Timex Sinclair 2068
Encyclopedia
The Timex Sinclair 2068 (TS2068), released in November 1983, was Timex Sinclair
Timex Sinclair
Timex Sinclair was a joint venture between the British company Sinclair Research and Timex Corporation in an effort to gain an entry into the rapidly-growing early-1980s home computer market in the United States...

's fourth and last home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...

 for the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 market. It was also marketed in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

, as the Timex Computer 2068.

A variant of the machine was later sold in Poland under the name Unipolbrit Komputer 2086
Komputer 2086
The Unipolbrit Komputer 2086 was a Polish version of the home computer Timex Sinclair 2068, produced by a joint venture of the Polish Unimor and Timex Computer of Portugal. The machine wasn't 100% ZX Spectrum-compatible and a "Spectrum Emulation" cartridge was available .-Technical...

.

Technical specifications

The TS2068 was based on the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...

 and followed Timex's ZX81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...

-based TS1000
Timex Sinclair 1000
The Timex Sinclair 1000 was the first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint-venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982....

 and TS1500, and the Spectrum-based TS2048
Timex Sinclair 2048
The "Timex Sinclair 2048" was to be an improved version of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer. Never released by Timex Corporation because of TS1500 failure...

.

Like the TS2048 was announced as a 40K memory machine (16K RAM + 24K ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...

), so the 2068 was announced as a 72K machine (48K RAM + 24K ROM).

The TS2068 was a more sophisticated device, significantly changed from its UK ancestor. Arguably one of the first Sinclair clones to significantly improve on the original design, it added a number of new features:
  • an AY-3-8912 sound chip, as later used by Sinclair in the ZX Spectrum+ 128K (but mapped to different I/O ports and thus incompatible)
  • twin joystick
    Joystick
    A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. Joysticks, also known as 'control columns', are the principal control in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or...

     ports
  • a slightly better "chiclet keyboard
    Chiclet keyboard
    A chiclet keyboard or island-style keyboard is a computer keyboard built with an array of small, flat rectangular or lozenge-shaped rubber or plastic keys that look like erasers or "Chiclets", a brand of chewing gum manufactured in the shape of small squares with rounded corners...

    " with plastic keycaps
  • a cartridge port to the right of the keyboard for ROM-based software
  • an improved ULA
    ULA
    ULA can refer to any of the following:* ULA TV, a Venezuelan regional television channel* Ulster Liberation Army, a fictional terrorist organization* Uncommitted Logic Array, a type of microchip* Underground Literary Alliance, a writer society...

     offering additional screen modes
    ZX Spectrum graphic modes
    The ZX Spectrum is generally considered to have limited graphical capabilities in comparison to other home computers of the same era such as the Commodore 64, largely due to its lack of a dedicated graphics chip...

    :
    • The standard Sinclair 256×192 mode with a colour resolution of 32×24
    • An "extended colour mode", 256×192 pixels with colour resolution of 32×192
    • A monochrome 512×192 mode


Sinclair BASIC
Sinclair BASIC
Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair...

 was extended with new keywords (STICK, SOUND, ON ERR, FREE, DELETE, RESET) to address the new hardware and the machine offered bank-switched
Bank switching
Bank switching is a technique to increase the amount of usable memory beyond the amount directly addressable by the processor. It can be used to configure a system differently at different times; for example, a ROM required to start a system from diskette could be switched out when no longer...

 memory, allowing ROM cartridges to be mapped in.

However, these changes made the machine incompatible with most Spectrum machine-code software, which is to say virtually all commercial titles; less than 10% would run successfully. In an attempt to remedy this, many TS users built a cartridge with a Spectrum ROM for emulation. The emulation was sufficiently accurate that it was able to run the majority of software produced for the Spectrum. Later, Timex of Portugal produced a Spectrum emulator cartridge that would auto-boot. This cartridge did not fit in a TS2068 as it was higher than TC2068 cartridges. The TC2068 casing was changed to accommodate this.

Although Timex Computer Corporation folded in February 1984, the independent Portuguese division continued to sell the machine in Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

 as the Timex Computer 2068, and Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 until 1989, as the Unipolbrit Komputer 2086. (Although the Portuguese-made TC-2068 was also sold in Poland, only the UK2086 was actually made there).
Timex of Portugal sold 2 versions of TC2068: the Silver TC2068 version came with a ZX Spectrum emulator cartridge and a black TC2068 version sold with TimeWord word processing cartridge plus the Timex RS232 Interface to use TimeWord with a RS232 printer. Strangely the black version came with a silver keyboard template with TimeWord commands to be used with the program. It can be removed because it is not glued to the black keyboard template.

Although the TS2068's main improvements over the original Spectrum were in areas that had come in for widespread criticism (graphics, sound, keyboard, instant load software cartridges and—to a lesser extent—the lack of joystick ports), it was not used as the basis for the Spectrum's successors. The ZX Spectrum+ (1984) changed the keyboard only, and even the ZX Spectrum+ 128K (announced in May 1985, but not released in the UK until February 1986) retained the original machine's graphical capabilities. However, unlike the UK models, the TS2068 was not burdened by the requirement of compatibility with previous models.

Differences between TS2068, TC2068 and UK2086

As Timex Corporation made the TS2068 even hardware incompatible with ZX Spectrum, Timex of Portugal made some changes in the TC2068:
  • Replaced the bus buffers with resistors like ZX Spectrum
  • Changed the I/O connector to be ZX Spectrum compatible (not requiring the Zebra Twister board).
  • Changed the cartridge slot top casing to accept bigger cartridges (ZX Spectrum emulator and Timeword cartridges will not fit in the TS2068 cartridge slot)
  • Instead of 15V, it uses 9V.


UniPolbrit also made some changes to the TC2068 for their Komputer 2086:
  • Modified ROM
  • Replaced a joystick port with a parallel printer interface

Software List

Timex Computer Corp published 7 cartridges and 41 cassettes to kick-start the launch of the TS2068 (some titles released on cartridge and tape). The software was varied, ranging utilities and personal accounting programs, educational titles and games. All software have a "part number" and are grouped with all software of the same kind. 4 cartridges and 23 tapes planned were never released and from the known list, 10 titles are missing.
Timex of Portugal released some more cartridges (ZX Spectrum emulator was sold with TC2068), software in tapes and software on FDD disks. Tasword for Timex FDD was sold by Timex of Portugal.

Footnotes

  1. Note that the "2086" in the name was not a corruption of "2068". The "86" derived from the year the computer was first made.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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