What began as an off-hand comment about showing some of our favorite computers at the 20th Vintage Computer Festival Midwest turned into a semi-coordinated group display and weekend of fun for more than a dozen members of the Timex Sinclair Online User Group.
Among those who attended:
- David Anderson
- Mowgli Assor
- Greg Bennett and his brother Brad
- Peyton Bratton and his wife Mariah
- Jeff Burrell and his son Jeff
- Jeff Fetta
- Ryan Gray
- David Green
- Tim Horner
- Jeff Kuhlmann
- Mark Martin, his wife Jennifer and son Ethan
- Carl Miles
- Stewart Newfeld and his wife Susan
- Ingo and Michael Schmied
- Adam Trionfo
- Joe Vandezande and his son Matt
And new members we met at the show:
Friday
Jeff Burrell arrived early on Friday and claimed our spaces, at the corner of an island. Jeff set up his display about the TS-2060 project (more below). Several other members arrived early and we spent part of the evening setting up everything for the show the next day.
Evan Wright, who was there to present his text adventure development systems Lantern, dropped by to say hi. Turns out, Evan was a Sinclair user from way back!
“After the Timex tables were setup, many of us had dinner at one long table at the Schaumburg Public House restaurant. We were the last table with customers, and we closed the place down. Quite literally, the manager had to come over and finally (nicely) ask us to leave.”
“Yet, we were not done, as afterward we went to the bar that was also downstairs, across from the restaurant. It was called the Gather Lounge. It was loud in there, so the groups of people chatting with each other sort of scrunched to groups of three or four (still at tables that had been moved together), but that still worked.” — Adam Trionfo
Saturday
Saturday was a whirlwind, crazy busy day: several folks finished setting up their displays while the line of people waiting to get into the hall grew increasingly longer outside. When the doors opened, it was packed very quickly.
“Many of us who stayed at the Schaumburg Hotel got coffee and maybe a snack at the Rendezvous Café. We needed something, at least on Saturday, to start our day wading our way through the crowded aisles in the convention center. In some places the crowd was so thick that it was, at best, only single file movement weaving in and out of the crowds and at worst there was no movement all.” — Adam Trionfo
We had a lot of visitors stop by to check out our displays and ask questions. We explored the other exhibits and spotted a few Sinclair and Timex/Sinclair computers at other tables, including another example of the NEI educational suitcase.
Ryan took the opportunity to live-code fixes to his TS Commander, a file navigation/program launcher for the TS-Pico, and to show off his “Thief!” game.
Saturday night, 24 of us went to Lou Malnatti’s for pizza and fun.
Next row: Susan Newfeld, Joe Vandezande, Jeff and Jeff Burrell (son and father), Ryan Gray, Jeff Kuhlmann.
Front row: Steward Newfeld, David Green, David Anderson, Adam Trionfo, Greg and Brad Bennett.
Special guest on the right: Tim Horner.
Sunday
Sunday was the last day of the show and it was a little less hectic. We still had plenty of visitors checking out our displays and learning more about our projects.
Carl Miles gave a presentation on the history Sinclair and Timex/Sinclair computers, from the ZX80 up to The Spectrum. It was the last presentation of the day and was well attended.
We went off to dinner in smaller groups but reconvened later in the evening at the hotel’s bar. David introduced those who came to the Chicago tradition of Malort. Everyone survived and we had a great time hanging out together one last time.
Displays
Carl Miles
Carl showed off the recreated and improved Timex Sinclair 1510 that he and Ryan have been working on, as well as what Carl is calling the “1068,” a souped-up version of the 1000 with a built-in Wespi, configurable joystick port, loads of RAM and more features. One of Carl’s computers, a recreation of the original proposal for the TS 1500 (a 1000 with 16K housed in a silver 1000 case) was running the Timex Store Demonstrator ROM. Carl also had his The Spectrum on display.
David Green
David loves to build expansion devices, ROM cartridges and other little open systems but ends up with more instances of each than he can possibly use because most PCB houses have a minimum order of 5 PCBs. So David was selling his excess at VCFMW.
He also had 3D printed replica ZX80 and ZX81 cases and PCBs available.
Stewart Newfeld/Zebra Systems
Stewart, a long-time supporter of the Timex/Sinclair community through his company Zebra Systems, showed his NOS books, tapes, Alphacom printers, as well as his newer products, like a microswitch keyboard and a composite output video board for the TS1000/ZX81.
Jeff Kuhlmann
Jeff showed his work-in-progress Baudot keyboard to joystick interface that showed how an 1800s technology could be taught using 1980s retro computers. Baudot code was a 5 bit character encoding, originally developed for telegraphy. Baud, the unit of measure for modem speed, is derived from the transmission rate for Baudot code.
“I loved VCFMW. It was great to meet the TS2068 members in person and feel their passion for their projects in person. It was great to talk at meals with the group. What a great mix of talent we have!” — Jeff Kuhlmann
Tim Horner
Tim made the 8,000 mile trek from New Zealand to hang out with his Timex/Sinclair friends. Tim showed off his cross-translating board that lets you connect a PC keyboard to a ZX81/TS1000, which he used with his custom keycap keyboard.
Jeff Fetta
Jeff displayed his compact-flash storage system for the ZX81/TS1000 that includes a custom ROM to support loading/saving to a CF device, along with his recreation of the Zon-X AY-3-8912-based sound board.
Jeff Burrell
Jeff showed off the Timex community re-imagined/updated version of the Timex/Sinclair 2060 Bus Expansion Unit. This device includes multiple video modes via its built-in FPGA, a Raspberry Pi Pico 2, real-time clock, serial and USB ports, stereo DAC, and more. When it’s finished, it’ll have a 3D printed enclosure that the TS 2068 plugs into, like the original Bus Expansion Unit.
David Anderson
David brought several Timex/Sinclair 2068s and a Timex/Sinclair 1000, along with books and other display elements for the show.
The Timex/Sinclair 1000 was inside a K2 Kradle, a keyboard/memory/device expansion made for the ZX81/TS1000 that included 64K RAM and serial and parallel port options. Attached to the 1000 was a Wespi, which has a fast loader, stores many files and has its own menuing system and a web browser for loading files on to the device.
One of the Timex/Sinclair 2068s was displayed with the TS-Pico storage device, PicoVideo board and Tim Horner’s ZX Printer board. Another 2068, signed by Gary Grimes, was displayed along with Gary’s industrial design drawings he made while working on the 2068 project.
Ingo and Michael Schmied
Ingo and Mike showed off their Kilozed project, a project they have been working on for several years. It includes a full-sized keyboard, larger case with openable top and numerous enhancements to the ZX81/TS1000 used in it.
Evan Wright
Evan came over and introduced himself to us Friday night. Evan showed us the article from Timex Sinclair User about a summer camp he attended in the 1980s (he’s in one of the photos!) and told us how that experience led to his career in teaching and to the text adventure system, Lantern, that he created.
The Albuquerque Club
Photo Gallery
