Timex Sinclair 1000
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The Timex Sinclair 1000 (or T/S 1000) was the first computer produced by
Timex Sinclair Timex Sinclair was a joint venture established in December 1982 between the British company Sinclair Research and Timex Corporation in an effort to gain an entry into the rapidly growing early-1980s home computer market in North America. His ...
, a joint venture between
Timex Corporation Timex Group USA, Inc. (formerly known as Timex Corporation) is an American global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into ...
and
Sinclair Research Sinclair Research Ltd is a British consumer electronics company founded by Clive Sinclair in Cambridge. It was originally incorporated in 1973 as Westminster Mail Order Ltd, renamed Sinclair Instrument Ltd, then Science of Cambridge Ltd, the ...
. It was launched in July 1982, with a US sales price of US$99.95, making it the cheapest home computer at the time; it was advertised as "the first computer under $100". The computer was aimed at regular home users. As purchased, the T/S 1000 was fully assembled and ready to be plugged into home televisions, which served as a video monitor. The T/S 1000 was a slightly modified version of the
Sinclair ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cost ...
with an
NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
RF modulator An RF modulator (or radio frequency modulator) is an electronic device whose input is a baseband signal which is used to modulate a radio frequency source. RF modulators are used to convert signals from devices such as media players, VCRs a ...
, for use with North American TVs, instead of
PAL Phase Alternating Line (PAL) is a colour encoding system for analogue television. It was one of three major analogue colour television standards, the others being NTSC and SECAM. In most countries it was broadcast at 625 lines, 50 fields (25 ...
for European TVs. The T/S 1000 doubled the onboard
RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...
from 1 KB to 2 KB. The T/S 1000's casing had slightly more internal shielding but remained the same as Sinclair's, including the
membrane keyboard A membrane keyboard is a computer keyboard whose "keys" are not separate, moving parts, as with the majority of other keyboards, but rather are pressure pads that have only outlines and symbols printed on a flat, flexible surface. Very little, if ...
. It had black-and-white graphics and no sound. It was followed by an improved version, the
Timex Sinclair 1500 The Timex Sinclair 1000 (or T/S 1000) was the first computer produced by Timex Sinclair, a joint venture between Timex Corporation and Sinclair Research. It was launched in July 1982, with a US sales price of US$99.95, making it the cheapest hom ...
which had substantially more RAM (16 KB) and a lower price (US$80). However, the T/S 1500 did not achieve market success, given that the marketplace was by this time dominated by Commodore,
Radio Shack RadioShack, formerly RadioShack Corporation, is an American retailer founded in 1921. At its peak in 1999, RadioShack operated over 8,000 worldwide stores named RadioShack or Tandy Electronics in the United States, Mexico, United Kingdom, Austra ...
, Atari and Apple.


History

Timex claimed to have sold 600,000 T/S 1000s in the US by early 1983, and other companies imported localized versions of British software. It sold for US$99.95 in the US when it debuted, making it the cheapest home computer at the time; it was advertised as "the first computer under $100". This pricing initiated a
price war A price is the (usually not negative) quantity of payment or compensation given by one party to another in return for goods or services. In some situations, the price of production has a different name. If the product is a "good" in the c ...
with
Commodore International Commodore International (other names include Commodore International Limited) was an American home computer and electronics manufacturer founded by Jack Tramiel. Commodore International (CI), along with its subsidiary Commodore Business Mach ...
, who quickly reduced the price of its
VIC-20 The VIC-20 (known as the VC-20 in Germany and the VIC-1001 in Japan) is an 8-bit home computer that was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PE ...
to match and later announced a trade-in program offering $100 for any competing computer toward the purchase of a
Commodore 64 The Commodore 64, also known as the C64, is an 8-bit home computer introduced in January 1982 by Commodore International (first shown at the Consumer Electronics Show, January 7–10, 1982, in Las Vegas). It has been listed in the Guinness ...
. Since the T/S 1000 was selling for $49 by this time, many customers bought them for the sole purpose of trading them in for a Commodore 64. Like the Sinclair ZX81, the T/S 1000 used ''8K BASIC'', a version of
Sinclair BASIC Sinclair BASIC is a dialect of the programming language BASIC used in the 8-bit home computers from Sinclair Research and Timex Sinclair. The Sinclair BASIC interpreter was made by Nine Tiles Networks Ltd. History Sinclair BASIC was orig ...
(a
BASIC BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. The original version was created by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College ...
dialect), as its primary interface and programming language. To make the membrane keyboard less cumbersome for program entry, the T/S 1000 used a shortcut system of one-letter "keywords" for most commands (e.g., pressing while the cursor was in "keyword mode" would generate the keyword PRINT). Some keywords required a short sequence of keystrokes (e.g., + would generate the keyword LPRINT). One notable thing about this version of BASIC was that, unlike other versions where it's optional in a program, the LET command was used extensively for data. The T/S 1000 was normally plugged into a regular TV that served as a computer monitor. The computer produced a black-and-white display that consisted of 32 columns and 24 lines. Of those lines, 22 were accessible for display, with two reserved for data entry and error messages. The limited graphics were based on geometric shapes contained within the operating system's non-ASCII character set. The only form of long-term storage was
Compact Cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...
. The 16 KB memory expansion module sold for $49.95. A shortage of the memory expansion modules coupled with a lack of software that would run within 2 KB meant that the system had little use for anything other than as an introduction to programming. Home computer magazines of the era such as ''
Compute! ''Compute!'' (), often stylized as ''COMPUTE!'', was an American home computer magazine that was published from 1979 to 1994. Its origins can be traced to 1978 in Len Lindsay's ''PET Gazette'', one of the first magazines for the Commodore PET c ...
'' showed enthusiasts how to interface the computer with various kinds of equipment. These tutorials provided an opportunity for learning about early speech synthesis technology through a Speak & Spell, robotics control through the memory port, and scrolling text displays for advertising. Over time, the T/S 1000 spawned a cottage industry of third-party add-ons designed to help remedy its limitations and provide more functions. Full-size keyboards,
speech synthesizer Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or Computer hardware, hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system conve ...
s, sound generators,
disk drive Disk storage (also sometimes called drive storage) is a general category of storage mechanisms where data is recorded by various electronic, magnetic, optical, or mechanical changes to a surface layer of one or more rotating disks. A disk drive is ...
s, and memory expansions (up to 64 KB) were a few of the options available. Languages such as
Forth Forth or FORTH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''forth'' magazine, an Internet magazine * ''Forth'' (album), by The Verve, 2008 * ''Forth'', a 2011 album by Proto-Kaw * Radio Forth, a group of independent local radio stations in Scotla ...
and
Pascal Pascal, Pascal's or PASCAL may refer to: People and fictional characters * Pascal (given name), including a list of people with the name * Pascal (surname), including a list of people and fictional characters with the name ** Blaise Pascal, Fren ...
, as well as BASIC compilers and assemblers, augmented the T/S 1000's programming possibilities. Computer enthusiast magazines from the early 1980s included articles that contained the programming instructions for simple games and other programs that could be used with the device. '' Microcomputing'' magazine published an article in April 1983, criticizing the membrane keyboard ("The designers of the Timex-Sinclair 1000 ... reduced this important programming tool to a fraction of the required size") and describing how to connect external full-size keyboards.


