10 Years Later--A Retrospective by: Rod Gowen
Has it really been 10 YEARS!! I guess the old adage is true--"time flies when you're having fun". it really does not seem possible that it was 10 years ago, Sept. 1991, when Bob Evans, Dennis Jurries and a couple of others met officially for the first time. Our first meeting place was on the corner of Molalla Avenue and Beavercreek Road in a former fireplace shop that was being used at the time by one of our first members, Quentin Rippey, for his foam rubber and styrofoam business. How many of you current members can remember this? How many of you remember Dennis Jurries, our co-founder? Do you know that we still have 3 of the first 4 members actively participating in our club? If you didn't, they are Bob Evans, membership #2, Rod Gowen, #3, and Dick Wagner, #4. I wonder how many other TS user groups can say the same? 1 wonder how many of the existing clubs are 10 years old?
The Beginnings
But, I am getting a bit off the subject. In this case, a look back on my 10 years with this great group! I can honestly say that I have enjoyed every bit of the time spent with our members. I can, as acting Treasurer of the group, say that I have met every one of the 87 people that have passed through our little group on their way through the ever-changing world of computers. I have collected dues from almost all of them. I will say that our first secretary/treasurer, Don Paul, did a fine job for the first year or so of our existence. Don, by the way, was, to the best of my knowledge, our only British born member. Our members' ages have ranged from 12 years of age to 76 years young. I think that the average age of our members over the years must be around 50-55 years old. I believe our current paid-up member list numbers about 15-18 die-hard TS supporters.
The Places...
A brief history of our group will follow us through our various meeting places and some of our events and high points. As I said earlier, our first meeting place was in an empty fireplace store where we had to bring our own chairs and tables. From there we moved to Clackamas Community College where we met on the 2nd Thursday of the month as the college campus was closed at 5 FM on Fridays during the summer, from there we moved to our present location, the Far West Federal Bank community room in the Oregon City Shopping Center where we have been meeting on the 2nd Friday of the month (except for rare occasions) ever since. Some of the events in our short history lesson have been the dinner meetings that have been held 3 times and the swap meets that have also been held 3 times. We were also fortunate enough to have participated in 3 "mini-fairs" over the years. The first, at the home of the now defunct magazine,
Time Designs, in 1986. The second, in Seattle, in 1987, and the final one (and the biggest) in Portland in 1988. This last, THE 3RD ANNUAL
GREAT NW TS MINI FAIR was co-produced by RMG Enterprises and Time Designs Magazine and was hosted by our group. A lot of group effort and cooperation went into some of these events and I feel that they, along with the continued comradery, have made being a member of CCATS well worth the effort.
RMG
As most of you know, I own and operate RMG Enterprises, perhaps the world's largest remaining TS dealer. It may interest you to note that the formation of the computer portion of RMG runs
parallel to that of CCATS. I
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ordered my first Sinclair ZX-81 from England in the fall of 1980 and received it just after Christmas of 1980. I then started looking at sources for software and impatiently awaited the release of the forthcoming printer and other promised add-ons. When, after 6 months of experimenting and learning, I learned of a local man doing the same thing I was doing, and, as the Timex Corporation had announced plans to market the Timex Sinclair 1000 in the U.S., was actively promoting the new $99 computer in local stores, I contacted him. Dennis Jurries was his name. He had already been contacted by Bob Evans and this was the basis for our present group. i started out by buying up items that the members of the group were interested in and could assure them of a lower price if i were to buy in bulk. I worked a full-time job and did the computer business on the side until 1985 when 1 was laid off from my 15 year job and decided to take a chance and go with the mail-order computer business full-time. It worked out well for both CCATS and RMG. In todays market I could never make a living selling exclusively to the TS market. RMG has broadened its base to include IBM clones and related peripherals in order to keep ahead of the bills. The group, as individuals and as a whole has had a slight edge due to having RMG as a member and RMG had a small but dedicated built-in customer base. 1 have appreciated the business over the past 10 years and I am sure (folks have told me so) that the members of the group have enjoyed having a "local dealer" instead of having to do everything by mail.
The Newsletter...
Our fine newsletter, THE PLOTTER, is not quite as old as the group. It premiered in September of 1982 and has been in continuous publication ever since. It has been published 11 times per year minimum for 9 years. The first issue was a 2 page affair with no name or graphics. It was printed on my first
Gorilla Banana 80 column printer using
Memotext on my ZX-81 with the
Memotech Centronics interface. We had a name by the second issue and were off and running. It slowly grew and evolved over the years. It stabilized at 8 pages and I edited and published it with some help from Dennis Jurries until 1985 when our current editor, Dick Wagner, took over. I, for one, applaud him and congratulate him on a job well done for the past 6 years! The job of newsletter editor, as any of them can tell you, is a thankless job at its best. With reader input always low, it can take a lot of time to do a credible job of putting together a publication that is both informative and entertaining.
The Computers...
