Memofest 2015 was hosted by Paul Daniels at his home in South Cheshire on 17th October

The event was attended by most of "the usual suspects", apart from Claus, with myself joining remotely via Facetime. This year, I was in a hotel in London, being down for the Rugby World Cup game between Scotland and Australia (tomorrow) - note, this will be the last mention of the RWC - the reason for which will no doubt become clear by tomorrow evening!

After she had listened in for a while, and eventually having had enough, I was left to network with my "geeky mates" while my wife went out to explore, with the parting comment that "they are really geeky"!

Despite not managing to make it in person this year, Claus had arranged for a new game conversion to be released at the event -  "O'Mac Farmer", by Mass Teal Ltd

Key discussion points

• Andy demonstrated his library of assembler routines to control the VDP and sound chip, the routines are callable from C which should make writing programs for the MTX a little easier, with only the speed critical parts of the code using assembly language.

• This generated a long discussion around the tools available, being worked or desirable for developing for the MTX

• Bill demonstrated a Node Ring running between a Raspberry Pi and a laptop, both running MEMU

• Paul demonstrated CFX , a cheap, Compact Flash, removable storage system for a basic MTX

• Paul also demonstrated the work that he has been doing to enhance Noddy, illustrated by some nice transitions

• Unfortunately, I missed this bit, but Andy demonstrated BE (his binary folding editor) and BEMEMU (which enables BE to look inside MEMU) which was very well received.

Memofest 2015
The 2015 gathering ! (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels, via Facebook)
The 2015 gathering ! (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels, via Facebook)
The 2015 gathering ! (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels)
In advance of the meet, Andy had offered to carry out REMEMOrizer upgrades during course of the day. Unfortunately, he was not clear enough when specifying the prerequisites and an individual, who shall remain nameless, arrived looking for his MAGOM to be upgraded to REMEMOrizer version 3 ! Needless to say, even Andy could not manage this !
"Bill demonstrated the Node Ring working between a Pi and a laptop, both pretending to be Memotech MTX computers " (Photo courtesy of Mark Kinsey, via Facebook)
The Raspberry Pi node (Photo courtesy of Mark Kinsey, via Facebook)
The laptop node, with the Raspberry Pi to its left (Photo courtesy of Mark Kinsey, via Facebook)
In the background, you can see a screen shot of Paul's Noddy demo (Photo courtesy of Mark Kinsey, via Facebook)
MEMU Output from Paul's Noddy Demo Click on the image to open the animated version (.wmv) Get the full version here (.mtx file format)
Paul's CFX set up and running on the MTX shown here I guess this counts as the "official release" of CFX, if anyone at Memofest 2015 would like one, discount pricing is available for attendees - just drop me an e-mail. (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels, via Facebook)
Close up of Paul's CFX (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels)
Jim demonstrating his "skills" playing Claus's new game conversion released at the event (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels, via Facebook)
Claus's new game conversion . . .  "O'Mac Farmer", by Mass Teal Ltd (Photo courtesy of Claus Baekkel, via Facebook)
Claus's new game conversion . . .  "O'Mac Farmer", by Mass Teal Ltd (Photo courtesy of Claus Baekkel, via Facebook)
Claus's new game conversion . . .  "O'Mac Farmer", by Mass Teal Ltd (Photo courtesy of Claus Baekkel, via Facebook)
This year's Memotech themed cake, featuring screen shots of Memotech games. I am told that is tasted very nice :-( (Photo courtesy of Andy Key, via Facebook)
Another photo of the cake  - not that it tastes any better from where I sit :-( (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels)
In more detail, the artwork for the Memofest cake (Photo courtesy of Paul Daniels)
This year's Memotech "hospital" patient was Jim's red MTX It transpires that Jim has used this board as his "test bed" and various parts have been swapped out along the way, so it's probably not too much of a surprise that the machine has problems! The patient on the table, with the surgeon at work
A close up of Mark's "healing hands" in action
And the patient getting a good dose of "looking at"
Some intense concentration seems to be in evidence, whereas, in reality . . . . . .
The severity of the problem seems to have escaped the team
Having reassembled the MTX, the trauma team finds that there seems to be a few parts left over ! The net result of the investigation is that the Video daughter board is faulty - Mark has taken it away for further treatment. The more serious problem seems to be a VRAM fault - further investigation & probably VRAM replacement required.

More detailed notes from the day, courtesy of Paul

Andy

Found out the correct way to pronounce MEMU (Me - Mu.)  Speaking of which, Andy demonstration BE and BEMEMU which impressed us all.  He might regret saying this but he also said he will be writing a game for next year.  Probably linked to the showing us SDCC with some MTX low level MC routines.  He was also reminded of a number of updates for Memu sent him by myself and Bill.

Jim

Talked about having tools available to make writing games for the MTX easier for none programmers or time starved designers. Various stories from the Memotech days, Wellie-grames and how he got fired and taken back on within minutes.  Had a MAGROM that was demonstrated.    and of course, telling us about the fornicating monkeys in the demo he wrote with Andy.

Bill

Demonstrated Node running between his Raspberry Pi and Notebook. Very impressed seeing a program on one Memu being output on another.

Mark

Mark attempted to get Jim's Red MTX working. As already reported the Video daughter board and VRAM are a bit dodgy.

Simon

Brought with him the start of a MTX case made out of black plastic which looked very nice.  Also some aluminum cases.

Paul

Cake. What would a Memofest be without cake? Showing off Noddy+, an extension to Noddy providing setting the colour, page transitions and an improved pause.  Had a CFX plugged into his MTX demonstrating CPM and Disc Basic.

Competitions

Jim won the Name the game Cake competition  Paul won the Old Mac game competition.

Next Year ?
Andy has promised to deliver a NEW MTX game at Memofest 2016