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Peripherals available (or once so) for the Timex Sinclair 2068A list of devices, addons, plugins and so on to make your 2068 experience more exciting. These are peripherals that actually exsisted on the market, however rare they may be to find. If you are looking for vaporware, check the Notes/FAQ section. |
Timex of Portugal made a special tape recorder for the TC2048 and TC2068, the Timex Computer 2010. This tape recorder is totally diferent of the american TS2020. It is black and it is totally digital. Because it reproduces a square wave, it doesn't work with music tapes. The volume control in TC2010 doesn't affect the sound volume that goes to the computer, it is only to listen to the sound. Specifications: 
Weight: 0,790 Kg Dimensions: 190x140x58mm Data transfer rate: 300, 1200, 2400 baud Recording: DC bias Wow and flutter: in 3Khz /- 0,25% Tape speed: 4,8cm/sec /- 3% Output power: 100mw /- 10% |
The Timex Sinclair 2020 Program Recorder was a analog cassete recorder with a tape counter and a VU/LEVEL meter to optimise cassete LOADing and SAVEing. It uses a external power supply witch delivers 6V to the unit. It can be used with 4 bateries. |
A small thermal printer, requiring special paper similar to that which older fax machines use. It is a 32 column line printer. It is compatible with all Timex Sinclair computer busses, including the Spectrum bus. Sinclair BASIC commands LPRINT and LLIST directed output to the printer, and COPY did a screen dump. All the Timex catalogs show a silver version, but it is believed that they never came out. Aparently, when Timex Sinclair folded, they sold the design of the TS2040 to Alphacom in Campbell, California who then produced them for the TS market. 
The power supply is a bit on the heavy voltage side, at 24volts, 1.2Amp.
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Timex Sinclair 2090 Command Sticks were Atari/Commodore style digital joysticks. Hand controller for graphics and game applications. Designed for maximum control and confort with single-control knob, tapered grip, and rapid-fire thumb button. TS2090 only works with the TC2068 and TS2068. (Note: the TC2068 is the Portugese version of the TS2068). It is aparently compatible with the Atari and Comodore joysticks, however, it is not compatible with the Spectrum joystick port. This peripheral is one of the rarest Timex Sinclair pieces. Additional Images: |
One of the most eagerly awaited add-ons for the Timex/Sinclair computers was the modem. Timex had announced a modem that was scheduled for release in November of 1983, which was to be compatible with both the T/S 1000/1500 (ZX-81) and T/S 2068. This was dubbed the T/S 2050 Telecommunications Modem. Unfortunately, 
Timex went out of the computer market before they received the first shipment.
After a short delay, Westridge Communications, a division of Anchor Automation,
released the modem that they were producing for Timex, and the Timex/Sinclair
2050 is now known as the Westridge 2050. The cassette that comes with the modem
(SMART TERMINAL 1) has the T/S 1000/1500 software on one side, and the T/S 2068
software on the other. An advanced version of this software, called SMART
TERMINAL II, allows for the storage of up to fourteen telephone numbers with
log-on instructions, and the ability to upload and download. It attaches to
either computer via a 12 inch RS232C cable which ends in a Timex interface
(built in) which then connects to the edge expansion bus. The connector is of
the piggy-back type so that other peripherals may be added. The set-up for both
computers is identical, with only the software differing. The modem connects to
Ma Bell equipment directly, and has a phone jack built in so that you may
connect a telephone to your modem, although that is not necessary. In fact, you
do not need a telephone at all. Set-up of the modem takes just a moment and you
are ready to go.
There are hardware modifications that can be completed to make the 2050 into a serial port enabling you to use a modem that runs at a higher speed than 300 baud (the max baud rate of the 2050). Additional Images:
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The Spectrum emulator is really a Spectrum ROM on cartridge (there are other forms) that is bankswitched into the lower 0-16K region. The top 48K region is filled with RAM. To the software this looks exactly the same as a 48K Spectrum. There are a few hardware reasons for incompatibilities. a) All I/O ports in the TS2068 are fully decoded. On the 48K Spectrum, port #FE (reads keyboard) responds to all even port addresses. This "feature" is not likely to cause any problems. b) On the TS2068, only D2 has a pull up resistor. The Spectrum has pull ups on all data lines D0-D7. This may produce a problem with some games that require the joystick to function. Specifically, the TS2068 does not have Kempston joystick, so when a particular game scans the Kempston joysticks, it reads a random collection of 0s and 1s on the data bus which are interpretted as joystick movements. On the Spectrum, if a Kempston joystick were absent, only 1s would be read, indicating the joystick was in the neutral position. This may lead to unexpected behavior on some games. 
