A lighter attendance than expected and heavy rain didn’t dampen the spirits of those T/S users who gathered in Orlando, Florida on March 5 and 6 for the Sunstate T/S Winterfest. A good time was enjoyed by all those who could make it. The area is one of the nation’s most popular tourist spots, with EPCOT and Walt Disney World just a short drive away.
The dealer tables drew the most interest, with companies such as Zebra Systems, Sharp’s, A+ Computer Response, Foote Software, Syncware News, WDJUP Co., and Time Designs; displayed their merchandise.
There were also some interesting Sinclair “one-of-kind” bargains to be found. For instance, A+ had boxes of items that were retrieved from the old Sinclair warehouse in Boston, when it shut down operations a few years ago. They offered packs of ZX81 ROMs, 2K RAMs, ZX80 kits which were in the original packaging, and the unique Sinclair FM Radio Watches…which were quickly snatched up.
Another interesting display was put on by Mr. Eric Johnson, of Orange City, Florida, who obtained a large stock of surplus Timex Sinclair items from a relative who works for Timex in Connecticut. Among the most notable were a series of TS1500 circuit boards that had been issued by Timex, from an early prototype board, to a later compact design from Portugal. There was also a good quantity of TS2068’s for sale.
The Larken 256K RAMdisk for the TS2068 was unveiled for the first time in public. The small compact board features one-quarter Meg of non-volatile RAM, and when used with the Larken LKDOS cartridge, it operates with standard cassette-type LOAD and SAVE commands.
Along with the dealer tables, there were tables with catalogs and brochures from some absentee vendors, and a few user groups, including the Northeast Florida T/S Users Group (Jacksonville), the TASBAM group (St Petersburg and Tampa), the CATS group (from Washington, DC), and the SMUG group (from Wisconsin, had tables as well.
On Saturday evening, a meeting was held to discuss the idea of a National Timex Sinclair user Group. Some proposals were presented and comments were solicited from the audience. Overall, it was the consensus that such an organization would help unify and strengthen our TS community, and benefits such as a central Public Domain software library would be offered. (Note: read the accompanying article on the national group for further details).