| Editorial on the Sinclair/Amstrad Deal |
What a shock! Only days after coming out from under rigorous bank supervision, Clive Sinclair sells his computer company to Amstrad, his leading competition in the English home computing market. A larger scale version in the U.S. would be Commodore suddenly selling out to Atari! However, my feelings about this move is far different than |
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| Emergency Power for the 2068 |
You never notice how often the power goes off until you start fooling around with computers. A great majority of power interruptions go unnoticed in normal every day living. Unfortunately, that computer notices every one. The reaction is always the same. The screen goes blank and back come the opening copyright notice; gone is your |
Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Kempston, Another Spectrum Disk Interface |
I have been using the Kempston disc drive interface on one of my TS 2068’s since early October and I am extremely pleased with the results so far. The Kempston disc interface is intended for use on the Spectrum, In order to use it on a TS 2068, one needs to use a Spectrum BUS |
Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Letter from Editor |
With all the changes that have been taking place over the past several weeks, it’s going to be interesting to see what will happen next! The recent Amstrad deal with Sinclair will certainly be “the buzz” at the Midwest IS Computerfest the first of MAY. I do hope to see a lot of you there |
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| Producing Sprites on the 2068 |
Back in September of ’84, SUM published my program that showed how to print a pattern on the screen that was not a slave of the 8×8 pixel dimension, but it only worked vertically. At the time it seemed impossible to do the same thing horizontally without doing an endless character creation session. It was |
Timex/Sinclair 2068, Type-in program |
| Review: ZPrint 80 Universal Print Driver |
Have you ever wanted to be able to modify a favorite program so that it would utilize your full-sized printer/interface combination to print out information? Or get a full 8 1/2 X 11 inch screen dump in color (sort of)? And do it in either 2068 or Spectrum mode? Well, now thanks to Zebra Systems, |
Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Reviewing Two Printers |
One of the first peripherals that most Timex/Sinclair owners purchase for their computers is a printer. Because the TS2068 as well as the older TS1000 and ZX81 did not come with a printer interface built-in, the Timex 2040 printer was an especially attractive purchase since it required no other interface, and fully supported LPRINT, LLIST, |
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| Reviewing Two TS-1000 Programs |
DISTACALC Basically Programming 2528 West Olive Avenue Fullerton, CA 9263316K TS/1000, 1500; $12.95 Were you ever taught while in school that an airplane flying from the United States to the Soviet Union flies over the North Pole? The principle involved is that of the Great Circle route. The concept flies in the face of common |
Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Sinclair Research Sells Out! |
Reprint of Amstrad Purchase of Sinclair Research Is End of an Era in British Computer by Paul Hemp, Wall Street Journal, April 8, 1985. LONDON — Amstrad Consumer Electronics PLC bought the computer business of troubled Sinclair Research Ltd. for the equivalent of $7.3 million. The sale represents the end of an era in the |
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| The Heart of the Sinclair QL ... the 68008 |
There is great confusion about the QL. The question is: in which computer category does the QL fall? The 32, the 16 or the 8-bit computer!?! It depends on the point of view. For now, we can say that the microprocessor, the MC68008, which is the heart of the QL, is an 8/32-bit type. The |
Sinclair QL |
| Vendor Report |
The article last month on connecting the 2068 to a plotter has elicited a great response from a number of readers. Peripherals Direct was listed as the source for the Amdek plotter. They now inform us that they are sold out of this model but still sell Amdisk III 3″ disk drives (similar to Zebra’s |
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| Workin' in the Software Patch |
Our feature program this month is OMNICALC 2, the impressive spreadsheet program from Microsphere, Ltd. OMNICALC 2 was reviewed in an earlier issue of SUM (volume II, Number 12). In my opinon, OMNICALC 2 deserves every bit of praise it gets. Advanced capabilities and ease of use places OMNICALC 2 way ahead of any other |
Timex/Sinclair 2068 |