---
title: "Vintage Computer Festival MidWest 2026, Part 3"
id: 71624
type: "post"
slug: "vintage-computer-festival-midwest-2026-part-3"
url: "http://localhost/blog/vintage-computer-festival-midwest-2026-part-3/"
markdown_url: "http://localhost/blog/vintage-computer-festival-midwest-2026-part-3.md"
published_at: "2026-09-22T23:46:37+00:00"
modified_at: "2026-09-22T23:57:31+00:00"
author: "David Anderson"
featured_image:
  url: "http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0482-Large.jpeg"
excerpt: "Third in a series on VCF Midwest 21. Part one, part two. The Timex Sinclair 2060 Bus Expansion Unit was not a rumor or a sketch. Timex showed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 1984, priced it at $120, and according to Bill Skyrme, who worked on it, had it…"
category:
  - name: "Blog"
    slug: "blog"
    taxonomy: "category"
    url: "http://localhost/category/blog/"
post_tag:
  - name: "TS 2060"
    slug: "ts-2060"
    taxonomy: "post_tag"
    url: "http://localhost/tag/ts-2060/"
  - name: "TS 2068"
    slug: "ts2068"
    taxonomy: "post_tag"
    url: "http://localhost/tag/ts2068/"
model:
  - name: "Timex/Sinclair 2068"
    slug: "ts-2068"
    taxonomy: "model"
    url: "http://localhost/model/ts-2068/"
indiv:
  - name: "Gustavo Pane"
    slug: "gustavo-pane"
    taxonomy: "indiv"
    url: "http://localhost/indiv/gustavo-pane/"
  - name: "Jeff Burrell"
    slug: "jeff-burrell"
    taxonomy: "indiv"
    url: "http://localhost/indiv/jeff-burrell/"
  - name: "Joe Vandezande"
    slug: "joe-vandezande"
    taxonomy: "indiv"
    url: "http://localhost/indiv/joe-vandezande/"
  - name: "Ricardo Calcagno"
    slug: "ricardo-calcagno"
    taxonomy: "indiv"
    url: "http://localhost/indiv/ricardo-calcagno/"
  - name: "Ryan Gray"
    slug: "ryan-gray"
    taxonomy: "indiv"
    url: "http://localhost/indiv/ryan-gray/"
---

# Vintage Computer Festival MidWest 2026, Part 3

*Third in a series on VCF Midwest 21. [Part one](http://localhost/timex-sinclair/vintage-computing-festival-midwest-2026/), [part two](http://localhost/blog/vintage-computer-festival-midwest-2026-part-2/).*

The [Timex Sinclair 2060 Bus Expansion Unit](http://localhost/product/bus-expansion-unit/) was not a rumor or a sketch. [Timex](http://localhost/tag/timex-computer-corporation/) showed it at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 1984, priced it at $120, and according to [Bill Skyrme](http://localhost/indiv/bill-skyrme/), who worked on it, had it through engineering and ready for production. The [specification](http://localhost/document/ts2060-interface-product-specification-preliminary/) is ambitious even now: up to eight Microdrive transports, a Centronics printer port, RS-232-C serial, RGB monitor output, audio buffering, a local area network for as many as sixty-four computers, and a buffered 64-pin system bus on the back able to drive six more loads. The first design used LS-TTL for speed, with a cost-reduced gate array version to follow. Timex had even lined up suppliers for 3.5-inch floppy drives at $49.95.

Then Timex left the computer business, and none of it shipped.

On our middle table at VCF Midwest sat a 2068 plugged into a prototype of a modern 2060. We had stacked a modem and a cassette recorder on top of it, because we had them and because it made the thing look like the photograph in the literature. All that was missing was a row of Microdrives and an 80-column printer off to the left.

[![Image](http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0482-Large.jpeg)](http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0482-Large.jpeg)The 2060 prototype at VCF Midwest 21, dressed the way the 1984 literature would have wanted it.

## The case

[Joe VandeZande](http://localhost/indiv/joe-vandezande/) designed and printed the enclosure, and it keeps the original idea: a low box that the 2068 sits on and plugs into, rather than a dongle hanging off the back. It is ribbed underneath with a substantial standoff through the middle, so it will hold a monitor.

