TSU Meeting SUNDAY — February 18, 2024
David Anderson, Carl Miles, Adam Trionfo, Ryan Gray, Jeff Burrell, Joe, Johnny (Portugal), Jeremiah Stoddard, Ada, Keith, Z
Joe walked the group through a software-preservation effort: recovering Craig Bird's Bird Processor word processor and the Bytebac Zcom terminal for the TS1000 from flood-damaged 1980s cassettes. Off-the-shelf cleanup tools choked on hundreds of thousands of bit errors, so he hand-edited the waveforms in Audacity — visually picking ones and zeros and splicing in good samples from a duplicate copy on the same tape — and got the programs to load. He offered to put together a short tape-archiving how-to for an upcoming meeting.
Carl gave a deep technical update on his TS1510 cartridge-interface clone work for the TS1000/1500. Working with Paul Farrow (who recently dumped the Flight Simulator cartridge), Carl traced why Superflo's earlier clone design only ran the 8K titles (States & Capitals, Chess, Supermath) but not the 16K Flight Simulator: Superflo had left pin 21 (the second 8K chip-select) disconnected. Carl is iterating new boards — including a multi-cart with DIP-switch selection — and is also reverse-engineering the 100-byte machine-code header Timex prepends to each cartridge image (it clears RAM, copies the program into RAM, and auto-RUNs at a specific BASIC line). Paul is writing a utility that will turn any ZX81/TS1000 .p file into a 1510 cartridge ROM image, opening the door to a 3D Monster Maze cart, a Forth cart, and similar. Carl also noted Paul Farrow's Chroma 80/81 (color+sound add-on with a Spectrum-style cartridge port) is finally shipping.
Adam reported on a working session in Albuquerque with Carl and Ryan. They dialed the Atari BBS "The Basement" from a TS2068 using a Westridge 2050 modem driven by the Zterm terminal program running under the OS64 64-column cartridge — at 300 baud, but with full 64-column output that wrapped correctly. Carl is building an RS-232 conversion board for Adam's and Ryan's 2050 modems (full six-line handshake) so they can drive faster external modems. Ada (joining from outside North America) showed an early-90s EGA-mod TS2068 wired to a Sears RGB monitor.
David demoed Jeff Burrell's new Pico-based video board for the TS2068 ("the Jeff board"): it sits on the bus, watches display memory in both 40-column and hi-res modes, and outputs clean VGA plus mixed beeper+AY audio — no configuration, just plug in. Boards are nearly ready to ship. Johnny (Portugal) briefly covered the 4th annual ZX Spectrum Game of the Year event at the LOAD ZX Spectrum museum (50–60 attendees in person, English-language stream this year, ~200–300 eligible new Spectrum games released in the year). Ryan got his NTSC ZX Spectrum back from Carl after a repair + composite mod; the group debated composite quality on various LCDs. Next meeting: Monday, March 4, 9 PM Eastern.
Highlights
- Carl Miles + Paul Farrow cracked the TS1510 cartridge header format; a .p-to-cartridge utility is in the works
- Superflo TS1510 clone's missing pin-21 chip-select identified as why Flight Simulator wouldn't run
- Joe recovered Bird Processor and Bytebac Zcom from flood-damaged tapes by hand-editing waveforms in Audacity
- ABQ trio dialed an Atari BBS from a TS2068 via Westridge 2050 modem + Zterm under the OS64 64-column cartridge
- Jeff Burrell's Pico-based VGA+audio board for the TS2068 is working and close to release
Projects discussed: TS1510 Cartridge Interface Clone · Library Tape Archiving Process Topics: TS1510 cartridge interface · Cartridges, EPROM & dumping · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Modems, serial & RS-232 · Video upgrades (composite, RGB, HDMI) · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX)
Summary generated from the meeting recording; the full transcript is kept in the group's private archive.