TSU Meeting MONDAY — October 7, 2024

Tom Hines, Peyton, Jeff Burrell, David Sawley, Paul Maltby, Joe, Ryan Gray, Keith, Johnny

An agenda-free Monday meet that began with returning member Tom Hines introducing himself: TS1000 in 1982, TS1500, then a TS2068 he sold years ago and finally replaced — the new unit arrived in mint condition (missing only the back cover), and he had a TS-Pico, VGA cable, and other parts inbound. Peyton shared early diagnostics on his ailing TS2068: an IR camera showed the audio chip running ~100°F, U9 ~86°F, CPU 92/83°F across the package, and ROM 2 also hot, while the original PSU still measured correct voltage. The group's read was that something is grounding the data or address bus, pulling everything hot together.

Jeff Burrell gave an update on his Blur 68E FPGA board: five built, four working, one with a dead sound module he's still chasing. A Spectrum 48K core is running on USB-keyboard + VGA hardware, cores load from SD, and he's writing a small core-selector. The on-board FPGA has 102 KB plus a 1 MB external SRAM — enough headroom for an Apple II/IIe core alongside the planned TS2068 core with dual AY chips for stereo sound. BOM is about $100 (FPGA ~$12, connectors ~$5 each, two RP2040 Picos ~$2 each from China). Beta-tester boards are being prepped.

David Sawley opened his ZX Spectrum Next (confirmed Issue 2 / red Sinclair badge, so upgradable to current FW). He walked through new-owner pain points — the manual's poor index, fear of wearing out the SD card, backup/upgrade workflow, getting into CP/M, finding a terminal program for the Wi-Fi, and running Pascal Z80. The group pointed him at the Spectrum Next support forum and image downloads, confirmed Tasword runs (MScript is 2068-only), and surfaced relevant tooling: Boriel BASIC (compiler with a 678-page companion book covering 48K/128K/+2/+3/Next), the ZX Tape Player Android/iOS app that streams TAP/TZX from the spectrumcomputing.co.uk database into a real machine via the headphone jack, and zmakebas for turning a text-editor BASIC listing into a TAP — with Ryan Gray's recent fork adding ZX81 fixes and a new hex-to-1510-cartridge converter in his zx81-utils repo.

Joe's library-tape archiving was the other big thread: ~141 programs delivered in September and ~360 in October, including the full set of seven Tim Ward Timex Sinclair Public Domain Library tapes for the 1000/ZX81 (numbered 10001 upward, roughly 70 programs per cassette, ~500+ in total) — bringing the archived total to ~1,700 programs across both machines. One TS1000 cassette of "5 2K Games" was unrecoverable due to dropouts. Joe's tape-baking rig is a styrofoam-lined box with a 100 W bulb and an AliExpress digital thermostat, originally built to dehydrate 3D-printer filament. Discussion ranged across Fort Worth user-group provenance, type-ins from Sync magazine, and the call for someone to identify the many uncommented machine-code snippets on the tapes. Other items: Paul Maltby on the music side (TI-99/4A sound limits, lust for AY/SID, ZX Band Plus, MIDI-cartridge ideas — and promising a theme song once he gets a 2068); Keith showing his Spectrum/Shadow ROM disassemblies and discussing his AERCO Spectrum-compatibility ROM patch and a Worievo bank-switching module using the Series 1 dock; a Ryan/Keith side-thread on whether the Interface 1 ULA's microdrive I/O could be driven directly from a TS2068; confirmation that the TC2068 and TS2068 share the same ROMs (differences are the Spectrum-bus edge connector and RGBI-vs-YUV SCLD output); and a strong push for members to attend VCF Midwest 2025 in Schaumburg.

Next meeting: Sunday, October 20, 2024, 2:00 PM. Future guests floated: Sue (Soft Sync), paired with George Grim; and a longer-term "Timex reunion" episode (Danny Ross, Lon Hildreth, Will Column, George Grim, Gary, etc.) scheduled on a Sunday so Johnny and João of the Load ZX Museum can join.

Highlights

Jeff Burrell's Blur 68E FPGA board: 5 built, Spectrum 48K core running on USB keyboard + VGA, ~$100 BOM, TS2068 core with dual AY stereo and possible Apple II/IIe core to follow.
Joe's archiving sprint: ~141 programs in September and ~360 in October, including all seven Tim Ward TS Public Domain Library tapes — total archived now near 1,700 programs.
Peyton's IR-camera survey of his TS2068 (audio chip ~100°F, CPU 92/83°F, ROM 2 hot) points the group at a data/address-bus short rather than just bad RAM.
David Sawley unboxed an Issue 2 ZX Spectrum Next and got pointed at zmakebas, Boriel BASIC, and the ZX Tape Player app for getting software onto it.
Push to gather the group at VCF Midwest 2025 in Schaumburg; next meeting Sunday Oct 20, 2024 at 2 PM.

Projects discussed: TS-Pico · FPGA "Advanced 2068" · Library Tape Archiving Process Topics: ZX Spectrum · Hardware projects & new boards · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · Repair & restoration · BASIC programming · User group meetings & events

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