In this week’s meeting of our group, we were joined by Ryan Gray, a Timex enthusiast. Ryan has resurrected a user-defined graphics editor he wrote on the TS 2068 in the 1980s and is working on improving it. Ryan is using a Raspberry Pi 400 with the ZEsarUX and FUSE emulators for his development.
https://github.com/chernandezba/zesarux
http://fuse-emulator.sourceforge.net/
David Solly, another long-time Timex/Sinclair user, told us about a cafe owner in Ottawa who used TS 1000 and TS 2068 computers to manage her business with software she wrote. She was using her Timex computers until she closed the business in 2000. Towards the end, she used a DOS-based Spectrum emulator written by Gerton Lunter called called Z80.
https://www.well.ox.ac.uk/~gerton/index.html
https://github.com/ZXSpectrumVault/z80-spectrum-emulator
David also talked about his experiences with Pascal programming and user-defined graphics.
We went on a long side discussion about mission-critical vintage systems and software, some decades old, and why they are still maintained.
Willie Jones told us a little about how he used his computers in the 1980s, including running a bulletin board system (BBS) for his local user group.
Adam showed us the BackBit cartridge he received and talked about using it with the systems he owns that it already supports.
The BackBit discussion led to a discussion about old floppy disk systems.
We got back on topic with a demonstration of a short computer/video art program David found in an old user group newsletter, running in ZEsarUX 10.
Jeff Burrell told us how he got into the Timex/Sinclair world, which led to discussion about old programming languages, including Fortran.
And we learned that it’s difficult to stump Tim Swenson when it comes to computer books.
Adam talked a bit about an article about a post-computer fair picnic, featuring Tim Swenson and his family. Tim told us about the computer fairs and how they led to him hosting a party afterwards. We shared the photos from the newsletter.
Jeff Burrell gave an update on his project to build an SD-card based storage system and we discussed the various file formats and challenges in loading them.
And Carl Miles told us about his experiences in high school, learning to program and use computers, and in particular, learning machine language by way of cracking software.