Vital Statistics

Sinclair sold the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum through mail order in the USA for a time, but the Sinclair machines' biggest American success came about through the company's collaboration with Timex. The American giant was already Sinclair's prime contractor for building ZX81s and Spectrums at its plant in Dundee, Scotland. Sinclair was doing well in the States, and by June 1981 it was selling 18,000-20,000 ZX81s a month - more than the combined unit sales of Tandy, Apple and Commodore - but suffered severe quality problems, with only one in three machines actually working. A tie-up with Timex was the obvious answer, and resulted in four officially-licensed clones, produced between 1981-84. These were the:-

• TS1000 - ZX81 clone with 2K RAM
• TS1500 - ZX81 clone with 16K RAM and looks like a Spectrum
• TS2048 - An enhanced ZX Spectrum 16K
• TS2068 - An enhanced ZX Spectrum 48K

Before the launch of the TS2068, there was a TS2016, but this was dropped when the TS1500 was introduced. The TS2068 was originally called the TS2072, because Timex had originally advertised it as a 72K machine - 24K ROM + 48K RAM. It was essentially a TS2048 without the bank-switching daughter card and had a VHF modulator added, plus a few more minor changes.

In the spring of 1984, Timex made a management decision to disband their Timex Computer division, despite it being profitable, and focus entirely on the watch industry.

In 1985, however, Timex in Portugal (TMX Portugal) decided to market the Timex computers in their home country. They were allowed to do so within the bounds of the Timex-Sinclair agreement, because Portugal was not included in Sinclair's market - the rest of Europe was, however, closed to them. They took the TS2068, and made some modifications armed with the knowledge of problems that had faced the TS2068. This computer they released as the "TC2048" and "TC2068". The TC2048 was a 2068 with some bits taken out (AY sound chip, command cartridges dock port, and the TC2068 ROM has been replaced with a Spectrum ROM for 100% compatibility). They also developed a floppy disk interface (for 3" disks), and the Timex Operating System (TOS). Following the launch of the floppy disk system, TMX upgraded it to work with CP/M .

Trivia:

• The 1500 has a feature whereby you set the modulator's channel at startup. The default channel is 2, but if you hold down the 3 key while powering up, the modulator switches to Channel 3. So the changes are likely the code that watches for a "3" to be held down at startup.