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TSU Meeting SUNDAY — April 13, 2025

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David, Jeff Burrell, Adam Trionfo, Carl Miles, Ryan Gray, Gustavo, Johan Koelman, Ingo Schmied, Mike, Tom, Larry, Joe, Christian

The main agenda was Jeff Burrell's "2060" expansion board — the redirected evolution of his 2068E project, now an expansion that plugs into the back of a real TS2068 and revives the never-shipped Timex 2060 bus-expansion concept. Jeff walked through the current design: an FPGA interfacing the 2068 data bus, RS-232 (UART in the FPGA), VGA video (HDMI possibly next revision), an 80-column terminal display, an I2S DAC with two AY cores for stereo sound, a new RP2350 Pico plus SD card taking over the TS-Pico's mass-storage role, a smaller Pico for USB keyboard (potentially game controllers, mice and USB mass storage via a USB-OTG hub), an optional Wi-Fi chip socketed for those who want it, four expansion slots, plus pass-through composite video, audio, mic/earphone and a power jack that feeds the 2068.

Discussion turned to enclosure, packaging and price. JLC pricing came out around $45 for a 3D-printed shell; the SD-card slot would peek out the front bezel (or be re-routed via a microdrive-look adapter for collectors), with an optional small 128×96 OLED for status. Short-run printed boxes are expensive, so plain packaging is more likely. The group converged on roughly $200 as a realistic target retail price, with STLs and as much of the design as possible released open-source for DIY builders.

A long technical thread covered printing. Gustavo explained how his modified TS-Pico ROM handles L PRINT, L LIST and COPY: under TPI:tape the original ROM routines still drive the thermal/2040 printer, but switching to SD-card mode replaces the print routine so that L PRINT/L LIST send ASCII (with token expansion, INK/PAPER/BRIGHT/INVERSE control codes 16–21, and UDC bitmaps when needed) directly to the Pico, while COPY ships the raw display files (one or both, supporting hi-res) for the Pico to interleave and rasterize. He also previewed extended SAVE TPI: device names (LPT, MDM, etc.) to reroute the print stream to files or peripherals — already implemented, awaiting firmware exposure. The group looked at having the smaller Pico talk Epson ESC/P2 over USB to modern printers, citing Tim (in NZ)'s Raspberry-Pi-based Retro-Printer / 2040 emulator with web-server OCR as a model. Lloyd Drager's 252-page M-Script + AERCO + Gemini-10X machine-code book was shown as proof a real 64-column word-processing chain worked back in the day, and Ryan pushed for using the BASIC streams/channels system properly so a channel-3 driver could redirect L PRINT to any endpoint.

Late in the meeting Ingo joined and was congratulated on a cameo in Adrian's Digital Basement YouTube video. VCF planning came up — business cards / QR codes for the site and meetings, displaying Carl Miles' new motherboard with a low-profile mechanical keyboard, the ZX-Wespi for game storage, and Johan Koelman offering to write a 1K ZX81 demo program (he has released six or seven games on Sinclair ZX World this year and is finishing a 1K Missile Dance). Next Sunday meeting set for May 5.

Highlights

  • Jeff Burrell unveiled the "2060" — an FPGA-based TS2068 expansion board with VGA, RS-232, AY stereo sound, SD storage, USB keyboard and optional Wi-Fi.
  • Target retail floated at ~$200 with a 3D-printed enclosure (~$45 shell), front-bezel SD slot and optional 128×96 OLED; STLs and design to be open-source.
  • Gustavo detailed how his modified TS-Pico ROM intercepts L PRINT/L LIST/COPY — ASCII + control codes for text, raw display-file dumps for SCREEN COPY, with INK/PAPER/UDC support.
  • Plan to use the on-board Pico to speak Epson ESC/P2 over USB to modern printers, inspired by Tim's Raspberry-Pi 2040-emulator with web OCR.
  • Ingo's Kilo Zed TS1000 appeared in Adrian's Digital Basement video; VCF prep underway with Johan Koelman offering a 1K ZX81 demo program.

Projects discussed: FPGA "Advanced 2068" · TS-Pico · ZX-Wespi / Wespi-Nano · TAP-to-Cart — TS2068 Cartridge Conversion Topics: Hardware projects & new boards · Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.) · TS2068 / TC2068 · Printers & plotters · BASIC programming · Video upgrades (composite, RGB, HDMI)

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