the new releases form Under4Mhz real easy, download on the pc, FTP to the MTX and test. "Simples"