the machine's
lack of memory seriously limited their possible uses. The huge market for
add-on memory packs which this situation created gave the opening which the
founders of Memotech seized.
RETRO
CLASSIX
INDEX: MEMOTECH COMPUTERS
THE HISTORY...
Memotech was the British company
that established its name as a manufacturers of add-ons and peripherals for
the Sinclair ZX81. The company went on to produce a range of stylish home
computers - the MTX 500, 512 and the RS 128. When Memotech was established,
Sinclair's first micros (the ZX80 and ZX81) were already spear-heading the
micro-revolution of the early Eighties. Despite their popularity, however,
the machine's
lack of memory seriously limited their possible uses. The huge market for
add-on memory packs which this situation created gave the opening which the
founders of Memotech seized.
The company's founders, Geoff Boyd and Robert Branton, were both lecturers at Oxford University. Geoff Boyd lectured in metallurgy at Wilson College and Robert Branton taught mathematics at Christ Church. They first met at a computer exhibition in 1981 and were soon in partnership, producing a 16k byte expansion board for the ZX81. The company flourished and produced a whole series of "Memopacks", which included 32k and 64k Ram packs. They also produced the high resolution graphics (HRG) pack, a spreadsheet analysis (Memocalc) and a word processor (Memotext). To this could be added Centronics and RS232 interfaces, a keyboard and even an 80-column dot-matrix printer, the DMX80.
Memotech were riding high on the back of Sinclair Research when, in 1982, the Spectrum was launched. Surprisingly, though, Memotech decided against producing any add-ons for Sinclair's new micro. The reason was that Memotech's resources were already being used to develop their own micro. The belief was that the ZX81 would not last and the directors of Memotech wanted to use the knowhow and expertise they had built up to produce one of the next generation of micro-computers.
Based in Witney, Oxfordshire,
the company did, however, continue to produce its range of products and
international sales of the Memopacks had exceeded 250,000 units, which provided
the funding to launch its MTX range. The 32k, MTX500 first went on show at
the Earls Court Computer Fair in June 1983 and advanced orders for the basic
machine costing £275, soon added up to 25,000. Memotech promised to
start shipping the machine to customers in September 1983, but had to put
the launch date back to October and still didn;t officially launch it until
February 1984.
With the MTX500 still not ready, Memotech then announced yet another machine, the 64k MTX 512 (originally called the Orchid SM1), in October 1983. They now planned to have both models, the MTX500 priced at £275 and the MT512 priced at £315, ready for sale by the end of October. When, finally, it did begin to arrive with the customers who had patiently waited for it, the machine really was a first class piece of workmanship and, with the promise of considerable expansion capability, the MTX was easily a good equal to the Commodore 64, with similar user RAM, a better keyboard, equal graphics and sound and similar in price.
The MTX computers were, indeed,
first class machines; solid and well built and had all the right qualities
to be directed towards use in the business world, as well as having all the
necessary features to make a good games machine. However, the machine was
late and had missed the Christmas trade. Undeterred, even by the collapse
of other micro manufacturers such as Jupiter Cantab at the end of '83, Memotech
got the MTX on the market and set about actively encouraging the development
of software for the machine. This included close links with Continental Software.
They also got PSS to start writing for them.
Despite being highly regarded, the Memotech 500 series turned out to be a white elephant. The machine's failure to achieve a wide popular interest was due to it being too expensive at over £300 and lacking software support for the games player. On the other hand, the "serious" user was probably put off by the lack of built-in interfaces, which would have allowed it to have been connected to disk drives.
By the end of 1985 and with another
new micro promised, the RS128's mounting debts put Memotech into Receivership.
The company, like so many victims of the 1985 slump, was dead; this one,
however, was refusing to lay down, but that's another story.
The MTX512 is housed in a smartly designed black casing, which was a great improvement on many other computers at that time which often crammed sophisticated electronics into cheap and flimsy casings. It has a beautiful keyboard, divided into three sections. The first is the main alpha-numeric area and is a dream to type on. Coming close to the "MSX standard", having a Z80 CPU, a Texas Instruments TMS9918/9928 video display processor and a BASIC that is acceptably close to the Microsoft version, it could claim to be one of those "standard" machines.
The machine has a relatively large number of chips when compared to other micros. The designers seem to have preferred (or found it more economical) to avoid using a few big ULA's and they used a traditional layout with many tightly packed chips, which makes fault diagnosis easier and quicker. A built-in assembler/disassembler is an unusual feature but, nonetheless, a very useful facility. Also available with the machine is the Front Panel software package which is a machine code programming facility, although it is only thinly documented in the manual.
The MTX512 could be expanded considerably. The user could add disk drives and three graphics controller boards, a 96-bit processor main controller board, a "Frame Grabber" and a three channel A/D converter. The display offered 16 colours in high resolution mode (256 x 192 pixels), which was fairly average by 1985, though the colour resolution was 64 x 192, which exceeds many, such as the Spectrum. The resulting system would produce animations, picture composition and graphic design up to full typesetting capacity. A system of similar capability would have cost around £4,500 at the time.
The main computing language is BASIC, but sub-languages include "NODDY", a language designed to make text handling easy. The error messages are all brief and ambiguous - the manual was little help with common messages SE.A, SE.B, SE.C and A! The user manual is relatively comprehensive but not as good as others at that time. It lacked an index and, apart from the cover, it had neither colour nor tints to make reference easier. Information about the machine, however, is presented in great detail.
The MTX512 is not so easy to get today and an unboxed machine will cost upwards of £50 in the UK. For an MTX500 or an RS128 you would probably have to pay in excess of £100. Boxed machine will always cost a lot especially if mint. Originally, the MTX512 cost £315. By the time the company went into Receivership you could buy one for £119. By 1986 the remaining stocks were being sold off at £39.95.
This article first appeared in Retro Classix, issue 16. Check out our back issues on the main web site for more articles on the history of retro computers and consoles.
Apart from the history of the Memotech the information supplied here should give you an idea of what these machines are worth in the UK today but one must remember that condition is everything. Dose the box contain what it should have including the correct manual, any promotional material, software. All the right leads and power supply should be present. The box must be the right one - for the Memotech it had a polystyrene insert and came in a plain cardboard box with MEMOTECH printed on it.
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