The last part of my "group history" has to be the history of the computers that we have used and loved for the past 10 years themselves. As I noted above, some of us started out with the second computer that Sir Clive Sinclair put on the market, the ZX-81. I venture to say, however, that the majority of our members have started with the TS 1000. Sir Clive started with the ZX-80 in the fall of 1979 and went to the ZX-81 in the fall of 1980. He followed that with the ZX-Spectrum and ultimately, with the
Sinclair QL (Quantum Leap). His historic agreement with Timex to manufacture and market the U.S. version of the ZX-81, to be known as the TS 1000 gave us the push we needed to get our group going and to sustain it. Timex followed the 1000 with the TS 1500 which was basically a TS 1000 in a silver Spectrum case, has the advantage of having 16K of ram onboard and a much better rubber key keyboard. This unit made its appearance in late 1982 to be followed within 2 months by the much heralded TS 2068. This was to be the "ultimate" $200 computer! With 72K of ram (37.5K usable), sound, color and high resolution graphics
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it sure looked like it! The 2068 finally arrived in stores and at RMG in late November of 1982 and was selling quite sell. Little did we know that 3 months later Timex would perform the ultimate "dump" on all of us who were so avidly supporting their computers! The first week in February of 1983 Timex Computer Corp. announced that
they were calling it quits and that was that!
Things were far from over though. There were many loyal dealers and third party software/hardware producers who were to stand by us for several more years. Some saw the Timex pull-out as the end and quit within weeks of Timex. The ones that remained were the basis of a long and, for most of us, enjoyable life with our computers. Almost EVERY major peripheral for the 2068 appeared AFTER Timex had already quit!
A company in Texas called
AERCO (Acme Electric Robot Co.) was the first to produce and market a disk drive system for the ZX-81/1000 and the 2068. Another company called
COMPUSA also had a disk drive for the ZX-81/1000. Another company in California,
A&J MICRODRIVE, came out with small, less expensive "stringy- floppy" high-speed tape drives for the ZX-81/1000 and the 2068 about the same time as Aerco's disk drives. This was based on the older
CAI String Floppy system from England. Before long, we had more disk systems available from
LARKEN ELECTRONICS, THE
JOHN OLIGER CO. and even an import from Portugal in the form of
THE TIMEX TOS DISK SYSTEM. This was to have been the disk system that Timex would have marketed in the U.S. for our computers. The only major difference in the Portuguese version was the fact that their 2068 had a Spectrum compatible bus. In the years since, the clear-cut system of choice seems to be the
LARKEN LKDOS system. LARKEN also developed a
256K ramdisk and had the foresight to produce code on a DOS cartridge to enable most of the other disk systems to use his DOS (Disk Operating System).
The first modem available for the TS computers was produced by BYTE-BACK CO.,
the MD-2B for the TS1000, to be followed by the first one for the 2068 called the MD-68. Even though Timex was ready to release the
TS-2050 modem to work with all of the TS computers, at the last minute they refused to take delivery of the 100,000 units that a company called Westridge was waiting to ship when they called it quits. It was almost 6 months after the demise of Timex Computer Corp. before we saw the promised Timex 2050 modem hit the market under the name of the producer,
WESTRIDGE. As a 300 baud modem with no software to allow for downloads on the 1000, this was a limited but effective modem. It wasn't too long before folks were looking for an alternative. Enter the need for an
RS232 port.
Byte-Back was the first with an
RS232 for the 1000 and then for the 2068. Problem was, they were one of the first to quit within a year or so of Timex quitting. Aerco had and still has a dual RS232 port available for the 2068 but it had a very high price tag: $100! A schematic appeared in Time Designs Magazine that told
how to convert one of the thousands of 2050 boards to an RS232 port. A company called
ED GREY ENTERPRISES in Los Angeles put out the ZSI/O Port as a kit and it has long since sold out. At the time of this writing the only commercially available RS232 port is the AERCO dual port. There have been rumors of a new one coming from Larken, but we will not hold our breath. With the use of these ports we were able to make use of the 1200 baud modems and make telecommunications more efficient. There are still several BBS systems around the country for the TS users, as well as a forum on Compuserve.
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Aerco produced one of the first parallel printer interfaces for the ZX-81/1000 and the 2068. A British company,
MEMOTECH, set up a base of
operations in Denver, CO, and sold a wide variety of hardware for the ZX-81/1000 in this country. A young Canadian, Peter Hacksel, also
put out a parallel port in two models: one for the rear bus and one to fit into the cartridge port. It was fully compatible with the Aerco model. In point of fact, the Aerco has been almost universally accepted as the standard for the 2068. There were others:
the TASMAN units from England and
the OLIGER interface. ihe OLIGER unit is still available as is the
Aerco CP-68. Many printer driver packages have been written and many are still available.
Now that we have 80 column printers, 1200 baud modems and disk drive systems, what more could we want? Well, it seems as though we are never satisfied. There is always something that folks will want. We have had video digitizers introduced as well as voice recognition and voice synthesizer systems. We have had some fabulous software written for the 2068 and well as a lot of the British Spectrum software imported and some of it converted for the stock 2068. As long as we keep active and curious, there will be a few more good years for the 2068. As for the 1000, it is still in strong demand by experimenters and ham radio operators because it is so easy to set up as a control device, a "programmable" controller.
CONCLUSIONS...
I know that this piece cannot begin to cover the complete story. I have not even begun to list all of the software and hardware that was and is available for the TS line of computers. I have not mentioned the many computer shows and tests that have been held over the years or the many user groups that were and still are active across North America. I do not have the room to talk about all of what has passed before me in the past 10 years. All I am trying to do here is to jog your memories, to try to capture a little of the excitement that has held us together for the past 10 years and will continue to do so in the future. 1 know that I have enjoyed each and every one of those years and I know that those of you who have been with us for a long while must also have enjoyed yourselves else why would you have stuck around? 1 am looking ahead and would like to see where we are 10 years from now! I do know one thing for sure: as long as there is a customer out there who wants to buy a TS product, RMG and I will be here to try to help. If there is a CCATS group, I will be a part of it.
WILL YOU?
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