The Rise and Fall of the Timex Computer Corporation, Part 2: On the Drawing Board

Throughout the month of January and even into the early part of February, before the bad news had hit, the product planning department at Timex was bustling. Led by director Billy Skyrme, a long time company employee, this division was creating a bit of excitement among TS user groups and in the computer press. Speculation and rumor ran high as to what hardware would soon accompany the newly released 2068 Personal Color Computer. Timex Corporation was vague and secretive as usual over much of the situation, although a few sneak previews and demos were set up with some equipment prototypes for a select few. Several of the larger TS vendors even featured catalogs complete with prices and projected release dates of the much anticipated peripherals.

After the crash had occurred, the dust had cleared, and Timex Computer Corp. had nailed their doors shut for good, one could only look back to what was being developed on the engineers drawing board, because what we actually had in our hands, was very little.

Almost simultaneously with the release of the 2068 came an accompanying data cassette recorder, the 2020, and a “command” joystick, the 2090. The 2020 is a very compact cassette recorder/player unit and is styled in the same silver color as the 2068, and looks suspicously like a certain Radio Shack model. It’s record of reliability is quite good. It loads and saves programs on all of the TS computers without missing a lick, including on the finicky 1000. The 2090 Command Stick was manufactured by the producers of the Zircon joystick. Outside of slight modification to the control handle and the vinyl TS sticker, it is primarily the same controller. The 2090 is a hand-held type joystick as opposed to a table top model, and operates quite smoothly, although the operators hands may tire with prolonged usage.

Soon Timex was running a modest advertising campaign, extolling the benefits of telecomunication and heralding the long awaited arrival of their 2050 Modem. The modem was designed by Timex and manufactured by Westridge Communications, a division of Anchor Automation in California. Not until recently, did the modem ever see the light of day, and it never did with the Timex name stamped on the front. Orders were taken, but the initial 8,000 units never budged from their Connecticut warehouse. When Timex folded, every unit was shipped back to the manufacturer. The TS 2050 Modem was built into a small silver plastic case with a black plastic front panel. Timex intended to include a software package on a quick-load cartridge. It was to be called the “Smart Terminal One”, and featured auto-dial, and auto-answer. Other software was in the works also. The 2050 was a direct connect modem (as opposed to an acoustic design) and worked at a baud rate of 300.

The old TS 2040 32 column thermal printer with its 4.33 inch wide paper, took over printing duties upon introduction of the 2068. Not only did it work well with the 1000 and 1500, but was totally compatible with the new computer also. The 2040 was introduced in the U.S. some time ago, instead of the English ZX printer for a variety of reasons including the high radio-frequency interference that the ZX was alluded to emit. The Timex printer was made by Alphacom, a California electronics firm.

The creators of the 2068 quickly recognized the eventual needs of it’s users, and decided to bring out a full size 80 column dot matrix printer. What with the advanced capabilities of the new computer, and the planned word processing software, the enlarged printer was a must. However, not one TS 2080 printer (appropriately named) came off the assembly line. A deal was struck with a Japanese company to produce the printer and some hand-assembled prototypes were shown, but the final go ahead for full production never came. The TS 2080 was to be a letter quality printer with 100 cps, and featuring both tractor feed and single sheet roller. It also required a Centronics parallel interface which would have been available in the proposed TS 2060 System Expansion Unit. The expansion unit would have been simultaneously released with the 2080 printer. The Timex printer would have been a low cost alternative for a variety of other computer systems as well as the 2068. It would have more than adequately handled text and graphic duties.

Perhaps one of the most significant and anticipated peripheral that Timex had plans for was the TS 2065 Microdrive mass storage unit. Using Sinclair Research’s wafer tape technology, the micro-drive would have been a vast improvement over standard cassette storage. It would have stored up to 100k and an average load time of four to ten seconds! Along with their small compact size and a projected retail price of $100, the micro-drive certainly would have been a hot item. Up to eight individual micro-drives could be chained together. The 2065 Microdrives also required the TS 2060 System Expansion Unit, which contained the controller card The expansion unit also would have included a CP/M card, a RGB monitor output, and the Centronics interface. One can only imagine such a system combined with a 2068 computer, several micro-drives, and the expansion unit!

Further plans on the drawing board included CP/M cartridge software, and the immensely popular LOGO software on cartridge, specially designed by Digital Research. Some other languages on the cartridge format were considered as well, such as Forth and Pascal.

An inexpensive, but fairly high quality color monitor was also in the works. It would have been an inported model, with some features designed specifically by Timex.

The word processing software, touted so highly in the 2068 literature, never came to light. It would have been on a cartridge, and would have operated in conjunction with the 80 column printer. The program itself was based on a processor written for the Sinclair Spectrum, and translated for the TS 2068.

Finaily, some thought was given towards the production of a disk drive device using a special floppy disk measuring under four inches in diameter. Such mini-disk designs are expected to be used more widely in the future, and are already being manufactured by several other computer firms.

Regardless of the multitude of ideas and engineering designs that never came about at Timex, we still ended up receiving perhaps the most important part of the deal… the cornerstone or brain of the whole system, the 2068 personal color computer.