My kind of town

Tim Hartnell reports back from the Consumer Electronics Show.

After some 18 months with the Timex version of the ZX81, Timex have managed to sell 600,000 of the machines in America. 

The Timex stand was enormous, about the area of a four-room flat, and it was dominated by giant pictures of the T/S 2000 and the T/S 1500. The T/S 1500 is essentially a ZX81, with 16K built-in, plus a Spectrum-like keyboard. The whole unit is silver and looks very good indeed. Timex will be introducing it at around 45 pounds. That is a great price, compared to the ZX81, when you remember it has a Spectrum-like keyboard, and 16K onboard.

Daniel Ross, Vice President (they have such titles in business over there) of the Timex Computer Corporation, says he believes the T/S 1500 will produce as much excitement as the T/S 1000. He also stated that “the T/S 1000, T/S 1500 and T/S 2000 series color computers, with the growing line of Timex peripherals and software, constitute the best price/value family of computing products available today.” While some may argue that, there seems little doubt that the Timex versions of Sinclair computers are pretty impressive.

The T/S 1500 is compatible with all the peripherals and software available for the T/S 1000, including the 16K pack (a few POKEs and you’ve got a 32k computer) and the TS2040, a thermal printer developed by Timex to take place of the silver paper machine we have in the UK.

Although the 100 or so software packs which Timex have made available in the US for the T/S 1000 and T/S 1500 are of interest (with most of the good items of software being written in Britain), the instant-load plug-in cartridges Timex are offering for their machines are really exciting. A small, wedge-shaped cartridge fits into a slot in the gadget which Timex sell to plug into the expansion area at the back of the machine where the RAM pack usually goes. Like plug-in cartridges on other machines, this means the program is available instantly, with no loading. The ‘mini-cartridges’, as Timex call them, cost between 5 and 17 pounds, depending on the program.

Although the T/S 1500 seems a vast improvement on the 1k ZX81, the T/S 2000 series of computers – the American versions of the Spectrum – are a whole world apart. The story gets quite complicated here, so I’ll try to explain it clearly. America will have two versions of the Spectrum. The 16K version will sell for around 100 pounds and is much like our 16K Spectrum, with the following extras: five new commands (ON ERROR GOTO, RESET, FREE – to tell you how much memory is left, STICK – to work the joystick, and SOUND – to trigger a three-channel synthesizer), a hole in the side to take a joystick, an on/off switch, a slot (with flip-up cover) to take the plug-in cartridges, and a new paint job in shiny silver.

The 48K version of this (called the T/S 2048) has all the above plus the ability to go into a second graphics mode which gives 64 characters across each line. This version sells for around 135 pounds.

It seems as though there will be little chance of these machines being available on the UK market. A Timex spokesman who I won’t name (so that Uncle Sir Clive won’t belt him one next time they meet in the States) said that Sinclair in the UK have shown no interest whatsoever in bringing any developments of Sinclair products back to the UK. “We offered him our printer,” that spokesman said, “and he just wasn’t interested. I guess that’s because he didn’t build it himself. I predict the same thing may well happen with the plug-in cartridges and the extra commands.”

However, Timex themselves may not be as hot as they think. I managed to cause a couple of Timex executives a moment of embarrassment by asking them to come with me to the T/S 2000s on display, and told them to watch as I typed in their new commands. To their discomfort, the machines on display (or at least the ones I tested) were only dressed-up Spectrums fitted with modulators to drive American TV sets. None of the exciting new commands actually worked. Instead, the keys produced such things as the Spectrum’s pretty (but useless) curly brackets.

Finally, a rather sad note. About 100 yards beyond the Timex razzle-dazzle of chrome and giant pictures of the new computers, was a small little booth marked “Sinclair”. In it, three somewhat bewildered people sat. On display was a ZX81 (not a T/S 1000), a UK Spectrum (modified to drive a US television), a copy of The Hobbit and Scrabble. “We are here to demonstrate that Sinclair Research is a separate company,” I was told.