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MTX computers were made in
Witney,
Oxfordshire, UK |
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David
Cameron, UK Prime Minister between 2010 and 2016,
was the
MP for Witney
from 2001 to 2016 |
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Douglas Hurd was also the MP for
Mid Oxfordshire (which was replaced by
Witney) from 1974 to 1997 |
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Memotech's founders (Geoff Boyd and Robert Branton)
established Memotech while both at Oxford
University |
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Geoff Boyd was a
post-graduate researcher in
metallurgy, probably at
Wolfson College,
Oxford |
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Robert Branton taught
mathematics at Christ Church College, Oxford |
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MTX cases were made in the UK, sent all the way to
Holland for painting, then sent back! * (Back
in Black ?) |
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The cases were manufactured by H C Holified in
Abingdon (now Oxford
Engineering) |
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The MTX512 & FDX starred in the movie
Weird Science (oh,
and
Kelly LeBrock was in the movie too). |
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The game called "Les Flics" is the French nickname
equivalent of the "Old Bill" (police) |
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An MTX512 with 64K of RAM has 512Kbits of RAM
- it really was a MTX "512" :-) |
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The MTX was 2.9x faster than a ZX Spectrum when
running
PCW BASIC Benchmarks |
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The red MTX demoed in Moscow was a lash up of
prototyping boards inside the red case* |
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Memotech seem to have operated from a number of different
addresses in and around Oxford |
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3 Collins Street, Oxford - an
early address for ZX81 add-ons
(April 1982) |
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103 Walton Street, Oxford - which
seems to have been followed by this one |
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Station Lane, Witney, Oxford -
the final home for Memotech, where the MTX was made |
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Memotech also rented office space
from Witney Congregational Church, at 33A High Street,
Witney |
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While the Station Lane
factory was being built,
Memotech moved into portakabins
(photo from PCW, 1982) |
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Continental Software were based in a building
opposite the factory (Mark Males) |
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Memotech Computers Limited moved into the that building when Memotech Limited closed down
(Geoff Boyd) |
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Megastar Games were based in the Memotech factory (Jim
Wills /
Andy
Key) |
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The Witney factory was located right next to the
Tolman
F1 Team (Mark Males) |
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The Memotech factory in Station Lane now looks like
this
(photo courtesy of Google Street View) |
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The MTX took its name from the die cast number
stamped on the first case sample (from
Memopad Issue 3) |
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Early MTXs used
VDPs made by
Texas Instruments in England,
Ti's first non-US Semiconductor plant |
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The name "Memotech MTX500" was a
UK Trademark with registration number 1195605 (1983) |
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The name "Memotech" was previously registered with
number 1172263 (1982) |
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When introduced in 1983, the MTX500 was £275 and the MTX512
was £315 |
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In September 1984, the MTX500 price dropped to
£199.99 and included five free games cassettes
worth £30 |
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By the end of 1985, the MTX500 was £79.95 and the
MTX512 was £129.95 - see the
Dealer
Pricelist |
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By mid 1987, you could get an MTX512 from UK Home
Computers for £39.95 -
see this advert |
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The most expensive MTX I have seen on ebay UK was a
standard MTX500 which sold
for £536 in April 2013 |
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The
Quadrascope in the
Natural
History Museum in London originally used a
Memotech Video Wall |
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You can even
buy a jigsaw of the Quadrascope Water Cycle display
in the Ecology Exhibition |
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The Twin drive FDX system was sold as the FDX-1000
in the US (it was reviewed in
this article) |
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In the USA, Memotech's (Memotech Corp.) first office
was in Denver, Colorado (80227) |
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Memotech Corp. later relocated to Needham,
Massachusetts (02194) |
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Before Memotech Computers demise, they were working
on a 32 bit computer based on a
NS32000
CPU |
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The winner of the contract for Russian school
computers was the Yamaha YIS503II - see
here for more |
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MTX is also an abbreviation for
Methotrexate, a drug used in chemotherapy, amongst
its other uses |
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Ed Hollingshead (author of Toado etc.) wrote an
unpublished book, "Know Your MTX" (from
MOC Info. Sheet) |
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Memotech (Memotekid) was a short experimental dance
film that won the
Betting on
Shorts competition for 2009 |
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The FDX was one of the earliest, perhaps even the
first, CP/M 2.2 system capable of utilising colour text
& graphics |
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The first title released under the SyntaxSoft label
was Salty Sam (from Memopad Issue 2) |
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The Memotech Speculator (ZX Spectrum emulator) was
released in October 1985 |
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Memotech sold more
disk systems in Germany than the rest of continental
Europe combined |
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Memotech
manufactured their own keyboards, using key-switches
and custom keycaps from
Futaba, Japan |
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MTX is a small,
Unix like, Operating system used for teaching the
principles of Operating Systems |
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The MTX Assembler ROM contains an "Easter
Egg" - a message to one programmer's girlfriend -
"Hello Caro" |
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It cost the programmer his job - I hope that it
was worth it ! [Located at #2BD0] (Mark Males/Martin
Allcorn) |
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Your trivia here . . . . . . |
