Skip to content

TSU Meeting SUNDAY — August 18, 2024

Watch on YouTube

David, Carl Miles, Adam Trionfo, Ryan Gray, Gustavo, Ingo, Jeff Burrell, Mowgli, Keith, Greg, Paul

The meeting's main topic was whether an American Timex/Sinclair museum is viable, and what realistic preservation looks like instead. Consensus: a dedicated US museum is a stretch — Timex/Sinclair was a niche brand here, and donating to a general institution like the Computer History Museum tends to mean things vanish into storage with no one on staff who knows the machines. The UK/Portugal/Argentina have more cultural pull, and Gustavo noted Argentina's Buenos Aires computer museum and that the Boston Computer Museum's collection was absorbed into Mountain View when it closed. Aircraft, railroad, and art museums were brought up as the model worth copying: working restoration shops that reproduce parts when originals can't be found.

The technical core of the discussion was how to preserve the TS2068 once chips and cases finally fail. Carl proposed standing up a GitHub project to reverse-engineer the TS2068's proprietary SCLD — the only non-commodity part on the board — building on the Portuguese FPGA work done for the TC2068 SCLD, on Jeff Burrell's existing Pico VGA implementation of the SCLD's video portion (which leaves only bank-switching, port decoding, and the sound-chip glue to recreate), and on Gustavo's full SCLD decode that exists inside his private 2068+FDD emulator. Carl also wants a 3D scan of the case so a future redesigned board could drop in. Ryan and Ingo pushed the broader point: preserve schematics, FPGA/CPLD cores, 3D models, and the repair knowledge itself as a living "time capsule" people can pull from to build working replicas. Jeff cited the MyArc Geneva precedent — TI-99 users pooled money in the early '90s to buy the OS source so it could keep being maintained — as a model worth borrowing.

Side threads: Mowgli described his private "Sprawl Technology Library" in Columbus (modeled on Paul Allen's Living Computer Museum, hopefully opening next year) and pointed to Dave McGuire's Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh as another small-museum example; he and others surveyed the VCF circuit (VCF Midwest next month, VCF SoCal, VCF Europe/Berlin) and noted there's no organized Timex/Sinclair presence at any of them. On the Spectrum Next: no TS2068 core exists, though Alvin had said it was on his radar; superfo's "Xberry Pi" runs the same FPGA core on a small board. Ingo described his Kilo Z (ZX81/TS1000-derived, better keyboard, 32K RAM, just got a ZX-Wespi fitted) and agreed to demo it next meeting. The group also discussed making more polished how-to and repair videos to fill the gap left by larger YouTubers (8-Bit Guy, Adrian Black) who cover Timex without having grown up with it.

Housekeeping: David showed a scan of the Jan/Feb 1988 Midwest user-group newsletter cover with digitized headshots from a CATS member's video camera (Mowgli, Paul Holmgren, Frank Davis, Gary Ginger, Don Guest, Maggie Stewart, Ed Radke all identified). The Sept Monday meeting is moved to Sept 9 because of Labor Day; the Sunday meeting stays on the 3rd Sunday. Ingo will demo the Kilo Z, and David will give a TS-Pico beta-testing update ("we have successfully passed the smoke test").

Highlights

  • Main topic: viability of an American Timex/Sinclair museum — group concluded preservation + working replicas beat a dedicated physical museum
  • Carl proposed a GitHub project to reverse-engineer the TS2068 SCLD, building on Jeff Burrell's Pico VGA work and Gustavo's existing full SCLD decode
  • Mowgli described his private Sprawl Technology Library in Columbus (Living-Computer-Museum-style, hoping to open next year) and Dave McGuire's Large Scale Systems Museum near Pittsburgh
  • No TS2068 core yet exists for the Spectrum Next; superfo's Xberry Pi runs the same FPGA core on a small board
  • Next meeting moved to Mon Sept 9 (Labor Day); Ingo to demo the Kilo Z, David to give a TS-Pico beta-testing update

Projects discussed: TS-Pico · FPGA "Advanced 2068" · ZX-Wespi / Wespi-Nano · "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 Topics: User group meetings & events · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · TS2068 / TC2068 · Hardware projects & new boards · Repair & restoration · Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.)

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