Prototypes & rarities
Prototypes, unreleased hardware, and rare one-off Timex/Sinclair machines.
31 threads · 328 messages · 2015-07-04 → 2025-11-29
Across both eras the group has steadily filled in the picture of what Timex almost shipped. The earliest Yahoo-era threads (2012–2018) were piecing the story together from sparse sources — Al Hartman's NTSC Spectrum from the Zebra liquidation, Lou Galie's recollections, and Luis D'Ardis hunting OneDrive photos of the clear-cased TC2068/TC2048 lab units and the TS2000 prototype. At that point the TS2000 was understood mainly through Rick Dickinson-era photos and the rk.nvg.ntnu.no page: a near-clone of the UK Spectrum that Timex delayed in pursuit of the more ambitious 2068, missed the 1982 Christmas window, and then lost the market.
The groups.io era (2020–present) turned that secondhand history into primary-source archaeology. The Bill Miller, Neil Cohen, and especially Lon Hildreth document drops (thread 837, then thread 786) brought in the actual TS2060 BEU functional specs, the bank-switching controller chip spec, the planned TS2070 Microdrive tape cartridges, the TS2065 Silver Microdrive, the SCLD engineering samples and pre-production ROMs found in the parts-bin haul (thread 1482), and a confirmed naming sequence — TS2000 → TS2048/TS2072 → TS2068 — backed by press-release artwork and book titles still using "TS2000" (thread 812). Billy Skyrme's 1988 LIST talk, recovered from period newsletters, added the TS3068 (claimed Amiga-1000-class) to the canon (thread 665), and Adam Trionfo's TC3256 deep-dive collected the Portuguese-language sources for that later, post-Timex prototype (thread 773).
A distinctive groups.io-era development is that members are now building the prototypes that only ever existed as photos. Carl Miles converted an Argentine CZ2000 clone into a physical TS2000 mock-up (thread 552), 3D-painted and labeled a TS2065 Silver Microdrive replica (thread 710), and John Lech and others have been working on TS2000-from-TS1500-case rebuilds (thread 548). David Anderson's shop has even put surplus TS2000 prototype motherboards into hobbyists' hands (thread 845). Where the Yahoo era debated what the hardware looked like, the current era is reconstructing it from the inside out — guided by the newly surfaced Timex engineering paperwork and cross-checked against the LOAD ZX Museum's TENET project in Portugal.
The "what if" thread (349, 2025) shows the synthesis: with Skyrme's TS3068, the Galie/Hartman NTSC Spectrum, the BEU/CP-M plans, the FDD3, and the 2065 Microdrive all now documented, the group can argue concretely about which of Timex's three big misses (no Spectrum-compatible library, no fast storage at launch, no follow-on product) was actually fatal — a conversation that simply could not have been had on the evidence available in 2012.
Key threads
- My continuing conversation with Mr. Lou Galie (part 2) (archive.org) — Yahoo-era (2012–2015) thread tracking the NTSC Spectrum prototypes — Al Hartman's unit from the Zebra liquidation, the Chile-exported NTSC Spectrums documented in Chris Smith's ULA book, and the FCC-test units. The foundation other prototype discussions built on.
- PROTOTYPE TIMEX SINCLAIR 2000 (archive.org) — Yahoo-era (2018) thread where Don Dindang shares the surviving photos of the clear-cased TC2068/TC2048 lab units and the TS2000 prototype, and Chris Nystrom lays out the canonical 'delayed past the 1982 Christmas window' explanation for Timex's failure.
- You must see this (#4465 on groups.io) — October 2023 — Lon Hildreth (Timex programmer) loans David Anderson the box of documents he saved at shutdown. First public sighting of the TS2060 BEU and the TS2070 Microdrive Tape Cartridge naming. Inflection point for the modern era.
- '64 Column Mode Support' from T/S BASIC; was: New Timex documents uploaded (#4481 on groups.io) — Companion thread to 837: David scans and uploads the Hildreth/TCC documents (TS2060 spec, bank-switching chip spec, Microdrive/LAN drafts, OS-64). Draws in Hugo Pinto from the LOAD ZX Museum's TENET project, linking the US and Portuguese archives.
- Timex Computer 3256 Prototype (#4317 on groups.io) — 47-message Adam Trionfo deep dive on the Portuguese TC3256 (c. 1987) — gathers the Johnny Red photos, Portuguese newspaper reviews, and places the TC3256 alongside the Apple IIGS as a 'what could the next Timex have looked like' case study.
- 1983 and naming (#4791 on groups.io) — Establishes the documented naming sequence — TS2000 in the early books, then TS2048 (press-release artwork) / TS2072 (per Danny Ross), finally TS2068 at the very last minute. Resolves a long-standing puzzle about why period documentation references the wrong model number.
- CZ2000 to TS2000 Prototype Conversion Project (#6840 on groups.io) — Carl Miles documents converting an Argentine CZ2000 (ZX Spectrum Issue 6A PCB, last-gen 6C001E-7 PAL ULA) into a physical TS2000 prototype replica — keyboard membranes, repainted overlay, all photographed. Typifies the era's shift from cataloging prototypes to building them.
- Billy Skyrme (from Timex) on the TS2068 and TS3068 (#6200 on groups.io) — Pulls together the 1988 LIST and Time Designs articles on Billy Skyrme's talk: the TS3068 (claimed Amiga-1000-class), BEU plans, and a Timex insider view of why the 2068 went the way it did. The most direct surviving testimony from a Timex R&D principal.
- Timex goodies (#223 on groups.io) — David Anderson's 2021 acquisition of a Timex hobbyist's parts drawers — engineering-sample TS1500 and TS2068 SCLDs, pre-production 2068 ROMs. The first significant cache of pre-production Timex silicon to surface in the community.
All threads (31)
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