Adam gave an update on the activities of the Albuquerque Timex Sinclair User’s Group, made up of Ryan Gray, Carl Miles and Adam. Ryan is working on a price comparison between the TS 1000 and other home computers available at the time.
Adam reported he’d reached out to Alex Burr, publisher of QZX, and John Brown, another individual active at the time, all local to Adam.
David talked a bit about some PDFs Carl Miles uploaded to the TS2068 groups.io list. They included code he’d written for a cartridge meant to fully test the 2068. Contained in the PDFs were also references to M&B Software, a company consisting of Carl Miles and John Brown.
Jeff Burrell presented his FPGA-based video output board. It mirrors the SCLD and 2068 display RAM, generating a VGA output from the Timex. It also has a second VGA output for an 80 column text mode, other graphics modes and an emulation of the Texas Instruments TMS9918 graphics display processor.
Stewart Newfeld dropped in to say hi and let us know what he’s been up to.
Ingo Schmied showed off his custom keyboard and “upscaled” 3D printed TS 1000 enclosure.
David gave an update on the tape archiving he’s working on. Paul Holmgren mentioned he has even more tapes and Adam asked about how others can help in the preservation process.
Ryan talked a bit about figuring out how to add microdrive support to other emulators, based on work Keith Watson did with an earlier DOS emulator.
Based on Ryan’s discussion, David asked those gathered how many would interested in a device that would allow saving/loading to/from SD card in native 2068 mode.
Tim Swenson gave an update his “intro to emulators for 2068 users” document. He’ll send it to the groups.io list and put it on his website.
Larry Lorenson showed some devices he’s made for his TS 1000, including an NVRAM board.
And Dario Ruellan, in Argentina, talked about Quicksilva programs that came with his TS 2068, which his father purchased in the 1980s.