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The T/S 2068 is an “under-$200” basic computer offering many features missing on the 1000
The new Timex Sinclair 2068 Personal Color Computer is much different than the computer originally announced at a trade show in January 1983 as the “Timex Sinclair 2000.” The computer has gone through a great metamorphosis. Those of you having Timex 1000s will find that the things you complained about — membrane keyboard, memory wobble, slow and unreliable cassette loading, limited BASIC language, no color, no sound, limited graphics, etc. — have been corrected in the T/S 2068. With 48K of on-board RAM, the machine has evolved into a sophisticated “under-$200” basic computer offering many special features.
Background
In April 1982, Timex made an agreement with Sinclair Research Ltd. in England to utilize Sinclair computer technology for computers to be made under the “Timex Sinclair” label and distributed in North America. The Timex 1000 was an almost direct copy of Sinclair’s ZX81 and, according to the Wall Street Journal, Timex sold 550,000 T/S 1000s in five months!
When Sinclair came out with its lowpriced color computer, the Spectrum, in mid-1982, it was assumed Timex would bring it into North America very quickly. Indeed, the original Timex Sinclair 2000 shown to dealers and press in January appeared to be a Spectrum in a slightly restyled case — same size, same keyboard, same specifications.
But the introduction of the T/S 2000 was delayed and rumors abounded. Finally, at a June 1983 industry show, Timex unveiled the Timex Sinclair 2068, which bore no physical resemblance to the Spectrum at all! By the time you read this, the T/S 2068 should be available through larger retailers and mail order houses with a suggested retail price of $199.95. However, it has already been scheduled for advertising in one major mail-order catalog for $148.32. Although in June, a T/S 2048 was also announced (with 16K RAM instead of 48K, and for $50 less), it appears that only the T/S 2068 will be available at this time.
This report is based on a pre-production T/S 2068 operating with a production Timex Sinclair 2040 Personal Printer and an inexpensive cassette tape recorder. A standard black-and-white 12″ TV receiver and a 5″ color TV/video monitor were used as displays.
General Description
The T/S 2068 is contained in a light gray plastic case whose upper surface is painted with a dull aluminum finish. The full-size keyboard uses light gray keys with easily read black printing on the keys, and clear black “keywords” above and below most keys. It’s a smart-looking package. It’s also relatively large: almost 15″ wide, 7″ deep, and almost 2″ high. It weighs about four pounds.
In a drastic departure from the Spectrum physical design, Timex upgraded the Spectrum’s rubbery, closely spaced “chiclet” keys with “hard” typewriter-like keys — the same as used on the Brother EP-20 Personal Electronic Typewriter. The keyboard is standard typewriter size and the full-travel keys have the standard QWERTY layout. An indication of the care given to detail is that the F and J keys have raised finger-tip sensitive dots, since these are the “home” keys for touch typists. Several of the keys in the top row are used to specify display colors, and these have colored legends above them in the color they control, which is a very handy feature.
There are 42 keys that include 36 alphanumeric and symbol keys, a space bar and a caps shift key on each end of the keyboard, with automatic repeat.
Most of the keys do multiple duty, since single-keyword entry is provided for over 150 BASIC commands and statements. Most keys perform five different functions, while seven keys have six functions. Functions are identified by one of six different letters that appear within the block cursor.
Eight of the keys directly provide 16 graphic blocks; and 21 high-resolution, 64-pixel, user-defined characters can be programmed for individual keys. Many special symbols are available, such as a copyright symbol, an “at” sign, an English “pound” sign, and much to the joy of T/S 1000/1500 owners, an exclamation point!
On the left side of the computer there’s an on-off switch and an Atari-standard 9-pin joystick connector. There’s another identical joystick port on the right side. On the back, a snap-off cover reveals a 64-finger gold-plated card edge — the main computer bus. Five jacks are clearly marked along the back side of the T/S 2068: monitor (yes, direct video for a monitor), ear, MIC, POWER, and tv. Underneath there is a small switch to select Channel 2 or 3 when using a TV receiver for the display.
The T/S 2068 uses the 8-bit Z80A microprocessor that can directly address 64K bytes of memory. However, utilizing a special Timex-designed system and a “function dispatcher,” up to 256 “banks” of 64K memory can be utilized in 8K “chunks,” for a total of over 16 megabytes (but no more than 64K at any one time.) The 24K ROM (16K plus a bank-switched 8K) includes a powerful expanded BASIC interpreter and operating system, and 48K of RAM is built-in and accessible for user programs.
Timex, and probably others, will offer “Command Cartridges,’’ IVi” square plastic cases that plug into an interface built into the upper right surface and are accessible via a lift-up door on the T/S 2068. The cartridges contain pre-programmed ROM, with their own operating system included; the T/S 2068 ROM can be switched out to allow more cartridge capacity. As of this writing, some 25 titles covering games, utilities, and business/home software are available.
