TSU Meeting SUNDAY — March 16, 2025

Adam Trionfo, Ryan Gray, David Anderson, Carl Miles, Mowgli, Joe, Paul Holmgren, Christian, Mark, Gustavo

Adam and Ryan opened with news that an Albuquerque user-group member raked in a pile of QLs at a local estate sale — the previous owner still unknown. Ryan then walked through ZX BasicUs, a cross-platform Sinclair-BASIC interpreter (Spectrum variety) by Juan Antonio in Spain, with binaries for Windows and Linux. He pulled one of the bundled demo games (a Spanish-language game called "Dead End"), translated its custom character/literal codes back to standard graphics characters, and produced a regular TAP file that runs on real hardware or in an emulator. He noted the tool also claims to do BASIC code optimization, which could be useful for the 10-line BASIC contest.

Ryan then demoed his in-progress smoothed/outline Timex/Sinclair font — an attempt at a TTF/OTF version of the 8x8 Sinclair character set that downsamples cleanly back to the original pixels. Working in FontForge, he showed his per-glyph design rules (one-pixel strokes, true 45° diagonals where possible) and the compromises forced on awkward characters: the ampersand, M/W (Timex curves, no sharp top-left), Q (tiny stub instead of a true tail), the 8/B optical-illusion fix, and how the lowercase glyphs and punctuation are aligned. He exported TTF/OTF so the font is usable as a daily-driver terminal font on his Pi.

Mowgli briefed the group on VCF Midwest (Sept 13–14, 2025, Schaumburg, IL) — likely a second hall this year, a request to keep the Timex/Sinclair tables clustered on one island, and a heads-up that Schaumburg has a 10% combined state+city sales tax that sellers are responsible for. David's Google-Drive sign-up form was reshared; confirmed attendees include David, Carl, Adam, Ryan, Mowgli, Joe, Ingo, Jeff Burrell, Mark (representing QL), with Paul Holmgren a maybe and a hinted-at "surprise guest."

The back half went deep on TS1000 / ZX81 hardware. Carl showed a green Issue-3 board made in Spain by Microsur (the Portuguese-market supply chain previously documented by João), which prompted a side discussion of issue-1 vs issue-3 boards (no issue 2), curvy hand-laid vs straight CAD traces, and ULA generations 153 / 184 / 210 — the 210 adds the back porch modern TVs expect. David proposed collecting member photos to build a real board-variants reference. Carl then showed one of five Minstrel-style ZX80/ZX81 clones he has built (snap-dome keyboard, 3D-printed case, dip-switch ROM selection, external ZX80/ZX81-mode switch with expansion-bus signals, composite out), with multiple ZX80 and ZX81 ROMs onboard; the related ZX81+38 / +41 and Harlequin discrete-logic boards were discussed as the modern no-ULA route. Smaller items: an eBay EasyKey 60 (Hammond-case custom keyboard with shift/function keys and keypad) Joe is bidding on; a Sun Tronix keyboard listed at $275; Christian's microdrive cartridges (probably Spectrum, hard to distinguish from QL physically); running Forth (3Forth, Husband Forth) on a TS1000 via the external ROM board. Decision at the end: shift the next meetings to Monday March 31 and Sunday April 13 to avoid Easter, then back on cadence in May.

Highlights

Albuquerque member scored a pile of QLs at a local estate sale
Ryan demoed ZX BasicUs (Juan Antonio's cross-platform Sinclair-BASIC interpreter) and translated the bundled "Dead End" game into a regular TAP
Ryan showed his in-progress smoothed Timex/Sinclair TTF/OTF font, exported from FontForge as a daily-driver terminal font
VCF Midwest set for Sept 13–14 in Schaumburg, IL — group coordinating clustered tables, 10% city+state sales tax flagged
Deep dive on TS1000 board issues (1 vs 3), Spanish Microsur PCBs, and ULA 153/184/210 differences; Carl showed his ZX80/81 Minstrel-style clones

Projects discussed: "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 · TS-Pico Topics: TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Hardware projects & new boards · Video upgrades (composite, RGB, HDMI) · User group meetings & events · BASIC programming · For sale, wanted & collections

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