News From the Boston Blow-Out

Hi! from Beantown. Yours truly along with Linda Moran and Mattie Durholz attended the GALA BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION of the Sinclair Users’ Group of the Boston Computer Society last week. I really wish you all could have been there to pick up the contagious excitement of Timex/Sinclair Machines, peripherals, software, Historical exhibits and Home-Brewed additions to our great machine. Timex and or Sinclair announced at a pre-show reception the new machines and peripherals that would be coming out shortly. The microdrive is for real. They showed the Sinclair version of the microdrive for the Spectrum and felt they could deliver a U.S. version for all three machines by January or February 1984. The long promised modem was shown with a firm delivery around the first of the year. The hard disc or cartridge for the 2068 were neat little packages. They loaded 100K in 4 sec. The T-dock for the 1500 will allow you to load cartridges as fast on the 1500 and 1000. The tape recorders were a very fine package. You can see them at our next meeting. They spoke of an 80 column printer compatible for the 2068 just after Jan. 1. And best of all, Timex will put out an EPROM to plug into the 2068 loading dock to convert the 2068 into a Spectrum so as to enable the Spectrum programs to run on the 2068. There is an awful lot of Spectrum Software available. Dan Ross, of Timex, showed some of the future software from Timex such as high resolution graphics for the 2068. In addition, word processing for all three machines. There were approximately thirty vendors carrying and showing peripherals for all the machines from about 200 manufacturers. The displays were super. See some of the photos from the show at our meeting. There were seminar/workshops that ran from 10 A.M. to 5:30 P.M. Some of the topics were; Timex in the classroom; The present and future plans for Timex/Sinclair; Business and home applications for the Timex; Using Timex for Biomedical work. Computer literacy seminar-An introduction to Basic; The outs and ins of your own cottage industry; Overview of Word Processors; VuCalc and the Organizer; Demo of Votem and the Hunter Board; program to play Scott Joplins’ “Maple Leaf Rag” on the 2068; and last but not least our own Mattie on the Modem Communications Networks. We also had visitors playing chess against the computers, donated by Softsync and Timex. One person beat the Timex program in eleven moves and the Softsync in eight moves. Don’t have his name but he must be a pro. We intend having a Chess Match with a Chess program with a voice at a future meeting. Also represented were the publishers and editors of Sync, Timex Sinclair User and Syntax magazines. I think the best display from the standpoint of originality and graphics were Reston Publishing and Compusa. I’ll bring you more on the show at the meeting next week. We will discuss a little of what each vendor showed. Lastly; this writer had the good fortune of winning a door prize. It was a Memotext Word Processor Processor donated by Sahid of Memotech. Thanks Sahid. Its a neat item. We’ll try and review it next issue. In closing, I want to congratulate SUE MAHONEY Director of the Sinclair Users’ Group of BCS for the grand job they did in planning and carrying out the tremendous undertaking and responsibility. It was sincerely a joy seeing all this TIMEX/SINCLAIR under one roof. WHEN AND WHERE DO WE HOLD THE NEXT ONE? It’s not too early to start planning.