For a brief time, the Sinclair ZX Printer was the only option available to Sinclair owners and it was only available in England. It printed by burning aluminum-coated paper, producing an interesting result. As with all Sinclair products, it was an idiosyncratic offering. Not only did it require special paper, the paper was supplied on 100mm (4”) wide rolls.
Timex contracted with Alphacom to supply one of their printers, the Alphacom 32, as the Timex 2040 printer. Like the ZX Printer, it printed on narrow (4.3” wide) rolls of special thermal paper.
Obviously, neither of these solutions could produce “business quality” documents.
Since Sinclair computers did not have built-in printer interfaces. Instead, the Sinclair printers connected to the expansion bus.
The aftermarket provided a variety of interfaces to the two most common printer communication protocols, Centronics (parallel) and RS-232 (serial). These interfaces also connected to the expansion bus.
| Name | Description | Computers |
|---|---|---|
| 2068 Centronics Printer Interface | Printer interface that was available as cartridge port or rear edge connector models. Worked with Centronics printers, allows full page, hi-res color screen copies using a gray scale and is compatible with software designed for Aerco and Tasman interfaces as well as Omnicalc II, Vu-Calc, and Vu-File. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| 2068 Parallel Printer Port | Printer port for printers that have a Centronics interface. Uses the same port and BUSY bit as the AERCO 2068 printer interface. Port is fully decoded and contains a “PRINTER READY” LED to show printer current status. Also included are hi-res screen dumps for Okidata, Olivetti PR2300, Gemini 10X and Gorilla Banana printers. | Timex/Sinclair 2068, Downloadable |
| 2068/1520 Printer Interface | Interface to connect a TS 2068 to the Commodore 1520 plotter. Later available with driver for Okimate 20 printer. The Commodore 1520 was was a small, four color pen plotter, built on an ALPS DPG1302 plotter mechanism. The same mechanism was used in the Atari 1020, the Radio Shack CGP-115 and a number of others. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Alphacom 32 Printer | OEM for Timex/Sinclair 2040 printer. | Sinclair ZX81, Timex/Sinclair 1000, Timex/Sinclair 1500, Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Brother EP-20 Adapter | Schematics and information on electronic and mechanical principles of operation. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| CAI/P40 Printer | 40-column thermal printer that prints all TS1000 and ZX81 alpha-numerics and graphics. Used with either a mini-interface ($20) or the CAI/O board. Printer has six modes of print: screen dump, print listing, and print string, each of which may be printed in normal or expanded style. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Centronics Interface | Parallel printer interface. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Centronics Interface | Interface for standard parallel printers. Manufactured by Indescomp. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Centronics Parallel Printer Interface | Expansion for the Compu-board system. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Centronics Printer Interface | Timex/Sinclair 2068 | |
| Centronics Printer Interface | Uses ports A and B of the I/O board. Printer commands and machine language programs are stored in an 8K memory area not used by computer. Professional Electronics I/O board required. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| CGP-115 Driver and Interface | Connect Spectrum to Tandy CGP-115 four color printer/plotter. Scans screen horizontally and sends printer information to Tandy printer. Colors mapped to printer’s four colors. Can be used with TS 2068 and twister board. | Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| CP-68 Centronics Printer Interface | Connect to parallel (Centronics) printers. Print in either the printer’s native font or the TS 2068 display font. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| CP-ZX Centronics Printer Interface | Smart printer interface that can autoboot disk system, set RAMTOP and disable Memotech control characters in some software. | Sinclair ZX81, Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| CRC Smart Soft Face | Interfaces printers to the Sinclair. Serial or parallel. Uses no RAM nor USR routines. Works with any printer, single key operations. