Stéphane from France (MTX500)

[Dave]

I remembered on Friday that I had been in contact with Gilles a couple of years ago. I had forgotten that he sent me a photo of his MTX512 with a French keyboard, I will add that to the website shortly. (I have already posted a photo of the language ROM fitted to his machine and photos of his SCART video board are on this page http://www.primrosebank.net/computers/ ... osmorg.htm).

Gilles bought a MAGROM from me, which, at the time, did not work as the language ROM configured as ROM 7 conflicted with MAGROM. (We later modified MAGROM to allow the ROM ID to be changed by a jumper.)

At the time, Gilles had TWO French MTX512s

[stansteph54]

sure, I’ll try to discuss with him too.

I found also a very few other french owners of MTX512 in our french FB Group « Ordinosaures » but I don’t know yet if they are french keyboards or imported versions.
Besides, I didn’t find any other french MTX500 yet

Thanks again

[1024MAK]

Hello and welcome to our forum Stéphane

Thank you Dave, a bit surprising to use the ear plug as an input! that’s why I tried the mic at first

Anyway, this isn’t working neither, I need to find the right cable.

Memotech first manufactured expansions/interfaces for the Sinclair ZX81 computers. Sinclair labelled the two cassette tape sockets after the corresponding connections on the typical “shoe box” sized mono cassette tape recorder. They supplied colour coded leads, hence one colour plugs went in the Ear socket on both the computer and the cassette tape recorder. Similarly the other colour plugs went in the Mic socket on both.

Memotech used the same system.

The 3.5mm sockets used on the Memotech are only designed to work correctly with mono 3.5mm plugs. If you have a stereo device as the audio source, you either need to make up a custom cable, or use a lead like this one: “3.5mm STEREO Jack Plug to 2 x MONO Jack Plugs SPLITTER Converter Cable Lead 1m”, here’s an example on eBay (this is on U.K. eBay, I suggest you see if there are other sellers).

“3.5mm STEREO Jack Plug to 2 x MONO Jack Plugs SPLITTER Converter Cable Lead 1m

IMG_7119.jpeg (192.31 KiB) Viewed 18695 times

If you are tempted to use a 3.5mm mono/stereo adaptor, keep in mind that these are really intended to feed a mono audio signal into a stereo device. If used to feed two audio channels (stereo) into a mono device, you are shorting the outputs of the two audio amplifiers together. This is unwise. Plus if there is a slight difference in the audio signals, this may distort the audio and reduce the likelihood of it LOADing.

The normal convention when using a stereo device to feed a mono device is to use the left stereo channel. But if the signal is present on both stereo channels, it does not really matter.

Mark