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TSU Meeting SUNDAY — November 19, 2023

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David, Ricardo Calcagno, Gustavo, Jeff Burrell, Tim Swenson, Carl Miles, Adam Trionfo, Ryan Gray, Paul

Marking the 40th anniversary month of the TS2068, the meeting opened with Ricardo Calcagno telling the story of the TS-Pico — how he started during the pandemic with no electronics background, worked from Johan ("Dr. Bip") Koelman's Spectrum PC interface, switched to the Raspberry Pi Pico for its PIOs, and eventually teamed up with Jeff, Tim Horner, Gustavo, and David to build the current board. Gustavo described the Argentine TS2068 scene of the 1980s (~5,000 official units plus smuggled machines, eclipsed later by Czerweny's Portuguese-Timex Spectrum clones), and gave background on his TPI BASIC extensions, which now form the Pico's command set.

The technical bulk of the meeting was a TS-Pico walkthrough and Q&A. The board ships with 512K SRAM and 512K flash (eight 64K DCKs or sixteen ROMs), supports save/load/verify/merge over the standard ROM routines, directory and mount commands, on-the-fly ROM/DOCK mapping, and switching I/O between SD card and cassette — so you can finally archive tapes to SD or vice versa. Non-standard Spectrum-loader tapes (Tomahawk, QED) don't load, as expected. Ricardo demonstrated flash-erase working from the TS side, with full DCK writing and an NMI-button snapshot feature on the roadmap; user-written Python commands on the Pico (a sort-array coprocessor example) and ADC/Wi-Fi expansion are also planned. Jeff explained the BE (bank-enable) handling: the Pico backs off the bus when an upstream card (Larken, Oligár, FDD3, AERCO) asserts BE, with jumpers for edge cases. Pricing is $79 for the Pico plus a four-slot expansion board (with switchable per-slot power and BE pass-through); 18 people committed to 20 boards in the pre-order list, with shipping starting this week and a firmware-update path via USB drag-and-drop.

Tim Swenson reported on the Bill Miller collection wind-down: roughly 30 boxes shipped via Pirate Ship/UPS, most machines redistributed, and a community fund of $2,321 now available for archiving or seeding new projects. Carl Miles flagged an unusual find from that batch — a Westridge-style 2050 modem actually labelled "Timex Sinclair 2050", serial #22 — prompting a discussion of whether Timex ever shipped any branded units before Anchor Automation took the design over. The group also went through Bill's A&J Micro Drive, Exatron, and Damco waffle-drive hardware and who ended up with what.

Tim Swenson announced he is starting a Timex Computer Corporation history/timeline document (Creative Commons, to live on David's site), drawing on SYNC, Time Designs, the two Sinclair books, press releases and newsletters; Ryan Gray has a related timeline in progress and will contribute. David floated a BASIC port of the solo sci-fi RPG Notorious for the 2068, now that fast SD storage makes loading screen art practical. The meeting closed on next-gen 2060 BEU (Bus Expansion Unit) design — Carl, Ryan, Jeff and Gustavo debated single-board vs. split-board layouts, riser cards, a taller chassis for vertical expansion cards, FPGA-based video/sound (AY emulation, stereo), 3.3V vs. 5V level translation, and whether to include a Centronics port. Next meeting: Monday, December 4 at 9 PM, with Ryan's feature-set document circulated in advance.

Highlights

  • TS-Pico demo: SD load/save, ROM/DOCK bank mapping, flash-erase working, snapshot/NMI and DCK writing on the roadmap.
  • TS-Pico pricing set at $79 (Pico + 4-slot expansion board); 18 backers committed to 20 boards, shipping starts this week.
  • Bill Miller collection wind-down: ~30 boxes shipped, ~$2,321 community fund left for archiving and new projects.
  • Carl flagged a Westridge 2050 modem labelled "Timex Sinclair 2050" (serial #22) — possible unshipped Timex run.
  • Tim Swenson starting a Creative Commons Timex Computer Corporation history/timeline document, with Ryan Gray contributing.

Projects discussed: TS-Pico · The Bill Miller Collection · Library Tape Archiving Process · FPGA "Advanced 2068" · "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 Topics: Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.) · TS2068 / TC2068 · Cartridges, EPROM & dumping · Hardware projects & new boards · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · For sale, wanted & collections

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