TSU Meeting MONDAY — September 1, 2025
David Anderson, Adam Trionfo, Carl Miles, Ryan Gray, Asa Gordon, James Cowdery, Rich Jay, Keith Albright, David Baulch
David opened with an update on Asa Gordon, the former NASA astrodynamicist whose Aug 10 meeting recording is now on YouTube. Asa has asked the group to retype his TS2068 BASIC listings — a multi-hundred-line satellite-position program from his pre-GPS NASA paper, plus a short Pac-Man-style game called "Gotcha" that uses UDGs stored in upper memory. The group discussed OCR tooling (Chrome's built-in OCR, Adobe Acrobat, the iPhone Notes text grab, Windows 11 Snip Tool) and noted the hardest part will be verifying every constant to the decimal. Asa joined briefly to thank the team for the AI-generated narrative accompanying his video and noted one transcription error ("Brouwer" → "Brow").
Most of the meeting was VCF Midwest planning, since this was the last meeting before the show. About 18 Timex/Sinclair people are converging on Schaumburg in table group F — including Adam, Carl, David Anderson, David Green, Greg Bennett, Ingo and his brother Michael, Jeff Burrell, Jeff Coleman, Joe, Mark Martin, Peyton, Randy Kendig, Stewart, and Z. The group worked through logistics: O'Hare vs. Midway, rental-car shuttles, the blue/red-line transfer between airports, the Saturday auction run by Jason Scott, and bringing masks given recent COVID exposure. Carl will bring his TS1500 prototype, cartridges, ZX-Wespi-Nano-compatible adapters, and monitors (LCDs with VGA + composite, CRTs composite/S-video). James Cowdery, a first-timer from Maine, raised the idea of taking a table at VCF East 2026 in Wall, NJ; he showed an Issue-1 Spectrum (a winter repair project) and an inherited Sinclair Scientific calculator.
On the hardware side, Rich Jay demoed his 3D-printed enclosures for the ZX-Pico video card, the JLO floppy system, and the ZX81NU board — strongly recommending the ZX81NU as a drop-in upgrade (works in a TS1500 with a dead SCLD, includes USB load/save and clean digital video). Carl described the "Super 1000" board he is designing: still ULA-based, but with VGA + composite, an AY sound chip, a fully programmable joystick port, and 512K of battery-backed RAM (DS3032) giving effectively eight switchable 64K banks — eventually with port-driven bank switching and a 2068-sized variant that could use a 3D-printed case. Ryan showed progress recovering programs from his Fort Worth library cassette tape. Rich also flagged that the Pico video card only works with Class 4 microSD cards, not Class 10.
The evening's main guest was David Baulch, a former member of TESA (the Fort Worth Timex/Sinclair user group), tracked down via his old newsletter editorials. He recounted using a 2068 to write a grade-book program for his English class with help from a colleague's Tandy version, learning soldering from Chuck Dawson, watching Frank Bolden's satellite-tracking programs, moving up to AERCO disk drives and CP/M, and writing a column over 300-baud modem on the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Star-Text BBS (launched 1981). He confirmed TESA met monthly at the downtown Fort Worth library, 6:30–9pm. The conversation closed on the HiSoft / Time Machine BASIC compiler for the Spectrum/2068 — used by Stan Lemke for Pixel Print Plus — and how compiling BASIC to call the ROM routines directly delivered the big speedup. Next meeting: Sunday Sep 21, 2pm Eastern (post-VCF debrief).
Highlights
- Asa Gordon asked the group to retype his TS2068 BASIC listings from his NASA satellite-position paper plus his "Gotcha" UDG game
- Final pre-VCF-Midwest planning — ~18 Timex/Sinclair attendees converging on table group F in Schaumburg
- Rich Jay demoed 3D-printed enclosures for ZX81NU, Pico video card and JLO floppy; strongly endorsed the ZX81NU board
- Carl detailed the "Super 1000" design: VGA+composite, AY sound, programmable joystick port, 512K battery-backed RAM as 8 banks
- Special guest David Baulch (ex-Fort Worth TESA) recounted the group's 1980s–90s history, Frank Bolden, AERCO/CP/M, and the Star-Text BBS
Projects discussed: "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 · TS-Pico · TS1510 Cartridge Interface Clone · Library Tape Archiving Process Topics: User group meetings & events · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Hardware projects & new boards · BASIC programming · TS2068 / TC2068 · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX)
Summary generated from the meeting recording; the full transcript is kept in the group's private archive.