Books & manuals
Books, manuals, and reference documentation for the machines and software.
140 threads · 925 messages · 2004-03-23 → 2026-10-16
Book and manual scanning has run through the group since the Yahoo era. In 2004 Bryan Vines unbound and scanned the TS 2068 User Manual and the SAMS Beginner/Intermediate and Intermediate/Advanced Guides, and Jack Boatwright offered sealed copies of Sharon Zardetto Aker's "T/S 2068 BASICs and Beyond". In the groups.io era David Anderson became the main scanner and cataloger, uploading to archive.org and listing everything on timexsinclair.com: Nick Hampshire's "Timex Sinclair Color Graphics", Tim Hartnell's "The Timex Sinclair 2068 Explored", the OHTSUG newsletters, and later the Quick Reference Card. In 2022 he put out a general call for manuals, newsletters and books. Louis Florit took apart and scanned Robert Maunder's "Creative Games for the Timex Sinclair 2068", and Richard Burt scanned the Multi-Draw 2068 manual the same day Adam Trionfo asked for it. Jeff K. sent David a hard copy of "Beepers: 21 Electronics Projects for the Timex/Sinclair 1000 and 1500". Adam kept track of which listed books were still unarchived, and he found that Hampshire's book was a rebadged "Spectrum Graphics" whose BAS listings were already on Spectrum Computing.
Several threads put the books' programs back into use. Adam typed in the PSG sound examples (tremolo, vibrato) from Jeff Mazur's Intermediate/Advanced Guide and recorded them on real hardware and in ZEsarUX, and David added them to the book's page. No one had the cassette for Richard Booth's self-published "Applied Sinclair: Subroutines for the Mathematically-Minded", so Jeff Burrell rebuilt the main program from text with zmakebas and Adam ran the plotting demonstrations before Booth spoke at a Zoom meeting. David also wrote a book himself: an annotated TS 2068 ROM disassembly. It combines the Yahoo-era disassemblies, the revised technical manual, the Spectrum ROM disassembly, the work of Bob Orrfelt and Lloyd Dreger, and Wes Brzozowski's bank-switching articles. Jeff Burrell finished the keyboard table and reformatted the EXROM section.
For learning, members pointed newcomers to the Owner's Manual, "The ZX Spectrum on Your PC", the archived "Introduction to 2068 Machine Code" and "Advanced 2068 Machine Code", and "ZX Spectrum Assembly. Let's make a game?". Newer books came up too: Shaun McClure's "A Guide to TS 1000/1500 Games" (257 games), which David found had swapped "ZX81" for "TS 1500" throughout; Jaroslav Švelch's "Gaming the Iron Curtain"; Tim Swenson's "The Z88 Sourcebook" and his paper on the QL in North America. Several threads only drifted into books: the McClure thread turned into the Retro Pixel Converter image app and Sprites2068, the Booth thread into testing the Time Machine compiler against a Time Designs review, the 16 MB question into Wes Brzozowski's "Mystery of the Missing 253" articles, and the Bratislava demos thread into Švelch's book.
Key threads
- Local Timex Users; was: I Have Unscanned Timex/Sinclair Books (#1339 on groups.io) — David's archive.org uploads (Color Graphics, The TS 2068 Explored, OHTSUG), Adam's list of unarchived books, and the discovery that Color Graphics is Hampshire's "Spectrum Graphics".
- Does Anyone Own "Creative Games for the Timex Sinclair 2068?" (#1350 on groups.io) — Louis Florit scans Maunder's book for archive.org; side notes on Paul Grosjean's Sync papers at the Charles Babbage Institute.
- TS 2068 Books (#2224 on groups.io) — 2004 scans of the TS 2068 User Manual and both SAMS guides by Bryan Vines.
- TS 2068 ROM Disassembly book (#1307 on groups.io) — David's annotated ROM disassembly, its sources, and Jeff Burrell's edits to the keyboard table and EXROM section.
- Math Subroutines Book by Richard Booth (#979 on groups.io) — Rebuilding the lost cassette program for "Applied Sinclair" with zmakebas and running the plotting demonstrations.
- Jeff Mazur's Four Sound Examples from his T/S 2068 Guide (#1343 on groups.io) — Typed-in PSG examples from the Intermediate/Advanced Guide, recorded on hardware and emulator and posted with the book.
- Multi-Draw 2068 - How to Use it? (#1424 on groups.io) — Richard Burt scans the missing manual; ends with David's call for manuals, newsletters and books.
- Beepers: 21 Electronics Projects for the Timex/Sinclair 1000 and 1500 Book (#1005 on groups.io) — Tracking down an unarchived electronics book and related hardware-interfacing titles.
- T/S 1000 and T/S 2068 - How Compatible? (#1154 on groups.io) — BASIC differences between the machines, which led David to rebuild the 2068 Quick Reference Card as a PDF.
- A new book (#101 on groups.io) — Shaun McClure's "A Guide to TS 1000/1500 Games" and its few American titles.
All threads (140)
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