TSU Meeting SUNDAY — February 19, 2023

David Anderson, Danny Ross, João, Carl Miles, Stuart, Gustavo, Adam

The headline guest was Danny Ross, who served as VP and Chief Operating Officer of Timex Computer Corporation from March 1982 until January 1984. Danny walked the group through his path to Timex (IBM → ITEL leasing → Memorex finance → headhunter call from Stuart Bader), his impressions of Clive Sinclair and owner Fred Olsen, and the early go-to-market: the ZX81 launch in Central Park, the first-day Macy's sell-out, the J. Walter Thompson "the power is within your reach" campaign, and the donation of TS1000 serial #1 (Lisbon line) to the Smithsonian, where it sits alongside the ENIAC. He also explained that Timex's 28% share of the home-computer market was won on distribution and brand, not technology.

He told two decisions he considers turning-points. The first was Fred Olsen's refusal to let him hire ad-man Bill Campbell as VP of Marketing — Campbell instead went to Apple under John Sculley and became the Silicon Valley "Trillion Dollar Coach." The second was the aborted China trip: after several days of meetings in Guangzhou, his counterpart Mr. Song leaned over and asked whether Timex was "in the gyroscope business" (Timex was making missile-guidance gyroscopes at the time). Reading the signal that Beijing wanted the defense tech rather than the computer, Ross walked away, and Timex announced its exit from the U.S. computer market a few months later. He attributed the actual shutdown to collapsing margins after TI and Commodore dropped their prices below cost ("kamikaze pricing"), compounded by having to take back retailer inventory of the TS1000/1500 when the TS2068 shipped — they recouped that stock through a barter-for-advertising deal, with the traded units sent to South America.

On product specifics, Ross confirmed the apocryphal TS2068 naming story: the machine was internally the 2048 (after the Spectrum), an FCC dispute over the Ferranti ULA forced redesign, the 48K + 24K cartridge math made it logically a 2072, and "2068" was a number he made up on the spot in a presentation. He recalled the Hayes-compatible modem prototype, said the Bill Gates / Microsoft BASIC conversations "didn't go very far," and dodged on how complete the TS2068 bus-expansion / micro-drive concept ever got. He confirmed the brother typewriter was the source of the TS2068 keyboard (he'd already said as much in his Boston Computer Society talk).

After Danny dropped off, João (Museu/Portugal) led a deeper dive into the European side: Timex Portugal ran a real R&D facility — multiple cost-reduced TS1500 revisions, the TC2048/TC2068 PAL SCLD developed locally (helped by what became INESC), the TENET (Timex Educational Network System), and an unreleased 256K "2256/3256" prototype. He shared a Timex flat-TV-module brochure from 1986, walked through how the Argentine Czerweny CZ1000/1500/2000 line came through Portugal (because of the UK–Argentina war) while Microdigital in Brazil had no Timex connection, and described an internal Portuguese production-line test rig whose ROMs the museum intends to release. David announced the upcoming guests: George Grimm on March 6 (Timex mainframe programmer turned Grimm's Fairy Trails) and Chuck Dierling on April 16 (author of the TS1000 and TS2068 manuals).

Highlights

Danny Ross (Timex Computer VP/COO 1982–84) joined as guest and told the inside story of the company's rise and exit
China manufacturing trip was killed when the Chinese side pivoted from computers to Timex's gyroscope (missile-guidance) business
TS2068 was internally the 2048; FCC issues forced redesign and the "2068" name was made up on the spot in a presentation
Bill Campbell — later Apple's VP Marketing and the Silicon Valley "Trillion Dollar Coach" — was nearly hired as Timex's VP Marketing instead
João confirmed Timex Portugal had its own R&D group that designed the TC2048/TC2068 PAL SCLD and prototyped a 256K "3256"

Topics: TS2068 / TC2068 · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Timex Computer (European: TC2048/3256) · Prototypes & rarities · Hardware projects & new boards · User group meetings & events

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