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TSU Meeting MONDAY — June 3, 2024

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David Anderson, Jack Boatwright, Adam Trionfo, Carl Miles, Tim Swenson, Johnny Red, Ryan Gray, Joe, Rich

The June 3, 2024 Monday meeting featured guest Jack Boatwright, one of the early Timex/Sinclair community archivists whose late-90s website (still hosted on World of Spectrum, last updated March 2003) catalogued an enormous personal collection. Jack walked the group through his collecting history: a ZX81 in a cradle, buying out Frank Davis / FWD Computing in the mid-90s (nine boxes that paid for themselves through an eBay lot of 58 TS1000 programs), and three Dodge Caravan trips to collect Rod Gowan's RMG Enterprises stock when Rod shut down. He also recounted the catastrophic fire that destroyed his 48×32-ft outbuilding and most of the collection — TS2068s, FDD 3000s, twister boards, Larken/Oliger/AERCO/Ramex cartridge boards, a clear-cased pre-production 2068 from Eric Johnson, and four TS1510 cartridges. Cassettes in the middle of stacked boxes mostly survived and are now being shipped to David for testing.

The group dug into the famous "Timex Dream" press photo (2068 + BEU + micro drives + printer), tracing Jack's copy back to Rod Gowan and Carl recalling first seeing it in the 1984 E. Arthur Brown catalog. A long thread on the Sinclair-badged DMX-1000 printer Jack sent (an Amstrad 4160 rebadge from the post-Amstrad-acquisition era) led into ZX printer history, the Timex 2040, and a Portugal-only "Timex Printer 2040" variant (no Sinclair branding) that Johnny Red had supplied.

Carl Miles announced he had scanned and uploaded his 1985 TS2068 diagnostic cartridge — source code, 2040 printouts, and handwritten notes — to Dropbox (linked from the groups.io thread). He wrote it as a high school senior in an individualized-studies class for Art's skywriting business, which used 2068s as the brains of a three-axis milling machine and needed a way to test Timex-second machines. The cartridge is an LROS that takes over the system, tests RAM/ROM/tape/SCLD (using NDA'd internal SCLD schematics Art had), and was built in Ray Kingsley's HotZ assembler. PDFs are OCR'd/searchable; Carl is hoping to revive the code. Discussion turned to using ChatGPT for OCR of both printouts and handwritten listings — Adam reported good results on his AstroKey BASIC scans.

Tim Swenson put out a call for ZX Scene articles for the next print issue — personal computing histories, current projects, anything members are tinkering with. The TS1510 clone was identified as a strong candidate for a summary write-up: Carl explained the design history (Superflow's original reverse engineering, Claudius's later cartridge revision, the swapped address-line issue that breaks Flight Simulator because it's the only 2-chip cartridge), and floated future goals — making clone cartridges that also work in original 1510 players, and a 3D-printed cartridge case (Joe has already adapted the Portuguese TC2068 cartridge design to fit a TS2068, with a rotary 8-position switch). David shared that Don Superflow has built a "reverse twister" board that adapts Jeff Burrell's Pico Video for use with ZX Spectrum / Harlequin clones, opening that hardware up to the much larger Spectrum market. The next meeting was moved from June 16 (Father's Day) to Sunday June 23 at 2 PM Eastern.

Highlights

  • Guest Jack Boatwright recounted his collecting history (FWD Computing buyout, RMG Enterprises rescue) and the fire that destroyed most of his archive; surviving cassettes are being shipped to David for testing.
  • Carl Miles uploaded scans of his 1985 TS2068 diagnostic cartridge — Z80 source, 2040 printouts, and notes — to Dropbox, with hopes of reviving the LROS-based tester.
  • Don Superflow built a 'reverse twister' board adapting Jeff Burrell's Pico Video for the ZX Spectrum / Harlequin clones.
  • Tim Swenson is soliciting ZX Scene articles, with a TS1510 clone summary (Superflow → Claudius → Carl history, address-line fix, 3D-printed cases) flagged as a top candidate.
  • Next meeting moved from June 16 (Father's Day) to Sunday June 23 at 2 PM Eastern.

Projects discussed: TS1510 Cartridge Interface Clone · Library Tape Archiving Process Topics: TS1510 cartridge interface · Cartridges, EPROM & dumping · Machine code, Z80 & assemblers · Newsletters & documentation · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · Printers & plotters

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