Cartridges only need to be inserted into the computer and don’t require loading (which is necessary when using cassette tapes). They operate in the same manner as cartridges for video game machines, like the Atari VCS, ColecoVision, Intellivision, and others.
The display can be programmed to show various “attributes” (characteristics) for each character space in most display “modes.” Eight colors are available for PAPER (background), ink ( printing) and border (outside the regular display area). Also, there are two BRIGHTness levels for each color, and FLASHing is available for each character space. INVERSE VIDEO provides for a switching of paper and ink colors in any character space. All this provides the capability for a variety of special effects.
Not only that, the T/S 2068 has four display modes. (The Spectrum has only one!) The normal Display Mode 1 provides 22 rows of 32 characters on a line available to the user, plus two more lines the computer uses for line entry, editing and status reports. This same mode offers 1 6 character-space graphic blocks (four sections to each block) or 256 “pixels” (picture elements or “dots”) on a line, with 176 lines of pixels from top to bottom.
Display Mode 2 is the 64-Column Mode, with 22 rows of 64 characters on a line, and a pixel resolution of 512 by 176. The 64 characters on each line, however, reside on two memory “pages” of 32 characters each, and appear on the screen in alternate spaces. Therefore, it takes special programming (probably machine language) to show 64-character text on the screen. Such software is in the design phase at the moment.
Display Mode 3 is a second “normal” screen, like Mode 1 . By switching rapidly between Modes 1 and 3 you can produce animation.
The fourth, Display Mode 4, is called “ultra-high color resolution.” It has the same character and pixel resolution as Mode 1 (32 character lines, 256 pixels on a line), but with an important difference. Each character space contains eight rows of eight pixels each. In this mode each row of pixels in each character space can be assigned various color parameters (ink, paper, BRIGHTness and FLASHing). This allows great flexibility in color mixing and other visual effects — but definitely requires sophisticated programming.
The language used in the T/S 2068 is Sinclair Expanded BASIC, sometimes referred to as Spectrum BASIC, with a number of additional commands not found on the Spectrum. To give you an idea of the power of the 2068, it has more than 50 commands and statements that are not available on the Timex 1000/1500 (see Table 1). For example, FREE displays the amount of free RAM space left; STICK calls the joysticks; SOUND can call three voices on the built-in speaker; ON ERR, which is similar to Applesoft’s approach to handling internal errors; and RESET, which is used to initialize a particular peripheral. It even has a number of commands for devices not yet available, such as FORMAT, OPEN, CLOSE, MOVE, and ERASE, which will work with an external disk and disk-like storage devices. For the former T/S 1000/1500 user who has been frustrated by not being able to translate programs from other computers, these new commands (such as READ, DATA, RESTORE, and Others) should make the task feasible.
The T/S 2068 has four “voices” produced through a built-in speaker, with three of the voices programmable in eight octaves. On those three voice channels, the sound command allows specifying tone, duration, amplitude, and various envelope parameters. The single-channel BEEP command allows specifying any of 130 semitones and a duration. The Spectrum, incidentally, has only the beep command directed to a very small sounding device.
Eight-position industry-standard (Atari compatible) joysticks are used with the STICK command. In addition to game control, creative programmers will likely use these joysticks for graphic art generation, as well as cursor control in word-processing, data-base, and spreadsheet programs.
User Comments
The T/S 2068 comes with all the necessary accessories to get it up and running, except the display. The very detailed over- 300 page User Manual — in color, with many, many screen displays — really holds your hand through the early stages of getting the system together and learning how to use the confusing keyboard. The User Manual is basically a reference and getting started book. It describes the use of most commands, but is not intended to teach programming.
We plugged the Timex Sinclair 2040 Personal Printer onto the bus at the back of the 2068, and then plugged in its 24-V ac power supply. (Be sure not to plug the printer power supply into the computer, since the computer and the printer have exactly the same jack. The printer power supply is ac and might damage the computer, which is designed for a dc input.) We used both a black and white TV receiver and a color monitor for displays. If you’re using a TV receiver, connect the (supplied) computer/TV isolation switch to the TV antenna terminals and then plug the (supplied) video cable between the switch and the TV output jack on the rear apron of the computer. If you’re using an NTSC or black-and-white monitor, plug the video cable between the monitor and the monitor output of the computer.
We plugged the computer power supply into the jack on the back of the 2068, turned on the monitor, set the switch box to “Computer,” and flicked the computer power switch to “on.” There is no “on” switch marking on the sample we examined. Also, there is no pilot light on the 2068, so if your monitor is not powered, you won’t know your T/S 2068 is on. A large black block appears momentarily on screen, followed by a screen clear and two copyright notices: Timex and Sinclair. So far, so good.
The keyboard has a soft touch. If you’re not dead-center on a key, it still registers. This is far more forgiving than some keyboards. The 6″-long space key, however, was “dead” at each end for about an inch (but remember, this was a pre-production model).
