Timex Sinclair 2068 - The American ZX Spectrum

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[RetroGamesCollector]

Once you learn a Sinclair keyboard, muscle memory takes over. When I was 13 I could type out a BASIC program faster on a squishy Speccy keyboard than anyone could on a 'proper' typewriter style keyboard and that was down to the keys having the BASIC commands on them. It only took weeks to master too. I grant you that it is not as easy to learn these things as an adult though 😉

[FortoFight]

There's something incredibly cool about playing a wave file on a modern laptop and having an old computer able to load a game from that.

[AtomicShrimp]

The single keypress based commands on this line of computers is a legacy from the 1K ZX80 - as well as only requiring one keypress to select a command keyword, only one byte is required to store it in memory; furthermore, this makes the BASIC interpreter much simpler (=more compact) to implement as it does not have to parse text as such, and does not have to handle any syntax errors of spelling

[marcosdiez]

This was my first computer in Argentina, although I learned with a ZX-81 so I was already familiar with the whole keyboard tokens thing and it was pretty fast to use (in the other hand I began working as a programmer in a company in which I had access to the IBM-PC, some friends later on bought Commodore 64s, a Sinclair QL -what a beauty killed by its tape cartridges-, and few years later I worked on a Logo public workshop with over 30 computers that included Spectrum, TI-994A, MSX, Commodore 64 and an IBM-PC Jr. so having the chance to extensively using what was on the market, and even knowing the drawbacks, I wasn't that unhappy with my 2068).

As a curiosity, after buying it I found and bought from a book store a 2068 tech manual that included the entire Z80 assembler code for its ROM. I have no clue of how it got there, for it seemed to be a Timex-Sinclair document meant for in house use: it was printed in a light blue recycled paper in an odd font that seemed to be vectorialy drawn, with the covers made in the same paper, so it seemed to be a draft copy, and it was about 10 cm thick, about the size of a white/yellow pages (phone guide) from that time.

Even later I got a thermal printer lent, it was incredibly noisy and looking trough this tech manual with a friend, we managed to change the internal clock speed hence altering the pitch of the printer noise, so we had the wrong idea of making music with it. We fried some components from the motherboard in the attempt, with a puffing noise and a little cloud of white smoke, and that was the end of my 2068 experience.

[countersurprise]

I had a ZX Spectrum as a kid and it was the first computer I learned to program on. I actually found the preset commands on the keys quite useful when learning - especially if English is a second language. You also knew for a fact the full command set - no hidden commands. All in all, I quite enjoyed learning basic this way.

[nuno_medeiros]

Some Timex 2068 were made in Portugal. All of them sold here had the "unicorn" emulator cartridge bundled for free. We also had the 2048 which was ZX 48K fully compatible.

[vwestlife]

This was the last Sinclair computer sold by Timex in the USA, but it was not the last Sinclair computer sold in the USA -- Sinclair Research in Nashua, NH sold a U.S. version of the Sinclair QL via mail-order in 1985, although obviously it was another failure in the marketplace. Sir Clive's Cambridge Z88 portable computer was also sold here and was somewhat more successful.

[neilomac]

That bit with the game loading with the commentary over the top of it - did anyone else imagine the loading sounds in their head while they watched it? :-)

[guidosmit]

In my C64 days I was hardly interested in the alternatives like the Sinclair. But now its a joy to see these machines in action and get the technical backgrounds. This channel is gold, thanks!

[BenHeckHacks]

The keyboard is scanned in an amazingly cheap way - 5 row bits read via the ULA port and 8 rows controlled by the high byte of the address bus. Thus 40 keys max.

[fdmillion]

Advertising the computer as 72K reminds me of companies advertising a computer today as having "20GB" when it actually has 4GB of RAM plus an Intel Optane caching SSD...

[mjdxp]

15:16 congratulations, you just enraged the entire UK with one chart lol

[EgoShredder]

As a 12 year old I got used to the keyboard entry system right away, and could type listings in pretty fast within months and I previously had used traditional keyboards on other computers. One thing to remember is that the UK versions had a colour coded system on the keys, which did help to speed up the learning of that entry method.

[absimaldata]

I learnt coding with this ZX Spectrum in 90s (the basic For loop etc.), as my first computer, then P3, P4 ... and so on (later on) now thankfully from that day to this one, I becamse a software engineer, just because I really enjoy this!!!
Just because i really loved to see that computer can automatically print me prime numbers or a simple 1 to 10 counting, just by simple instructions, was amazing to see.

[jfroco]

In Chile we had 4 different ZX Spectrum compatible NTSC microcomputers during the 80s: Timex Sinclair 2068, Timex Computer 2048, Microdigital TK-90X and Sinclair ZX Spectrum (16K and 48K, NTSC). Both the Timex Computer 2048 and the TK-90X were 99.9% compatible with the ZX Spectrum 48K.

[CatsMeowPaw]

12:25 Great to see your cat helping with the filming

[captainzeppos]

11:50 I'm getting goosebumps. Jet set willy was probably the very first game I played on a spectrum back in 1986 or so, along with Psssst and Jetpack.

[DiestroCorleone]

Let me say it, your content is probably some of the best you can find on YouTube, period. The dedication put to the videos, the research, the edition... Everyting is so polished that I can't complain. There's not a thing I can objectively say 'this can be improved'.
Congratulations, David. You deserve a place in history, for bringing history to us.

[DPS_beats]

man the idea with the MacBook Air, wave file and audio cable - priceless!

[scottgray]

Oh, my God! I had one of these. Talk about a blast from the past.
My father bought me one from Kmart in 1983, of all places. But, I graduated to an Atari 800XL soon afterward.