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TSU Meeting MONDAY — September 9, 2024

Adam Trionfo, David, Carl Miles, Jeff Burrell, Jeff K, Peyton, Joe, Ryan Gray, Mowgli, Paul, Tim Swenson, Keith

The group opened with an in-memoriam for Glenn, a longtime member from the 90s era who recently passed away (Jack relayed the news); David noted Glenn's Sir Clive Alive article about visiting the German ZX-Team. That tied back into a previous discussion of what happens to members' collections, and to an email from Gary Grimes — the industrial designer who did the TS2068 case at Timex — who is donating his TS2068 to the group (to be signed by Gary). Jeff Burrell raised the archive.org lawsuit; David walked through the publisher suit over digital library lending and the consensus to keep local copies of scanned materials.

New member Peyton introduced himself: he bought a TS2068 lot on eBay (with the silver 2020 tape player and printer) and the machine boots to vertical white/black bars. Carl walked through the likely cause — bad lower (display) RAM versus possible SCLD or CPU issues — and offered to socket and replace RAM chips for him. David noted that Jeff Burrell's Raspberry Pi Pico video board has shown otherwise-broken 2068s producing clean video, which sparked an extended design conversation about turning that board into a proper 2068 diagnostic cartridge: assert BUSRQ to take the bus, interrogate address/data/clock/power lines, possibly add a flash ROM and overlay diagnostics on video, and target the Pico 2 for its 48 GPIOs. Carl wants to extend it to Spectrum and ZX81 as well.

Joe gave a tape-archiving update from the ZX81/TS1000 box David sent him. On a Fort Worth public-domain library tape he found Ryan Gray's own 1983 "Word Wizard" (Ryan was on the call) plus a "Merry Christmas" demo with machine-code snow scroll, and elsewhere a 1984 "Speech Synthesizer" by Tad Painter (under the name Seymour). Joe explained that on these mass-duplicated library tapes one side loads cleanly and the other is glitchy — almost certainly an artifact of four-track simultaneous duplication and zip-squeal copying — and noted he's hitting XLR8/accelerate FSK saves that only a real machine will load. Discussion touched on TAP/TZX tooling and the Java visual editor for ZX81 bit patterns.

Mowgli (VCF Midwest staff) recapped this year's show — first year in the Schaumburg convention center, ~360 tables sold out in 2.5 hours, an in-hall POTS phone network (and Ethernet) run by a group with a Meridian switch, a complete ZX81 in-box that fetched $120 at the auction, but otherwise very little Timex/Sinclair presence. That set the main planning item for next year: the group wants to commit to VCF Midwest 2025 with multiple coordinated tables covering ZX81/1000/1500/2068/QL, and Paul agreed to bring up his IS-too BBS on a 2068 with a real 2050 modem on the show's phone network so other tables can dial in. Tim shared photos of his own early-2000s VCF West display (third place, with QL/Spectrum/2068/Lambda) and the Peter Jennings/Sargon Chess anecdote. Business items: the next meeting is Sunday Sept 15; Ingo's oversize "Kill Zed" ZX81 with Westby board may be demoed then; Tim needs ZX-Zine articles — TS-Pico as the headline piece, plus Carl's TS1510 clone write-up — and Paul mentioned he has a working TS2068 (and ~30 boxes of gear) to sell on the list. Willy was noted as still building replica Oliger disk systems.

Highlights

  • Joe found Ryan Gray's own 1983 "Word Wizard" (plus a "Merry Christmas" snow demo) on a Fort Worth TS public-domain library tape — and Ryan was on the call to see it.
  • Gary Grimes, the industrial designer who did the TS2068 case at Timex, is donating (and signing) his TS2068 to the group.
  • Extending Jeff Burrell's Pico video board into a proper 2068 diagnostic cartridge — bus-request the Z80, interrogate address/data/clock, overlay diagnostics, possibly use the 48-GPIO Pico 2.
  • Group committed to a coordinated Timex/Sinclair presence at VCF Midwest 2025, with Paul running the IS-too BBS on a TS2068 + 2050 modem over the show's POTS network.
  • Remembered Glenn, a longtime member from the 90s era who recently passed away.

Projects discussed: Library Tape Archiving Process · TS1510 Cartridge Interface Clone · TS-Pico Topics: User group meetings & events · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · Repair & restoration · TS2068 / TC2068 · Newsletters & documentation · Modems, serial & RS-232

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