TSU Meeting Monday — January 2, 2024
David, Adam Trionfo, Ryan Gray, Carl Miles, Tim Swenson, Gustavo, Mark, Andy Wilhelm, Ingo, Paul, Greg Bennett, Johnny Red
The first meeting of 2024 opened with a long thread, prompted by Adam, on unusual real-world deployments of Timex/Sinclair machines in business and science. David recapped his finds: Alger Salt and Ray Mills's Votum voltage-to-frequency adapter, which plugged into the cassette jack of a ZX80/81 or 2068 and was reportedly sold to a college group for a Space-Shuttle experiment on hollow-sphere manufacturing; Medi Products of Salt Lake City, which combined a TS1000 with a Votum to re-sterilise artificial kidneys; Parker Electronics's TS1500-based HVAC controller for Carrier; and a 1983 Journal of Automatic Chemistry paper describing a ZX81 potentiometric analyzer for small labs on a tight budget. Paul recounted an all-night 1996 drive to Maryland to pick up an inventory of QLs that had been running a company's office network, and a $1,000 EMSoft QL package for CNC milling. Tim noted Larry Kenny drove a 3-D CNC wood lathe from a 2068 using HiSoft Pascal (chosen because the compiled code was ROMable, before he eventually outgrew Z80 speed). Iris Tenholder's use of a TS1000 and later a TS2068 to run her restaurant's liquor stock and payroll (initially in BASIC, then ported to Pascal) was revisited. David offered to chase down more former-Timex people — Sue Mahoney (Boston group, manuals), Marty Warner (Games to Learn By, who helped vendors recover programs after Timex shut down), Jim Payne of "Pheonix" Enterprises, and the author of The Crown — to preserve those stories before they're lost.
Adam asked about getting a 2068 onto BBSs on real hardware. The technical consensus: existing terminal software (SpecTerm 64 etc.) targets the 8251 UART of a TS2050 modem at ports 73/77, so the easy path is a converted 2050. A cleaner modern build would be a small board carrying an 8251 — or the Western Digital WD2123 dual-port UART already used in the FDD3, as Gustavo pointed out — plus an RS-232 jack; alternatively a Raspberry Pi Pico could provide the UART and even synthesise 300/1200-baud FSK tones in software. VoIP was agreed to be hostile to real modems (the codec mangles the analog signal); a Telnet/IP path would sidestep that. Gustavo described his earlier use of a TNC packet-radio modem with a 2068.
David showed a long-sought image from the Loja X Museum: Timex Middlebury's original silver TS1500 concept. Johnny Red confirmed that the case is real but the machine inside is a plain TS1000 with 2K, not the planned 16K board — the silver was essentially paint. Carl is partway through painting a TS1000 silver to match (masking the heat-stamped bottom-case labels and FCC marking, and wanting a TS1500 ROM to drop in alongside a 16K SRAM upgrade). Carl also reported on repairing Ryan's batch of 2068s: one had a NEC Z80 that booted to the copyright screen but failed the Spectrum diagnostic cartridge's upper-32K RAM test and the NMI keyboard test; a new-old-stock Z80 from 1983 made it pass. Ingo asked whether anyone is documenting 2068 board revisions (3A vs 3D, including the cut trace near the sound chip) the way the QL and Spectrum communities have. Carl floated 3-D-printing a TS2060 expansion-unit case by widening a copy of the 2068 base mould.
A large block was given to how the group itself should operate in 2024: a written agenda mailed a few days ahead with time-boxed items; Adam as informal timekeeper / "sergeant-at-arms"; muting non-presenters during a project talk with questions in chat; rolling action items; and using the groups.io wiki (now available since the upgrade) for per-project status pages members can edit. The Wednesday TS-Pico call was held up as the working model for a topical SIG. Tim noted the group has $2,376 from the Bill Miller collection in its account, which could help underwrite a printed ZX zine for 2024 — Tim already runs the digital ZXZine and SMSQZine. Mark proposed coordinating attendance at retro shows (VCF etc.) for visibility. Carl and Ryan previewed the January 21 meeting topic: an automated Spectrum-to-TS2068 transpiler that would disassemble a TAP, retarget Spectrum ROM calls to their 2068 equivalents, and ideally emit a .dck cartridge image; Gustavo flagged that the trickiest case is joystick reads — Kempston's single IN can't be replaced by the 2068's indirect AY-register-14 scheme without growing the code. Greg also flagged that the ZXpand Plus (32K + AY sound + joystick + SD + WRX hi-res for the ZX81) had just come back into stock on Sell My Retro.
Highlights
- Survey of oddball industrial/scientific uses of TS machines: Votum on the Shuttle, TS1000+Votum sterilising artificial kidneys, TS1500 HVAC controller for Carrier, ZX81 potentiometric analyzer, QLs running an office network
- Loja X Museum's silver TS1500 prototype turns out to be a plain 2K TS1000 in a painted case — confirmed by Johnny Red; Carl is replicating the look on a real TS1000
- Proposed 2024 meeting overhaul: pre-mailed agendas, time-boxes, muting during presentations, action items, and a groups.io wiki page per project
- Tim flagged $2,376 in the Bill Miller treasury that could underwrite a printed ZX zine for 2024 alongside his existing digital ZXZine and SMSQZine
- Next meeting (Jan 21): Carl and Ryan to present an automated Spectrum-to-TS2068 transpiler — ROM-call retargeting, joystick remapping via AY register 14, eventual .dck cartridge output
Projects discussed: TS-Pico · The Bill Miller Collection Topics: User group meetings & events · Modems, serial & RS-232 · Prototypes & rarities · Newsletters & documentation · Spectrum emulation & software · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX)
Summary generated from the meeting recording; the full transcript is kept in the group's private archive.