c) While the I/O ports the TS2068 and Spectrum have in common function identically, there are extra I/O ports on the TS2068 used to control hardware the 48K Spectrum didn't have. As long as games don't fiddle with ports that were never used on the original Spectrum, all should be fine. Using the emulator, about 400 Spectrum games that were available on the net were tried an there is about a 97% compatibility. |
The FD-68 interface is 4 inches tall and 6 inches wide with a through edge connector for adding other peripherals. It had the capability of having a 256K RAMdisk (in 64K chunks) onboard, and had CP/M capability if you purchased an extra eprom. Adding 256K to the interface required an additional power supply and some re-wiring of the board to add a new circuit for the power supply. Additional Images:
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These drives were compatible with the TS2068, TC2068, TC2048, and Spectrum. These came as 3 modules (power supply, controller and disc drive) and an interface. Additional disc drives could be purchased separately. The FDD is the system
imported from Portugal by Zebra Systems of New York. The imported systems were
the same silver color as the TS2068. Black FDD systems were manufactured and sold
in some parts of Europe. The FDD Disk System came with its own Z80 cpu and 16K
RAM. Timex Operating System (TOS) increased the available commands in order to
operate the drives. The FDD came standard with one 3" disc drive and had 2 RS-232
ports. Each disc had a formatted capacity of 320K (160K on each side).The FDD-3000 disc drive system is an all-in-one-unit system and all were manufactured with black cases. All the features of the FDD, and more, are contained in one case. This was also imported to the USA by Zebra Systems and, like the FDD, included a "twister board" to align the TS2068 buss with the ZX Spectrum buss (the interfaces were Spectrum compatible). The "twister" also had a feed-through port for attaching other peripherals to the 2068 and was known as the "super twister". This system has its own Z80 cpu and came with 64K RAM. Like the FDD, it came with TOS but was also CP/M 2.2 capable because of the larger internal RAM. To run CP/M required booting the computer into terminal mode with supplied software. As with the FDD, the FDD-3000 disc drives (2) were 3". The 2 RS-232 ports were continued and a monitor jack (RCA) was provided for connecting to a composite monitor when the Timex Terminal 3000, a CP/M terminal keyboard, also made by TMX Portugal, is connected because the FDD3000 controller doesn't have video circuit. The FDD/FDD3000 can be used in Spectrum 48K without modifications. It can also be used in the 128K models of ZX Spectrum, but the FDD Interface ROM must be replaced. The 3 modules are the minimum system. A additional disk drive can be added (a 3.5" Sony disk drive has been added) without the need of another power supply. The FDD system can drive up to 4 disk drives. If you use four 3.5" disk drives and use 640K disks you have access to 2.4MB of data! Both FDD/FDD3000 can use the 640K format. To format disks in 640K format, you need a 80 tracks DSDD disk drive. 360K 5.25" drives will not work since they only have 40 tracks. TOS A.2 supports this format. A RAM upgrade to 64K for the FDD system may have existed, so it would be possible to use CP/M. Additional Links: Additional Images:
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One of the first drive systems available for the Timex Sinclair 2068 (circa 1984), created by the same company who made the TasWord II Word Processor program. Advertised to read data at a rate of 32k/s, these drives far outperformed the same class of drives available for the IBM, Apple II and Comodore 64 of the era. To support the drive, a operating system called SP-ROM lets the 2068 use the starard LOAD and SAVE commands to write files to the disk as if they were tapes.
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The LarKen TS2068/Spectrum disk system came as two components: an LKDOS cartridge and the actual disk interface. The cartridge plugged into the dock port and the interface on the rear buss expander. The interface board has a feed through of the 2068 buss to allow connecting addtional peripherals. The LKDOS cartridge also came in versions for the Oliger and Aerco disk interfaces. Using the LKDOS cart, you can have more than one disk interface, i.e., LarKen and Oliger, in use at the same time. Knowing that each interface can drive 4 floppies you could set up a whole drive array. Also LarKen provided a RAM Disk (128KB & 256KB) that could be used to store your most used programs. The RAM Disk is backed up by battery and is a very nice addition to the system. With an autoload program as soon as you turn on the computer your program listing is waiting for your command. The interface also has NMI (snapshot) capabilities and lets you save snapshots to the RAM Disk as well as floppies. The LarKen system also included a Kempston compatible joystick interface. Additional Links: |
This system has an expansion board that plugs into the TS2068 buss and has 4 slots for adding additional boards. Disk Board 'A' has the Oliger SAFE DOS and Disk Board 'B' actually controls the drives. A centronics printer interface and other items can be added, such as an eprom burner, to the main expansion board. A switch can be installed on Disk Board 'A' to shut off the DOS for use with the LarKen DOS cartridge. It also has NMI capability. This company is still in business as of 2000.
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2010, 2020, 2040, 2090 and some of the Timex FDD article snips and images by Johnny Red 2050 Article by Mark Fendrick. Spectrum ROM snips are from sna2jlo1.zip readme file. Aerco Drive, Timex Portugal FDD, Larken summary info off of Jack Boatwright's Website Larken Disk Editor, Larken DOS Manual and Sequential/Random Access File Utility Pages by William McBrine and David Solly |
