I am pleased to announce that I have been given permission to publish an article by Bruno Florindo and Andrew Owen entitled, American Cousins, which features a fascinating interview with Lou Galie, Senior Vice President of Technology at Timex Group USA Inc and former Director of Engineering for the Timex Computer Corporation. The article tells the story of Timex's transition from their successful Sinclair ZX81-based budget computer, Timex Sinclair 1000, to the company's last two personal computing products in the US, the Timex Sinclair 1500, an updated Timex Sinclair 1000, and the Timex Sinclair 2068, an enhanced pseudo-clone of the UK's popular ZX Spectrum. You can read the PDF article originally intended for the fanzine Byte High No Limit by downloading the attachment below or simply clicking here. In the future, I will be providing more coverage of the complete series of Timex and Spectrum computers from my personal collection, so be sure to stay tuned. Many thanks to Andrew and Bruno for the article.

Hi, Armchair Arcaders! Kick back in those armchairs and watch a new episode of Matt Chat on the Armchair Arcade Television Network (AATN for short). Even on Antsy the Aardvark would like this one. Remember him? Okay, enough silliness. Here's the eppie!

Sir Clive - world famous in at least the UK and Europe - has recently told reporters that he doesn't use any computer in his day to day life. The current generation of computers suffer from bad design flaws and are the absolute opposite of being conservative in their use of internal memory - according to Sir Clive. And he's the man who knows what he is talking about as he is the designer of the Timex1000/ZX80/ZX81 series of machines that came out in 1980 featuring a whopping 1Kb of RAM and a basic interpreter.

All this and more can all be read in a recent interview in the UK paper the Guardian. It seems that even all email correspondence is all printed out by his secretary and handled by him on paper. That would actually cause the bald red-bearded Sir to be somewhat of an environmental hazard, wouldn't it? Oh, by the look of the photograph in the article he actually lost the beard. Well Sir Clive will be celebrating is 70th birthday this year and perhaps it does make him look a little younger. One does tend to get this Gandalfian/Dumbledorian look when sporting a grey/white beard... Sir Clive has an extensive track record when it comes to the ZX Spectrum line of microcomputers that did shape a large part of computer history - at least in Europe, Brazil and Russia.

He's currently devoting his energy to design yet another energy efficient electric car. Let it be noted that his last attempt called the ' C 5 ' bombed! Perhaps he'll be more fortunate this time around. Go Sir Clive!

In what is surely good news for those of us with Timex Sinclair 2068's, an entirely new production run of Sinclair ZX Spectrum Compatibility cartridges are being made available by Jarek Adamski. This is the number one most sought after add-on for Timex Sinclair 2068 users, as there never was an official US release of the emulator, only in Portugal. The US-based Timex Sinclair 2068, as a follow-up to the Timex Sinclair 1000 and 1500, was a fairly nice system, but didn't last long before Timex pulled out of the market and was mostly incompatible with the computer that it was based off of and to which it exceeded in capabilities, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. By adding a compatibility cartridge (some performed an internal modification), you can open up the world of the majority of software for the 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which rivaled the Commodore 64 in terms of software depth and breadth in England, but never saw release in the US. While a comparatively underpowered specification, the 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum was and still is well loved by a huge population of users. The only real incompatibilities - a very small number - arise when Spectrum software tries to check for or utilize peripherals, such as joysticks, whose ports are at entirely different locations on each system. Of course this does not make the system compatible with the 128K version of the UK Spectrum, which itself matched and exceeded most of the features of the US Timex Sinclair 2068.

Alien Mind for the ZX81/Sinclair/Timex Computers (16K) ANDRE is back with the next new game in his regular series of releases for the ZX81 and Sinclair 1000/1500 1K systems, PICMAN. Of course stuff is also available for 16K models.

ANDRE's update (light editing for content):

Bonjour,

Have you seen SNOOPY?! He can be seen at the Website.

Alien Mind for the ZX81/Sinclair/Timex Computers (16K)French programmer ANDRE is at it again, creating yet more games for the quaint ZX81/Sinclair/Timex systems, which had 1KB, 2KB and 16KB configurations, limited black and white graphics, and no sound. Despite all this, these were one of the first truly low-priced personal computers, selling millions and eventually being marketed under the Timex banner in the US. Subsequent systems would see huge success outside of the US, but not here (the Timex 2068, while a favorite of mine, was too little, too late). In any case, check out ANDRE's message below and visit his Website for his programs and the emulator to play them on: