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TSU Meeting MONDAY — June 2, 2025

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Carl, David, David Green, Mark, Adam, Ryan, Mogli, Jeff, Chris, Gustavo, Paul, Phil

Book Nook — the ZX81 / TS1000 manual. The group opened with a long look at the original Sinclair ZX81 manual and its Timex Sinclair 1000 counterpart. Mark showed off a perfect-bound copy alongside the more familiar wire-bound edition, which prompted a comparison of editions (first/second/third), authorship (Steve Vickers, with Charles F. Dirang revising for Timex), and small textual differences — including the ZX81 manual's habit of using & instead of "and". Members agreed the US ZX81s shipped with a US keyboard layout and the standard 1K, while the TS1000 brought 2K; the manuals are very close, with most changes confined to TV channels, power, and a few keyboard labels (RUB OUT/NEW LINE vs DELETE/ENTER). The 1500 manual was noted as more heavily revised, and the educational "briefcase" 1500 kits (with the TS2020 recorder and full manual set) came up as a related collectible.

Learning BASIC from the manual. Several members walked through how they actually used the manual — Carl and Jeff went cover-to-cover; others (Chris in the UK) skipped quickly to type-in books from Penguin and similar publishers. That led into a substantial discussion of Sinclair BASIC's quirks: tokenized single-keypress keywords (vs Casio/TRS-80/Apple typed-in keywords), the absence of LEFT$/MID$/RIGHT$ in favor of string slicing (including slicing literals), the lack of a true string array (only character arrays), and the power of VAL. The group judged Sinclair's string slicing as more elegant once you get past the conversion pain from Microsoft BASIC dialects. ROMs were confirmed identical between the ZX81 and TS1000.

Hardware sidebar. RAM-pack "wobble" came up — the Sinclair 16K pack's poor edge connector vs the better-built Memotech, and the modern ZXpand / ZXpand Plus (with joystick port, 32K, made by Charles "Hudson" in a Memotech-inspired case) as a current option. Carl mentioned a hot-glued RAM pack he'd acquired. The PC8300 / Lambda 8300 ZX81-class clone was identified as part of the orbit but not core. Brief mention of Jerry Ellsworth's bizarre Italian Sinclair Spectrum derivative, which has mains-voltage wiring soldered to a homemade edge connector — flagged as a fire hazard.

VCF Midwest planning (September, Schaumburg, IL). Most of the back half was logistics for VCF Midwest, the second weekend of September. Attendance is free; tables run ~$50+ (electrical costs are pushing it up this year). Mogli explained that members should each request their own table and ask to be seated together rather than asking for a group block. Power strips, Ethernet, and (no) token ring were covered. Carl is proposing a talk — working title "Timex made home computers? What were they thinking?" — covering the ZX80 through QL/Amstrad era, the Timex Portugal lineage (TC2068, FDD3000, TS1500-as-Portugal-machine), the Spectrum Next, and clones; he's debating 45 vs 90 minutes and whether to accept a non-recorded side room. The group offered to help build the outline in Google Docs. Dinner coordination for ~15 people (Saturday post-auction or Sunday) was punted to Adam and David Green. Confirmed attendees with tables include Carl, David, and David Green. Next meeting: Sunday June 22 at 2pm Eastern (pushed from June 15 because of Father's Day), focused on Carl's talk outline.

Highlights

  • Book Nook compared the perfect-bound vs wire-bound ZX81 manual and traced the small US/UK differences through to the TS1000 revision.
  • Sinclair BASIC deep-dive: tokenized keywords, string-slicing (including on literals) as a more elegant replacement for LEFT$/MID$/RIGHT$, no string arrays, and VAL.
  • Confirmed ZX81 and TS1000 ship identical ROMs; US ZX81s had the US keyboard but still only 1K (the TS1000 was the 2K bump).
  • VCF Midwest is the second weekend of September in Schaumburg; sign up for individual tables and ask to be seated together (not a group block).
  • Carl is pitching a Timex/Sinclair history talk at VCF Midwest; group will help flesh out the outline at the June 22 Sunday meeting.

Topics: TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · BASIC programming · Books & manuals · User group meetings & events · RAM expansion & RAMdisk · Timex Computer (European: TC2048/3256)

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