The front panel carries the things you actually touch: an SD card slot, a power LED, a small badge space, a 128 × 96 OLED display, and three buttons: one to reset the Pico, one for non-maskable interrupt, and one to reset the 2068. They mount on their own small circuit board behind the panel and run back to the main board.

## The board, left to right

At the left edge are two power converter modules, making 3.3 volts and 5 volts. Next to them sit a PS/2 keyboard connector and a joystick connector, for anyone who wants the period-appropriate route in. The USB-A port beside them is the modern one: plug in a keyboard, or a joystick, or a hub and have both. It is driven by the small RP2040 board next to it — a compact relative of the Raspberry Pi Pico, doing USB host duty — which carries a USB-C port of its own.

The large board in the center is a Raspberry Pi Pico 2, carrying the RP2350. This is what will run the file storage system once there is a file storage system to run.

Beside it, an Efinix Trion FPGA — the part doing the real work. [Jeff Burrell](http://localhost/indiv/jeff-burrell/) designed the board and has written a good deal of software for the FPGA already. One of the modes you can load into it turns the whole unit into a peripheral for the 2068: it becomes the 2060, and handles file storage, video generation, the joystick and keyboard interfaces, extra RAM and the rest of it. There is a RAM module next to it, a row of level-shifting chips to get between the 2068’s 5-volt world and the 3.3-volt world everything modern lives in, and a few more buffers.

The remaining modules read like the 1984 feature list translated into parts available in 2026. A purple board is the same I²S digital-to-analog converter that sits in the OpenSpand, here carrying the output of the emulated AY-3-8910. The blue connector is VGA out. A black one is the serial port, the RS-232-C. The silver box takes the RGB signals off the bus for anyone with a period RGB monitor. A battery-backed clock module sits in front of the serial port. A wifi module sits at the far end, of which more in a moment. The SD card module rides down in front, and will eventually be mounted behind that slot on the front panel with a short loom running back to the board. The bus continues out the back, as it must, and there is a set of holes for an expansion board to mount in parallel above the main one.

[![Image](http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0515-Large-edited.jpeg)](http://localhost/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/IMG_0515-Large-edited.jpeg)Inside the prototype. Jeff Burrell’s board; Joe VandeZande’s enclosure.

## The OLED

The little display was my request. Emulated storage has a persistent problem: the machine has no idea what you have done to it, and neither do you. You mount a tap file and the 2068 shows you nothing, because as far as the 2068 is concerned nothing has happened. A 128 × 96 panel on the front is enough to say which file is mounted, or to let the Pico tell you that what you just asked for was a bad idea.

## Where it actually stands

Honestly: the hardware is real and the software has not started in earnest.

Jeff’s board works and Joe’s case exists, and what we showed at Schaumburg was a prototype, not a product. [Gustavo Pane](http://localhost/indiv/gustavo-pane/) has been modifying ROMs and working on a CP/M port for the combined 2068 and 2060, which is the most advanced piece of software on the project so far. The rest of us — [Ricardo Calcagno](http://localhost/indiv/ricardo-calcagno/), [Ryan Gray](http://localhost/indiv/ryan-gray/) and [me](http://localhost/indiv/david-anderson/) — are finishing major revisions to the TS-Pico first. That has to go out the door before the 2060 gets real attention. Beyond the six of us, a good deal of the feature list came out of the wider Timex community talking about what such a thing ought to do.

## The network, forty-two years on

Somebody asked at the last meeting what the wifi module does. The correct answer today is nothing.

What it could do is the interesting part, and it loops back to that line in the 1984 specification about a local area network for sixty-four computers. The Sinclair Interface 1 had a network of its own: a cable between two Spectrums and a protocol to talk over it. Gustavo will likely want to implement that protocol over wifi, at which point two people with 2060s could connect their machines across the internet, with the usual caveat that somebody has to open an inbound port on a router.

There are less exotic uses that would see more daylight. Emulating a modem, so the 2068 can reach the telnet bulletin boards that are still out there, the way a FujiNet does it, the terminal software thinks it is dialing, and a URL goes where the phone number used to. Or simply mapping a drive to a PC on the same network and letting it serve files to the 2068. Ryan made that point at the meeting and he is right that it is the one most people would use first.