Book

[Bill H]

Anyone ever come across this book: The Watchmakers Guidebook to the Timex/Sinclair Computers

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/i ... _Users.php

From the Compute! Magazine article: COMPUTE! ISSUE 36 / MAY 1983 / PAGE 265

Resource Guide For Timex/Sinclair Users

TSG Enterprises has released The Watchmakers Guidebook to the Timex/Sinclair Computers (44 pages).

The book contains a directory of about 120 software suppliers, 50 hardware suppliers, and 20 ancillary suppliers.

In addition, the guide contains directories of user groups and of Timex/Sinclair specific magazines and books, and an index to general personal computer magazine articles about the Timex/Sinclair computer. The book is available by mail order ($3.95 plus $1 postage and handling) from:

TSG Enterprises
Guidebook
54 Richwood Place
Denville, NJ 07834

[BrunoFlorindo]

Never saw that one.
The thing with that and similar books is that it's interesting from a historic perspective, but it's practically impossible to find out what happened to most companies and user groups (I've tried). One good example of a company that disappeared without a trace is Microace. I live in the city where they used to be and have visited the place, but can't find any records nor names. Many things from the Timex past have disappeared, and I'm afraid some people, places and history are gone permanently.

[swensont]

Bruno,

If you know peoples names that were in the User Groups, you might have some luck tracking them down. Granted most of the Timex/Sinclair user groups in the US morphed from ZX81 users, to T/S 2068 users and QL users. Paul Holmgren, who traded as 1/2 of Mechanical Affinity, is still around on the QL mailing list. The Midwest was a hot house of T/S 2068 users, that might still be around in some form.

Tim Swenson
Former Penninsula User Group (CA) member
Former Capital Area Timex/Sinclair (CATS) (DC) member

[BrunoFlorindo]

Thanks. The problem is that I don't know the names. I moved to the U.S. in 1995 (was an avid Sinclair user in Portugal, from 1987 to mid-1995) and only returned to Sinclair computing (or retro-computing) in 2006. As you can probably imagine, my work has been similar to that of an archaeologist or a family tree investigator. Almost nothing to start from. Current users aren't necessarily the ones that were part of the active community back in the day, etc. I've found a couple people who don't want to hear about Sinclairs anymore, and I kinda gave up (but not completely) due to being a lot busier compared to the life I had back in 2006, when I was spending several hours per day in investigation, communication, preservation, etc. Another problem is that people might stop by once in a while, create an account here or on css or worldofspectrum.org, present themselves, say a thing or two, and disappear without a trace without giving us a chance to talk to them and ask questions... happens all the time. People may feel nostalgic for a day or two but they don't really stay long enough to help us understand things better. Which is a shame, really....

People from back in the day should tell us more of what it was to live during the computer revolution. Otherwise their memories will never be preserved...