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Dual Centronics Interface | Port-mapped expansion board using the Intel 8255 PIA chip. Provides two Centronics ports, one for output to a printer, the other for data input. A 32 byte PROM overrides ROM printer routines and directs the commands to driver software. Fully supports BASIC LPRINT, LLIST and COPY statements. Driver software loads above RAMTOP but can be | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| FootePrint | Cartridge dock interface. Compatible with print driver software for the AERCO/Oliger and Tasman B and C. Includes the card, ribbon cable and software on cassette. Spare socket and switch to run either a Spectrum ROM or other EPROM-based software. The article “2068 Printer Interface and ROM Cart” (appears in Best of SUM) documents how to | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Memopak Centronics I/F | Centronics parallel interface pack enables the Sinclair to use a wide range of compatible printers. The resident software in the unit gives the ASCII character set. Interface provides lower-case character capability. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| MW100 Printer | Plain paper, dot matrix printer that printed on 1 3/4 inch paper rolls. Three printing modes: | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Parallel 1000 | Interface to Centronics parallel interface printers. Driver translates Timex/Sinclair code to 80 column ASCII and sends printer via USR calls to simulate LPRINT, LLIST and COPY. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Parallel 2068 | Interface to Centronics parallel interface printers. Driver software supports LPRINT and LLIST. High resolution screen copy program supports multiple printers. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Parallel Printer Port | This project was detailed completely in Syntax Quarterly, issues 1 & 2. Port is memory mapped at location FFFFh and is completely decoded. Project includes schematic, theory of operation sheeta and machine code listing comments of a copy routine for use with the Okidata ML80 and ML82A printers. Circuit and software can be adapted to | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| PERICONc | Centronics printer interface. A module in the BASICare Modular Expansion System. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| PI2040 Printer Interface | Solves the interface problem of connecting the TS2040 printer to a TS1000 computer with Memotech or other non-Timex add-ons. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Printer Interface | Serial and parallel printer interfaces that plug into the 2068 joystick ports. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Serial Interface | Interface for RS-232 serial devices. Manufactured by Indescomp. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| SMC CPI-1 Printer Interface | Updated version of Tasman B printer interface with more decoding to improve compatibility with both TS 1000 and TS 2068 computers. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| Super ROM Board | Built-in printer interface, EPROM burner and autostart ROM. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| T.A.S. Fix | Device for the TS 2068 and Tasman parallel printer interface. Disables Tasman device to allow use of incompatible hardware and software. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| Tasman Printer Interface | Available in Centronics and RS-232 versions. Supplied with 3′ cable and driver software. | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| TS 2040 Printer | The 2040 printed on 4.3″ wide thermal paper in 32 columns. All Timex computers could print individual lines (LPRINT), list programs (LLIST) or dump the screen (COPY) to the printer. The 2040 improved on the ZX Printer by adding two ferrite rings around the cable to reduce TV and radio interference and an interface IC, | Timex/Sinclair 1000, Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| TS 2080 80 Column Printer | The TS2080 was a full-size printer the provided 80 columns of dot matrix output, including all the characters in the TS2068. It would have plugged into a Centronics parallel printer port on the 2060 Bus Expansion Unit. According to one vendor, it was a Cal-Abco Legend 880 printer. E. Arthur Brown claimed it was a | Timex/Sinclair 2068 |
| WIDGIPRINT Printer | 32 column thermal printer; prints on 3.2″ wide paper. Supports Sinclair BASIC printing commands and screen dump. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| ZX Printer | Designed exclusively for use with the ZX81 (and ZX80 with 8K BASIC ROM), the printer offers full alphanumerics and highly sophisticated graphics. COPY command prints out exactly what is on the whole TV screen. Printing speed is 50 characters per second, with 32 characters per line and 9 lines per vertical inch. | Sinclair ZX80, Timex/Sinclair 1000 |
| ZX-98 Parallel and Serial Interface | Parallel and serial interface (Centronics printer and RS-232) on the same board. Supports LLIST, LPRINT and COPY; communicates at up to 9600 baud. On-board driver routines in EPROM. | Timex/Sinclair 1000 |