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Timex Sinclair User Group Meeting with European Friends — January 16, 2022

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David, Jacob Bullock, João, Stuart, Adam Trionfo, Ricardo Reich, Mario Mudeira

This was a joint meeting with European participants, anchored by a long visit from João, who runs the Sinclair/Timex museum in Cantanhede, Portugal. Before João's segment, Jacob Bullock demoed DitherPaint81, his ZX81 paint program (ported from an earlier TI-99/4A version). He wrote it in BASIC, compiled it with M-Coder (the original encoder, not MCoder, which he couldn't get working), and showed both the BASIC source and the compiled machine-code version running on a real ZX81 with a printer attached. He sells copies on cassette through eBay; cassette duplication is being done one-pair-at-a-time because his (church-surplus) audio duplicator can't drive a high enough level for the data signal. David also asked about Winky board schematics for level setting.

João then gave a ~90-minute walk-through of the museum and, more importantly, of the historical material he has been gathering. The museum is the only one in the world dedicated to Sir Clive Sinclair's and Timex's machines; it grew out of his private collection, runs in cooperation with the city hall, and now has a free virtual tour (built pro-bono by a vendor in exchange for partner credit). It covers all Sinclair lines, Spectrum clones from around the world (including Arabic-ROM Spectrums sold in Egypt, Brazilian Micro Digital and Prologica machines, Argentinian Czerweny), and a strong Timex Portugal section.

The headline news was the volume of primary-source material João has obtained from former Timex Portugal executives and their families. He has roughly 2,000 PDFs scanned so far (about half of the eventual total) — internal reports, Telex traffic, production figures, personal notes from US trips, dictaphone tapes, and engineering samples — including evidence that Timex Portugal manufactured Jasmine floppy-disk systems for the Oric Atmos (confirmed by a "Tron / produced by TMX Portugal" mark on the underside of a Jasmine 1 he just received). He also confirmed two long-rumoured Portuguese projects exist as more than vapor: the TENET (Timex Educational Network) — a classroom of 25 networked TC2048s with a master/slave architecture, c.1986–88, coded by the same engineer who wrote the TimeWords cartridge — and the TC3256, of which he has the bare PCB and keyboard and a lead on a working prototype kept by the family of the former managing director. He has also documented the two TS1500 board revisions (the second using the locally-developed SCLD/"Gatorade" in one of the first European surface-mount production lines), a TS1045 fast-loading-interface prototype, and a string of Dixtronic projects that used Timex computers (stadium scoreboard driven by TS1500s, a news-agency Telex aggregator, a hotel-room TV welcome system).

Cross-Atlantic threads: Stuart offered João his drawer of date-stamped TS1500 "PT" SCLD prototype boards (originally from Eric Johnson's Waterbury collection) and the moulded TS1510 briefcase João is missing. David walked through the TS2068's naming history (planned 16K 2048 and 48K 2072, with Sue Mahony announcing the 16K was dropped; Dan Ross is the one who reportedly mis-named it the 2068 on stage), and reminded João to chase Gary Grimes for the hand-drawn 2048 watch mock-up. João is looking for surviving contacts — Lou Galey, Vitor Schiff, and the real identity of "Al" in the Waterbury correspondence — and is wrestling with how much of the internal Timex paperwork he can responsibly publish. The group agreed to repeat the joint European session in four weeks.

Highlights

  • Jacob Bullock demoed DitherPaint81, his ZX81 paint program compiled with M-Coder and sold on cassette via eBay.
  • João unveiled the Portuguese Sinclair/Timex museum (Cantanhede) and its new free virtual tour.
  • Confirmed Timex Portugal made Jasmine floppy systems for the Oric Atmos — a "Tron / TMX Portugal" mark on a Jasmine 1 is the first physical proof.
  • The TENET (25-computer classroom network) and TC3256 prototypes both demonstrably exist; João has hardware and is chasing a working 3256.
  • ~2,000 PDFs scanned so far from a former Timex Portugal executive's archive — Telex traffic, internal reports, and production figures.

Topics: Timex Computer (European: TC2048/3256) · Prototypes & rarities · TS2068 / TC2068 · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · BASIC programming

Summary generated from the meeting recording; the full transcript is kept in the group's private archive.