TSU Meeting MONDAY — April 6, 2026

David, Adam, Ryan, Carl, Jeff, Joe, Mike, Ingo

The first April Zoom meeting opened with Ingo's KiloZed keycap Kickstarter, run in partnership with Loic at 3D KeyCap in Montreal who UV-prints real Cherry-MX low-profile keycaps. Five days in, the project was already funded at roughly seven times its modest goal. Discussion produced two concrete additions: bumping the set from 40 to 42 keys so buyers can swap in the ZX81 'rub-out' / 'new line' caps alongside the TS1000 'delete' / 'enter' pair, and a separate emulator-only 3D-printed keyboard case (Ingo's brother Michael is prototyping it). Ingo and Tim Horner are also working a microcontroller variant with USB-C output, faster typematic rate and user-configurable layouts, and a full keyboard-kit bundle (PCB + bezel + switches + caps) is planned, with STL files to be open-sourced on GitHub.

David walked through several Claude-assisted projects: a WordPress plugin that ingests BASIC listings on timexsinclair.com and auto-generates program descriptions and excerpts for ~950 TS2068 and ~750 TS1000 entries, and a LaTeX pipeline that compiles those into period-style PDF catalogs (with covers borrowed from the Adventure / Traveller books). A separate tool generates Midjourney prompts in chosen styles to produce fake cassette-inlay art for programs that never had one. He also demoed a new Electron app that opens Oligar (v1 and v2), Larken, AERCO, Zebra and QL disc images, viewing BASIC listings and screen-memory snapshots, highlighting Oligar/Larken commands, and following LOAD statements to reassemble multi-file programs into a single TAP.

Joe is working through a large batch of Bob Sober's discs on his Greaseweasel (now a v4.1) and feeding images back; among the finds is City 2068, a previously-known-only-by-name post-apocalyptic Manhattan text adventure that came in on a Syncware News tape (David had Claude extract a location map from the data). Other software notes: Dr. Beep (Johan Koen) has finally put his 150+ 1K ZX81 games on itch.io, and there was an extended look at Robotac, a new ZX81 Robotron-style game that needs a ZX-Pand, Zonics and Wolf Richter HRG; this led into discussion of OpenSpand, an open-hardware ZX-Pand clone posted on Sinclair ZX World. Mike showed his original ZX-Pand in a Hudson-made 3D-printed Memotech-style case with a UDG Express add-on, and Jeff brought out a DKtronics user-defined-graphics board.

Announcements: VCF East is April 17–19, so the April Zoom is bumped one week to Sunday April 26. David, Stuart and Ricardo are planning to attend VCF East. Carl's HP early-retirement application was accepted (end of May or June/July), which should free time for the '1068' / enhanced-TS1000 board work. The group also discussed inviting Ken — a former Timex employee (started ~1971) recently posting historical tidbits to the list — to a future Sunday meeting, and collecting his posts into a dedicated page.

Highlights

KiloZed keycap Kickstarter funded ~7x in five days; 42-key option added so buyers can choose TS1000 or ZX81 layout
New Electron disc-image tool handles Oligar/Larken/AERCO/Zebra/QL, views BASIC + screens, reassembles multi-file LOAD chains into TAP
City 2068 — a long-rumored post-apocalyptic Manhattan text adventure — recovered from Joe's archive of Bob Sober's discs
Dr. Beep's 150+ 1K ZX81 games now on itch.io; Robotac (ZX81 Robotron clone) discussed, needs ZX-Pand + Zonics + HRG
VCF East April 17–19 (David, Stuart, Ricardo attending); next Zoom pushed to Sunday April 26

Projects discussed: "1068" — Enhanced TS1000 Topics: Hardware projects & new boards · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · Disk & floppy systems (Larken, AERCO, Oliger) · Games · TS2068 / TC2068 · Tape & library archiving (TAP/TZX)

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