TSU Meeting MONDAY — February 2, 2026

David, Carl Miles, Ryan Gray, Adam Trionfo, Stuart, Ingo, Chris, Joe, Paul, Ricardo Calcagno

David opened with archive news: the BytePower First Class Magazine collection (tape images plus the print run David has been indexing on archive.org) is now essentially complete, including programs compiled with Time Machine. He's also building out pages of vintage Timex/Sinclair print advertisements and put out a call for full-page ads for the CX80/CX81, TS1000, and TS2068 from magazines like Popular Science and Omni; members confirmed the multi-page TS2068 insert (with the 'BC' caveman strip) and offered scans. Upcoming shows discussed: VCF East (Wall, NJ, April 17–19), VCF SoCal (Orange, Feb 14–15), VCF Southwest (Fort Worth, May), and VCF Pacific NW at the Computer History Museum in August.

The biggest hardware thread was Carl Miles's '1068'/Kilo Zed enhanced ZX81/TS1000 board. Carl is helping Ingo bring up a deliberately minimal build of the same board — bare-bones CX81 with composite mod and the M1-NOT 64K memory expansion — to validate the platform before layering on Wespi video, joystick, and other optional mods. The RAM test passes on boot but they're getting only a white screen; troubleshooting video generation (and possibly the M1-NOT circuit) is the current blocker. Carl also showed UV-printed custom keycaps from Louie at 3D Key Cap (Montreal) for the Kilo Zed mechanical keyboard — white/red/grey on black, low-profile Cherry/Gateron MX, snapping onto a new PCB. He's planning a group bulk-buy to bring per-set cost down, and the group discussed extending the same approach to a TS2068/Spectrum keycap set (working around the dense original legends by using the front face of the keys and a separate overlay strip for the color row).

David and Ryan demoed a Timex Computer Club rotomolded/blow-molded plastic carrying case for the TS1000/TS1500 + RAM pack + PSU + cassettes — advertised in Ramblings newsletter issue 5 (Oct 1983) for $12.95, with reportedly only ~2000 made. That spun off a tangent on other portable cases (Data 5000, Sinclair display trays, the educational briefcase) and a long retro-keyboard digression covering Brother typewriter origins of the 2068 keyboard, IBM Model M/F capacitive 'foam-and-foil' construction, Atari 800/XL keyboards, and the ZX80's famously fragile vacuum-formed case.

On the TS-Pico, Ryan and Ricardo Calcagno are roughly two weeks from a 1.0 firmware release; Ryan has been testing manually and feeding small Python fixes back to Ricardo. The main outstanding issue is loading non-official DCK cartridge images (e.g., Penetrator) from flash — they start, then corrupt the title screen — which led to a discussion of LROS/AROS conventions, system-variable copying, and how community-made DCKs (memory dumps with a pasted LROS header, like Manic Miner) can violate the spec. Ricardo noted Timex never published a TS1510 cartridge spec, so 1510 work remains hand-done. Stuart wrapped up with his CX81 USB keyboard — a Ginger Electronics tactile keyboard in a sealed enclosure with an Arduino, DB9 joystick port, reset and buzzer — and asked for game-playing beta testers to validate arrow-key auto-repeat behavior against emulators like Jetty One (3D Monster Maze repeats on hold; many games scan the matrix directly). Ricardo pointed out the same 8x5 scanning layout would adapt to the TS2068. The next meeting was moved to Sunday, February 22 — the anniversary of Timex's 1984 exit from the computer business.

Highlights

BytePower First Class Magazine archive on archive.org is now essentially complete (tape images + indexed articles)
Carl Miles's Kilo Zed '1068' board: bare-bones build passes RAM test but stuck on white-screen video; troubleshooting underway
UV-printed custom keycaps for Kilo Zed look production-ready; group bulk-buy planned, with 2068/Spectrum set next
TS-Pico ~2 weeks from a 1.0 release; non-official DCK images (e.g., Penetrator) still expose LROS/AROS edge cases
Stuart's CX81 USB keyboard (Ginger Electronics + Arduino) is looking for game-playing beta testers

Projects discussed: "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 · TS-Pico · ZX-Wespi / Wespi-Nano Topics: Hardware projects & new boards · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Cartridges, EPROM & dumping · Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.) · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX) · User group meetings & events

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