Timex/Sinclair NorthAmerican User Groups

In 1988, at the Sunstate Timex/Sinclair Winterfest, a group of enthusiasts proposed a nation-wide user’s group. The name of the group, Sinclair Northamerica Users Group (SNUG), made it clear it intended to include all users in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

Mel Nathanson and Mary Lynn Johnson were the initial contacts. The group had ambitious goals, including a publication, directories of members, user groups, Sinclair-specific bulletin board systems, a library of public domain software and a directory of available software.

There was a some enthusiasm for the group, especially among those who published newsletters and magazines. Response from individuals and user groups was slow: by early December 1988, the group had 35 individual and 13 user group memberships.

In the interval between the announcement and update, Nathanson and others worked on drafting a charter, required to establish the group as an independent entity.

By March 1989, the group had its charter, selected nominees for offices and were voting on officers. The group had 58 individual and 15 user group members at that point.

The group suffered setbacks in 1989 as personal and family commitments required some organizers to step back. As a result, progress on some efforts slowed. They managed to compile a substantial library of public domain programs, including 850 Spectrum and 2068 programs. Membership swelled to about 130 by the end of the year.

In early January, Don Lambert was announced as the group’s newsletter editor. Behind the scenes, however, the group had stalled. A few months after the editor announcement, the Timex/Sinclair NorthAmerican User Groups (T/SNUG) organization sprung from a subset of SNUG participants.

The new group came at the suggestion of Bob Swoger, an active member of the Chicago Area Timex Users Group. As SNUG lost steam, Swoger suggested Lambert become chair of a new group. Swoger explained his idea in the final newsletter:

At 3 AM in the morning ten years ago I was unable to sleep. I was thinking about SNUG, the Sinclair NorthAmerican Users Group, a group that just couldn’t get off the ground. Its purpose was to be the preservation of Sinclair hardware and software in the United States of America. The fellows trying to get the group going were young working guys that were trying to keep their families going and could not put enough time into SNUG to keep its members happy. I thought up a new organization to do the things promised by the old group headed up by folks that might have more time to devote to the goal. I wrote a letter that would get a new group started to do what the old group couldn’t seem to get going. I would call it T/SNUG, the Timex/Sinclair NorthAmerican User Groups.

Swoger called Lambert in April 1991 and suggested they put out a newsletter. Lambert was recently retired and had experience editing his local user group’s newsletter. With Lambert as the initial chairperson, T/SNUG’s first newsletter came in Spring 1991. The newsletter, ZXir QLive Alive!, was named by Al Feng. The name was an obvious nod to Clive Sinclair, incorporating ZX from the Z80-based computers and QL from the 68000-based QL computer.

The group published its newsletter quarterly for 12 years, four issues a year, ending with a final issue in Spring 2003. As Swoger said in his final editorial, “I know of no other Timex/Sinclair group that still meets.”

The function of a print newsletter had largely been supplanted by email and websites. During the 12 year run of the newsletter, a parallel email list was established and several websites sprung up to support the work of the group but they, too, eventually faded away.