TSU Meeting SUNDAY — January 18, 2026

David Anderson, Chris Boisvert, Paul Anderson, Ryan Gray, Adam Trionfo, Mike, Gustavo, Jeff K, Joe, Leroy, Rich

The meeting was almost entirely given over to special guest Chris Boisvert, who with his brother Eric published BytePower First Class Magazine — a cassette-based magazine for the TS2068 — out of Toronto from August 1986 through 1989. Chris walked the group through the origin story (a ZX81 their IBM-technician father brought home in 1981, then a TS2068 bought at Toronto's Gladstone Electronics), the production setup (six tape decks dubbing a master, ~100 subscribers mostly in the US and Canada, the first two or three issues printed on paper before moving everything to tape), and the economics (advertising in TS Horizons, dot-matrix printing via an Aerco interface, smaller 30-minute tapes once 2+FAST doubled the data rate). Eric handled most of the artwork; Chris wrote the backend code and tools. David showed several program splash screens live during the call (Conflict, the spreadsheet, the aquarium-inspired sunken-boat game, the end-of-tape "the end" sign-off animation).

Chris is donating the full set of digitized tapes — all 12 issues, the 2+FAST fast-loader, the Print Factory desktop-publishing program, the Companion programs, and the raw WAV captures — for inclusion in the archive, plus any surviving paper newsletters and ZX81 packaging he can find at his father's house. A lot of practical archiving discussion followed: standard .tap files don't survive the 2+FAST custom loader so TZX is required, a couple of programs only round-trip as SZX snapshots, raw WAVs are being kept for items that wouldn't convert, and Ryan and David traded techniques (header-program in one fuse instance, extractor in another; using MERGE or POKE to stop autorun; regenerating clean WAVs from TZX with rounded waveforms for loading onto real hardware).

Around the BytePower segment, the group covered several active projects. Gustavo (Argentina) recapped the history of his TPI commands ROM modification — first working version 1985, so 40 years on — and confirmed this year's release of the first 22K XROM for the Timex's 16K home-ROM area, the first mod to use the full ROM-storage capacity. Mike asked for an update on the "2060" follow-on hardware: Ricardo has a second revision of the PCBs in hand, Joe is iterating on 3D-printed enclosure files, and Ryan is waiting on Ricardo's Pico-side test software before the firmware work starts in earnest. Tim (not present) was credited for a new ZX81-produced seven-page ZX zine issue this year, typed inside an 81 emulator and laid out in Scribus, inspired by Andre Bon's 1991 threefold ZX81 zine from Quebec.

The meeting closed on plans and housekeeping: VCF East in New Jersey in April and VCF Midwest in September are both on the table, with David wanting the booth to tell the community story (BytePower being a perfect example) rather than just display hardware. Ryan's annual TS-themed calendar is up — built around the Fort Worth tape's calendar program with a custom font, run through ZX Spectrumizer (Ryan's upstream patch to that tool was accepted the morning of the meeting), in both cropped and full-image variants. Next meeting: Monday 2 February 2026, 9 pm.

Highlights

Special guest Chris Boisvert (co-creator of BytePower First Class Magazine, 1986–89) is donating all 12 issues plus 2+FAST, Print Factory and raw WAV captures for archiving.
Practical tape-archiving notes: standard .tap fails on 2+FAST double-speed tapes — use TZX, fall back to SZX snapshots for a few stubborn programs, and keep raw WAVs.
Gustavo announced the first 22K XROM for the Timex's 16K home-ROM area, the first mod to use the full ROM-storage capacity.
Update on the "2060" hardware: Ricardo on PCB rev 2, Joe iterating on the 3D-printed enclosure, Ryan waiting on Pico test firmware.
VCF East (NJ, April) and VCF Midwest (September) are both being planned, with the booth pitched around the TS community story rather than hardware alone.

Projects discussed: Library Tape Archiving Process · TS-Pico Topics: Newsletters & documentation · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · Tape, cassette & loading · TS2068 / TC2068 · Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.) · User group meetings & events

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