TSU Meeting MONDAY — May 4, 2026

David, Stuart, Jon Becker, Ryan Gray, Greg, Mike, Adam, Paul, Joe

David recapped VCF East and did an in-meeting unboxing of the Ngo, a ZX Spectrum Next clone from Spain that he ordered after seeing one at the show — laser-cut acrylic case, nine-volt center-positive, VGA/HDMI/PS2 mouse, and (controversially for a Sinclair-lineage machine) an on/off switch. Stuart, visiting from the 1802 / Toronto crowd, brought a $40 thrift find from the show: a green-and-white Your Computer PC-8300 (the AT-300 ZX81-class clone), with rubber keys, full-keyword entry, sound, composite out, joystick port, and a licensed Ferranti ULA. The group noted Fred Knackbauer's rewritten ZX81 ROM for the 8300 and that the machine's space-invader/racing-car glyphs live in the ULA, not the ROM.

Jon Becker reported on his TS2068 extended-color image viewer — it correctly displays the high-color images produced by David's web-based image converter on a real 2068 and in emulation, but locks up on his TS-Pico. David suspects an early ROM image with a known high-color-mode bug and promised to push the current shipping ROM to GitHub. Separately, David walked through how he used Claude to crack a long-standing TS-Pico problem: Gustavo's CPM-style file-server protocol uses ports 14 and 15, and Ricardo Calcagno's original PIO code (talking to the 2068 from one of the Pico's PIOs) only worked reliably on the first 25 boards built with genuine Raspberry Pi Picos — units made with cheaper Chinese Pico chips (subtly different flash, per Stuart) failed intermittently. Claude found a way to drive both ports from a single PIO using a register trick, and after some firmware churn the previously-failing command now works consistently; downstream load/directory functions are being reworked next.

David's image-converter web app (itself written almost entirely by Claude, then refined by Joseph's GitHub PR adding better dithering algorithms) inspired a tangent into Steven Hugg's 8bitworkshop converter, which renders the same source picture (a Seurat) for dozens of vintage targets — Spectrum, NES, Game Gear, Atari 8-bit ANTIC mode F, Bally Astrocade, Fairchild, Apple II, CompuColor, Teletext, etc. The group noted the Spectrum's attribute palette is genuinely hostile to arbitrary photo conversion. Mike confirmed his Ingo ZX-keycap Kickstarter (he is backer #37) is finally shipping in May, and plans to combine the caps with a Cherry MX LP keyboard, Ingo's smaller case, and Carl Miles's upcoming ZX81/1000 board — which will use an ESP32 running ZX-Wespi firmware (Wi-Fi setup via a hosted web page; loads P-files and TZX images into the 81/1000 as virtual tapes, but not general internet browsing).

The meeting closed on emulation: Greg is trying to run ZX81 emulators on a Pi Zero 2 and hitting performance walls with Xasarix and JZX81 (Java 15 only); David recommended Clock Signal (CLK), which auto-detects formats from a file dialog, and the group looked at bare-metal Pico ZX81 and Frank OS as menu-driven, no-filesystem-UI alternatives. Ryan reminisced about his 1980s science-fair Gaussian-elimination chemistry-equation balancer that wouldn't work in Applesoft BASIC but ran fine on his 2068 — likely thanks to Sinclair BASIC's 40-bit floats / better math routines. He also mentioned his cross-target Wordle in Z88DK (Spectrum + 2068, color or mono) and his monochrome-output mod to the Spectrumizer converter that maps black-to-ink rather than dominant-color-to-paper so printouts match the screen. Next meeting: Sunday May 17 at 2 PM.

Highlights

David unboxed a Spain-ordered Ngo (ZX Spectrum Next clone) live on camera and compared it to the 2068.
Stuart showed off a $40 VCF East find — a Your Computer PC-8300 (AT-300) ZX81-class clone with licensed Ferranti ULA.
David used Claude to fix the TS-Pico's port-14/15 PIO timing bug that only manifested on the Chinese-Pico production batch (~70 units).
Jon Becker's TS2068 extended-color image viewer works on real 2068 and in emulation but currently locks up the TS-Pico — likely an old ROM image bug.
Carl Miles's upcoming ZX81/1000 board will integrate an ESP32 running the ZX-Wespi firmware for Wi-Fi tape loading.

Projects discussed: TS-Pico · ZX-Wespi / Wespi-Nano Topics: TS2068 / TC2068 · TS1000 / ZX81 / TS1500 · ZX Spectrum · Pico / modern interfaces (UnoDos, etc.) · Spectrum emulation & software · Hardware projects & new boards

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