Jon Becker demoed TS Writer, a proportional, what-you-see-is-what-you-get word processor for the 2068 that runs from a cartridge. It borrows its look and fonts from GEOS and works in standard, extended color and high-resolution modes. It imports and exports RTF with fonts and images intact, and Jon loaded a book chapter of about 179 lines, inserted extended-color images into the text, and switched between wide and narrow page views. A pre-converted RTF opened in LibreOffice Writer to show the round trip.
He built it from scratch with Codex, had a working version in roughly four hours the Wednesday before, and spent the rest of the week optimizing. The program is about 49K. He started from a quick Codex port of ZX Desk for the Spectrum and wanted a GeoWrite-style application. Gustavo Pane offered to help integrate the TS-Pico disk routines and RAM expansion support, and noted that his modified ROM patches the video-mode dispatcher in a way that makes mode switching work, which the original ROM does not. Jon also floated a Raspberry Pi Pico-based sample-player card that would emulate an AY chip and add sample playback for arcade-style speech and effects.
Charlie Day described version 2 of his Leap ROM, a full replacement ROM for the 2068 imagined as what the machine might have become had it kept evolving. Version 1 was an interpreter, and a Forth ROM followed. Version 2 swaps the interpreter for an in-ROM editor and compiler that produce compact byte code for a virtual machine, in the spirit of Turbo Pascal. That freed enough room to push the BASIC much closer to Sinclair QL SuperBASIC, and Charlie has begun prototyping Pascal on the same system. Math and library routines are shared between languages, and version 2 can load multiple assembly extensions at once instead of one. Everything has been tested only in emulators. The remaining job is memory optimization before version 2 goes on GitHub. Charlie uses Claude as what he called a contractor, backed by a Z80 debugger and a TS 2068 debugger he built so every change runs through a full test suite. His Forth ROM traces back to Hawg Wild Forth, which he received from the Arkansas vendor as partial payment for writing software for them.
Josef Jelinek reported on QLRun and TSRun. QLRun, his Sinclair QL emulator, was redesigned after the interface could not handle the hard-drive image Tim Swenson sent and the extensions it needs. Josef had Claude Opus produce many deliberately different designs and assembled the final interface from pieces of them. It now handles Minerva ROMs, the Toolkit cartridge, floppy and microdrive images that can be created, formatted and downloaded, NTSC timing, mouse types, and serial connections to a real QL (Chromium browsers only). It also runs on a phone. It emulates the QSound 2 card, based on the YM2203, a card that does not yet work in hardware; Josef said the emulation has given its author new impetus to finish it.
TSRun also gained a cartridge archive browser that pulls from archive.org, and a ROM parameter that loads Charlie’s Leap ROM in the browser. David and Charlie both ran it live, and Josef will file issues for TSRun’s high-resolution color preferences. Josef also noted that QL forums are filling with AI-assisted ports from DOS and Spectrum, one of which carried about 300K of pre-rendered sprites as code.
David and Adam Trionfo introduced Nick Cassavaugh, a new attendee from Indiana University whose son found a Timex Sinclair 1000 at the university surplus store. Nick has replaced its keyboard and added a memory pack. David pointed him to the OpenSpand, an open rebuild of the ZXpand for the 1000 and ZX81. The original had about 56K of RAM, an AY sound chip, a joystick port and an SD slot, and relied on a CPLD that limited production. The new version uses a Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and recreates the ULA to add composite video output. Michael Kutzner linked the ZXpand+ on Tindie. David mentioned Don Crawford and Dave Spinnett’s high-resolution TS1000 games, including Zoust and Robotac, need ZXpand-class hardware.
The group spent a stretch on AI-assisted development workflows. David said Claude figured out how to talk to Zesarux, recompiled it to accept Gustavo’s 16K XROM, and that he has ported TS-Pico support to both Zesarux and Fuse as test backends, with the Mac also connected to a real Pico over USB. Chris Collins described an MCP bridge for the Amiga that supports screenshots, keystroke injection and GDB debugging. Jon shared an AI skill for the TS2068 that combines David’s technical archive with his own notes.