The 2068 worked without any flaws in black and white, though the color produced by the pre-production model was “off.” That is, the colors were not as marked on the keyboard. (We’ve been told that this has been corrected on production units.) On a black-and-white TV or monitor, each color appears as a different shade of gray. We tried all the keys and most of the BASIC functions, except for those used with presently nonexistent peripherals. No surprises.
We used an inexpensive cassette tape recorder to save and load programs. Timex even supplies a cable with dual plugs on both ends for the ear and Mic jacks on the computer and recorder. A costly cassette recorder is not needed, therefore, and may not even work as well as a “cheapie.”
Cassette operation (1500 baud, or about 150 characters per second) was very reliable with a broad range of loading volume. We loaded a 3373-byte BASIC program in about 24 seconds, including about 4 seconds for the program “leader.” Programs are assigned filenames when saved, and the program name appears on the screen as the program loads. Striped moving bars on the screen confirm loading and saving.
The printer copy command duplicated every ink dot on the screen — 32 characters or 256 pixels on a line — including high-resolution graphics. Listings also appeared the same as on the screen. On those screen displays with color, the printer only showed the ink color dots, and totally ignored paper color dots.
The printer output was sharp, fast and quiet, and photocopied very well. The printer uses 4 1/4″ wide thermal paper, and you can make only one copy at a time. However, for word processing or any serious use, or to reproduce the 64 character display mode, you’ll want to connect a standard 80-column printer and print on regular paper, with multicopy capability. Timex, at this writing, only offers the 2040 Printer, but is said to be working on an 80-column printer. Other companies have designed printer interfaces for use with the Timex 1000 and 1 500, allowing the use of Centronics parallel printers. It can be expected that this will also be done for the T/S 2068.
We tried the beep and sound commands produced through the small built-in speaker, and were even able to play simple tunes. The sound command is quite complicated, since it can produce three voices with several parameters. The BEEP command, however, is simple to use. In both cases, we found that by connecting an amplifier to the computer output marked MIC (which normally goes to the cassette MIC input) we were able to get plenty of sound or beep. While the beep command has no volume control; the command for SOUND does.
We did not test the joystick or cartridge capabilities, or the other three display modes, and we did not try the RGB monitor output available on the 64-pin bus.
Out of curiosity, we checked the power consumption of the computer, since the power supply was marked 17.5 V dc at 1 ampere, and this would amount to 17.5 watts — higher than we would expect. In actual use, however, the power supply was delivering only 215 milliamperes at 21 V dc, or less than five watts. Unlike the Spectrum, both the power supply and the computer hardly warmed up! Timex has really tamed the heat problem that plagued the Spectrum.
Conclusions
Except for the “deadened” SPACE key and the off-colors (both of which can be attributed to the fact this was a pre-production model), I was very impressed with the performance of the new 2068, as well as the potential of those things we didn’t test at this time (the 64-character mode, animated and ultra-high resolution displays, the cartridge and joysticks, the complex sounds, and the ability to memory-bank select over 16 megabytes). As software wizards produce programs to access these features, we’ll start using them. About the only things we’d like to see added are a power-on indicator, a remote control for the recorder, and distinctively different power-input jacks for the computer and the printer.
Although most BASIC programs written in England for the Spectrum will LOAD and run in the T/S 2068, most machine-language programs will not. However, at least one U.S. company, SoftSync (14 E. 34th St., NY, NY 10016), is converting Spectrum programs for the T/S 2068. It also appears that Timex will be offering about 25 programs for the T/S 2068 when it is expected to hit the marketplace around the end of October.
As for the future of the T/S 2068, Timex has already announced plans to produce a telephone “modem” for the computers. With appropriate programming, this will enable communication, information exchange, and even the capability to “upload” or “download” programs. You’ll be able to connect to “bulletin boards” and large networks and data bases like CompuServe and The Source, leaving messages (electronic mail) or carrying on real-time exchanges in a conference, or on a CB simulation.
We can also expect some programming and hardware geniuses to produce “light pens” (to draw directly on, or to select items from the screen), “bit pads” (the same thing on a flat surface in front of you), “mice” (cursor positioning devices), and other not-yet-thought-about devices for the T/S 2068. Certainly, the software at first will be games, games, and more games, followed by word-processing and personal software.
The T/S-2068 is a solid learning/home computer. Its cost is not prohibitive for these purposes, assuming one is going to use an already-owned cassette recorder and TV receiver. Of course, a horde of software and hardware additions will take time to develop in the marketplace, a shortcoming that most newly introduced computers share. This Timex machine has a head start in this respect, however, since there are so many Spectrum machinelanguage programs in the U.K. that can be easily converted to operate on the T/S-2068, as well as more hardware.
Since the T/S does not use a typical memory map scheme, using ultra-high resolution color graphics and the 64 character mode cannot easily be taken advantage of without using advanced programming techniques. This was not addressed in the machine’s manual.
Moving out of the very-low-priced T/S-1000 class into the modest category throws the new T/S-2068 into an area where there are a handful of tough, entrenched competitors. However, its nice attributes make it deserving of buying consideration in its class.