Zebra Systems, Inc.

Incorporated in February 1983, and founded by Stewart Newfeld, Zebra Systems developed products for the Timex/Sinclair 1000 and 2068 computers. Newfeld quit a job as plant manager of a manufacturing company to start Zebra Systems, Inc.

Newfeld designed a keyboard-beeper, joystick adapter, A/D converter, and a speech-synthesizer for the TS1000, TS1500 and TS2068. He marketed Zebra products by taking out advertisements in various Timex/Sinclair oriented magazines.

It was a small company, and at its peak, had six employees. Newfeld was the hardware designer, manager/president, and chief cook and bottle washer. In addition, there was a computer programmer; two production people who assembled, soldered and tested product; and one general assistant hobby computer enthusiast. Nearly everyone pitched in with customer service duties, shipping clerk, etc.

Zebra employees included:

• Tom Gee
• Al Hartman
• Jeff Street

Al wrote software, manuals and ran the bulletin board system for Zebra. One BASIC program he wrote made cassette labels. According to Al:

“Zebra did most of the order processing on an IMSAI 8080 upgraded with a Z80 card. We used dBase II with a custom written system to take orders and print out mailing labels and invoices. I also used that system to do the typesetting for our catalogs with a program called Fancy Font (with an RX-80F/T printer). Later, we upgraded to Televideo MS-DOS compatible system, and I just continued to use Fancy Font on it until we got a Mac with a Laserwriter.”

Tom Gee was a hardware design engineer. He created circuit designs for products, including designing the printed circuit boards. He also diagnosed and repaired problems with products returned by customers. Tom also authored some of Zebra’s software.

Jeff Street wrote software for Zebra, most notably the OS 64 cartridge.

Zebra’s survival in the first few years after Timex stopped selling computers was in no small part accomplished by purchasing large quantities of books, software cassettes, trackballs, ZX81 kits, and more at closeout prices.

Just before starting Zebra, Newfeld worked for a company repurposing a large manufacturing building in Bronx that had loading docks and fork lifts.

His former boss let him store entire pallets of computer surplus after he started Zebra.

When Melbourne House got rid of their Timex/Sinclair products, he was offered the remaining copies of “The INS and OUTS of the TS1000 & ZX81” by Don Thomasson. He purchased them for 10 cents a book, but had to take the pallet of 2000 books. Being able to handle and store 800lb pallets long term was critical to Zebra.

Other notable closeout purchases were 2,800 ZX81 kits, hundreds of RAM and other modules from Memotech, thousands of WICO Trackballs, thousands of books and software cassettes.

In 1985, they imported a small quantity of floppy disk controllers and drives from Timex of Portugal for the TS2068 computer.

Zebra continued to support Timex/Sinclair computers long after Timex stopped supporting them and transitioned to supporting other personal computers from Atari, Commodore and Radio Shack.

Zebra Systems is now a web and computer consulting company.