TS User Issue 2:1

In the mid-60’s, four musical moplops, leading a legion of other musical moplops, descended on the U.S. mainland. They called ii the “British Invasion.” The ’80s has seen another British Invasion, and this time in the form of a little black plastic device with honest computing abilities and a price tag that can only be…

Timex, the company that manufactures the TS1000 are soon to launch the American equivalent to the ZX Spectrum. Designated the TS2000, it is basically an upgrade of the British machine, i.e. with some of the bugs ironed out!

Tim Hartnell reports back from the Consumer Electronics Show. After some 18 months with the Timex version of the ZX81, Timex have managed to sell 600,000 of the machines in America.  The Timex stand was enormous, about the area of a four-room flat, and it was dominated by giant pictures of the T/S 2000 and…

Having liberated the arcades, women are just starting to make their prescence felt in the mostly male game business. Not everyone agrees it’s tough to be a woman in the video game business. It can even be an advantage, says 32-year-old Sue Currier, co-partner with her husband in Softsync Inc.

Sinclair and Timex, were most conspicuous by their absence at the giant West Coast Computer Faire held in San Francisco at the end of March. The booth listed in the catalogue as being the Sinclair one was unmanned throughout the show, the most important computer show in the world. Some 40,000 people crammed into a…

Sinclair Research have signed a deal with Timex in America to get the ZX81 sold through some 171,000 retail outlets in the States. Very shortly, lucky Americans will be able to buy ZX81s from the same shops which sell jewellery, perfume and Timex watches. Uncle Clive will get a royalty on all sales under the…

Reviews of Time Lost by Joseph Giratano, 30 Games for the Timex/Sinclair Computer by Bill Behrendt, and Timex/Sinclair Interfacing by James Downey and Don Rindsberg.

What can you say about a new computer that’s about a year and a half behind the times? The Timex/Sinclair 2000 was shown at last year’s Consumer Electronics Shows. The 2000 received a bad reaction from the press, largely as a result of its undersized keyboard, which, lacked a space bar. The 2000 was retooled,…

Updates on contact information for software, hardware and documentation.

Indiana Timex Sinclair User reports program was almost finished when Stan Lemke, the author, exited market. Steven Spalding of Sting Graphics completed program.

Updates to contacts for groups in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

SyncWare News lost approximately $5,000 before going out of circulation.

User group in Ohio working on project to interface Commodore 1541 disk drive to TS 2068.

Ruminations on amateur programming in light of advancing technology.

Trend is shifting to Z88 and QL modifications.

TS 2068 disk utilities program available from RA Hilsman in Menomonee Falls, WI.

Had published articles about Commodore 64, Sinclair, TI, Atari 8-bits.

Source released for non-commercial use.

Source code for TreeFORTH (a ROMable, TS1000, slightly non-standard FORTH) has been released for non-commercial use by author Bob Alsum.

Article appeared in August-December 1989 issue of CRAGIST.

Gary Young in Iowa has working and non-working units, RAM packs and software.

Fix printed in August 1989 CATS and Dec 1989 Timelinez newsletters.

BBS software available from RMG. Larry Kenny working on desktop publishing system and is PC-based marketing plotter, engraver, router/miller.

QL and Z88 hardware and software available.

Using the CODE function instead of numbers to save bytes; saving space with DIMensioned variables.

List of programs appearing in user group newsletters in late 1989.

Due to illness and personal situations, work on newsletter is delayed. Seeking donations for public domain library.

Macintosh and NeXT emulators being readied. Author working on several self-published books about ZX81/TS 1000 computers. Local group developing simple compiler.

Dec 1989 issues was final newsletter and notice of dissolution of Harrisburgh Area TSUG.

Amateur programming with home computers has become more of a niche activity.

Wide variety of TS 1000 and TS 2068 tapes may be available.

Fix for mating LDOS with Tandon disk drives. Also working on a custom ZX-81 for controller applications, developed with Mike LeDuc.

Closing down as a special interest group; restarting as New England QL User Group.

Also working on implementing a machine language compression algorithm.

Exchange of experiences in Pascal programming; Dave Solly using HiSoft Pascal on TS 2068.

Hints on how to store a telephone number in three bytes (encoded) versus seven bytes.

Updates on Larken Electronics, RMG, Update Magazine, EMSoft, John McMichael, Byte Power.

Update on Vancouver TSUG, where Wilf Rigter has contributed a number of technical articles. New addresses for other groups, notices of user groups disbanding or discontinuing newsletters.

Club continues to support TS 2068 and Larken DOS users.

Original designers of ZX81/TS 1000 LDOS and TS 2068 LKDOS turning attention to computer-controlled shaper/router/plotter, driven by IBM PC compatible. Software originally written in Pascal on TS 2068.

Ottawa-Hull Timex-Sinclair User Group continued to meet.

Tutorial on random number

Brief review of the program.

Describes purpose of the newsletter, as compared to others.

Sinclair announces ZX-83, Timex the 2000. Timex plans a 3000 for 1984. Mindware printer back ordered for six months.

Catalogs received from Z-Ware, Computer Continuum, Softsync, Data-Assette, Cleva Computerware.

Short video game program.

One user’s opinions about his TS 1000.

Review of ZX-81 Horizon by Adrian Watney. An excellent introduction to advanced programming with a detective game, a graphics game, a file management system, and a machine code programmer/toolkit. Very clearly presented. Many hints and tips. The cassette includes all the program texts – so it saves a lot of time and protects you from…

How to prevent RAM pack wobble crashes and minimize static electricity.

Reivew of the graphics kit tape from Softsync.