Peripherals

Timex Computer Corporation produced a cartridge interface for the T/S 1000, the Timex Sinclair 1510 Command Cartridge Player. Only four cartridge titles were ever released: * 07-9001 Supermath * 07-9002 States and Capitals * 07-9003
Chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...
* 07-9004 Flight Simulator (Required the 16K RAM pack) The program took 12 minutes to load. The TS1510 can be used with a T/S 1000 and a 16 KB RAM pack (an additional RAM pack). Users could also load programs using a
tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present- ...
and
compact cassette The Compact Cassette or Musicassette (MC), also commonly called the tape cassette, cassette tape, audio cassette, or simply tape or cassette, is an analog magnetic tape recording format for audio recording and playback. Invented by Lou Ottens ...
s. Timex released a thermal printer for use with the T/S 1000. The printer retailed for $100.00.


Timex Sinclair 1500

The T/S 1500 was an upgraded T/S 1000 with a better keyboard and 16 KB RAM, introduced in 1983. Timex Sinclair (TMX Portugal) designed the T/S 1500 and offered it to the Timex Corporation. The design utilized the T/S 2000 prototype (ZX Spectrum-like) silver cases that weren't previously used because of the launch of the T/S 2068. The machine was sold in the United States,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and
Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...
. The T/S 1500 replaced the earlier machine's
ZX81 The ZX81 is a home computer that was produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Dundee, Scotland, by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and designed to be a low-cos ...
-like case with a silver
ZX Spectrum The ZX Spectrum () is an 8-bit computing, 8-bit home computer that was developed by Sinclair Research. It was released in the United Kingdom on 23 April 1982, and became Britain's best-selling microcomputer. Referred to during development as t ...
-like case, the same ZX Spectrum rubber keyboard, and a custom ULA. The T/S 1500 did not incorporate the Ferranti ULA. The T/S 1500 used a standard television for its display, "broadcasting" on either channel 2 or 3. It defaulted to TV channel 2, but if was pressed on the keyboard within a few seconds of turning the computer on, it changed to channel 3 instead. Although the T/S 1500 came with 16 KB internal RAM, an external 16 KB RAM pack could be added for a total of 32 KB RAM. A few keyboard commands (POKEs) were required for the system to recognize the additional memory space (the RAM pack is multiplexed to the start of the RAM). The T/S 1500 sold for $80 and was not a commercial success because of its late launch long after the success of the T/S 1000. The T/S 1000's successor, the T/S 2068, was already available, and the home computer market in general was dominated by Commodore, Radio Shack, Atari and Apple.


Bugs

There are two little-known software differences between the T/S 1000 and T/S 1500.Ask HN: What bug(s) make “LPRINT 0.00001” output “0.0XYZ1”?
/ref> On the T/S 1000 and ZX81, the command: LPRINT 0.00001 results in the Timex printer outputting 0.0XYZ1. This well-known fault was corrected on the T/S 1500. The T/S 1000 runs the following loop correctly, but the T/S 1500 does not; it makes one fewer iteration than it should. 10 FOR I=0 TO 1 STEP 0.25 20 PRINT I 30 NEXT I


References


External links

















{{Authority control Sinclair computers and derivatives Sinclair Research Computer-related introductions in 1982 Timex Group Z80-based home computers Home computers