Memotech Advert - June 1984

Here's an attempt by Memotech to advertise itself as a software company, and to position its MTX512 as a dedicated word processing system - an approach that just a few years before had resulted in some quite expensive systems, priced on the assumption that such a machine could replace several actual typists in the office.

Memotech's offering, which came with NewWord, an MTX512 micro with 80K of memory and a DMX80 dot-matrix printer, was a little bit more reasonable, retailing for £645, which is around £2,720 in 2025.

The company was also making much of the fact that the NewWord word-processor was installed as ROM - making it permanently resident and fast, but also meaning that the system didn't require "expensive disk drives and their supporting hardware" in order to run.

NewWord was essentially a clone of the more famous WordStar, created by some of WordStar's original programmers after they had been fired from MicroPro.

They ended up getting finance to start their new company from George Morrow, who in turn secured a "free" software licence to use the program for his own micros. Once the company was established, Morrow sold most of his share back to the founders, but kept the licence^[1].

The idea of the computer as a dedicated word processor - even one built around a general purpose micro that could do anything - was perhaps best realised in the following year with the release of Amstrad's hugely-successful PC​W 8256.