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The Memotech MTX Series

MEMOTECH  RELATED TRIVIA

A page of useless facts related (however tenuously) to :-

Memotech "Timeline" courtesy of Paul Daniels

Did you know ? . . . . . . . .

+

MTX computers were made in Witney, Oxfordshire, UK

+

David Cameron, UK Prime Minister between 2010 and 2016, was the MP for Witney from 2001 to 2016

+

Douglas Hurd was also the MP for Mid Oxfordshire (which was replaced by Witney) from 1974 to 1997

+

Memotech's founders (Geoff Boyd and Robert Branton) established Memotech while both at Oxford University
+      Geoff Boyd was a post-graduate researcher in metallurgy, probably at Wolfson College, Oxford
+      Robert Branton taught mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford

+

MTX cases were made in the UK, sent all the way to Holland for painting, then sent back! * (Back in Black ?)
+ The cases were manufactured by H C Holified in Abingdon (now Oxford Engineering)
+ The MTX512 & FDX starred in the movie Weird Science (oh, and Kelly LeBrock was in the movie too).
+ The game called "Les Flics" is the French nickname equivalent of the "Old Bill" (police)
+ An MTX512 with 64K of RAM has 512Kbits of RAM - it really was a MTX "512"  :-)
+ The MTX was 2.9x faster than a ZX Spectrum when running PCW BASIC Benchmarks
+ The red MTX demoed in Moscow was a lash up of prototyping boards inside the red case*
+ Memotech seem to have operated from a number of different addresses in and around Oxford
      3 Collins Street, Oxford - an early address for ZX81 add-ons (April 1982)
      103 Walton Street, Oxford - which seems to have been followed by this one
      Station Lane, Witney, Oxford - the final home for Memotech, where the MTX was made
      Memotech also rented office space from Witney Congregational Church, at 33A High Street, Witney
+ While the Station Lane factory was being built, Memotech moved into portakabins (photo from PCW, 1982)
+ Continental Software were based in a building opposite the factory (Mark Males)
+ Memotech Computers Limited moved into the that building when Memotech Limited closed down (Geoff Boyd)
+ Megastar Games were based in the Memotech factory (Jim Wills / Andy Key)
+ The Witney factory was located right next to the Tolman F1 Team (Mark Males)
+ The Memotech factory in Station Lane now looks like this (photo courtesy of Google Street View)
+ The MTX took its name from the die cast number stamped on the first case sample (from Memopad Issue 3)
+ Early MTXs used VDPs made by Texas Instruments in England, Ti's first non-US Semiconductor plant
+ The name "Memotech MTX500" was a UK Trademark with registration number 1195605 (1983)
+ The name "Memotech" was previously registered with number 1172263 (1982)
+ When introduced in 1983, the MTX500 was £275 and the MTX512 was £315
+ In September 1984, the MTX500 price dropped to £199.99  and included five free games cassettes worth £30
+ By the end of 1985, the MTX500 was £79.95 and the MTX512 was £129.95 - see the Dealer Pricelist
+ By mid 1987, you could get an MTX512 from UK Home Computers for £39.95 - see this advert
+ The most expensive MTX I have seen on ebay UK was a standard MTX500 which sold for £536 in April 2013
+ The Quadrascope in the Natural History Museum in London originally used a Memotech Video Wall
+     You can even buy a jigsaw of the Quadrascope Water Cycle display in the Ecology Exhibition
+ The Twin drive FDX system was sold as the FDX-1000 in the US (it was reviewed in this article)
+ In the USA, Memotech's (Memotech Corp.) first office was in Denver, Colorado (80227)
+ Memotech Corp. later relocated to Needham, Massachusetts (02194)
+ Before Memotech Computers demise, they were working on a 32 bit computer based on a NS32000 CPU
+ The winner of the contract for Russian school computers was the Yamaha YIS503II - see here for more
+ MTX is also an abbreviation for Methotrexate, a drug used in chemotherapy, amongst its other uses
+ Ed Hollingshead (author of Toado etc.) wrote an unpublished book, "Know Your MTX" (from MOC Info. Sheet)
+ Memotech (Memotekid) was a short experimental dance film that won the Betting on Shorts competition for 2009
+ The FDX was one of the earliest, perhaps even the first, CP/M 2.2 system capable of utilising colour text & graphics
+ The first title released under the SyntaxSoft label was Salty Sam (from Memopad Issue 2)
+ The Memotech Speculator (ZX Spectrum emulator) was released in October 1985
+ Memotech sold more disk systems in Germany than the rest of continental Europe combined
+ Memotech manufactured their own keyboards, using key-switches and custom keycaps from Futaba, Japan
+ MTX is a small, Unix like, Operating system used for teaching the principles of Operating Systems
+ The MTX Assembler ROM contains an "Easter Egg" - a message to one programmer's girlfriend - "Hello Caro"
      It cost the programmer his job - I hope that it was worth it ! [Located at #2BD0] (Mark Males/Martin Allcorn)
   
+ Your trivia here . . . . . .

If you know anything useless about Memotech, please let me know :-)

 

* Information from Ann Selene based on her time working with Memotech on the Russian project

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