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Timex Sinclair 1000

Sync Mag on eBay for only $12,000.

Sync Mag on eBay for only $12,000.

Sync This!
Yea, but there are no payments till 2009 with the eBay MasterCard - - and that's over 2 whole months away! (Plenty enough time to gather up that first months 'minimum' payment :) Now, by my calculations, (using my vintage calculator, of course,) - that's $1,000. a month for 12 months.) Of course that doesn't 'include' the eBay MasterCard interest because, for some reason I can't seem to find out what the interest rate is. It must be an insignificant amount though, or they would mention it somewhere, you'd think.
Anyway, making just a minimum monthly payment of two percent on a $12,000 debt at 18 percent interest will take you only 53 years to pay off.
Tempting, isn't it?
Is it no wonder, in this, 'has everybody gone nuts?' - society, that we, "The Vintage Men"; ladies welcomed), hark back to a simpler time and dabble so much with our vintage machines?
 
I just double checked with my vintage calculator (APF Mark 1). 230 dollars a year, it's not even worth the yearly payment. Maybe I'll contact him and offer him $5 :)
 
Bill is correct about getting a modern TV to show an acceptable picture!! I have to move the TV 75 ohm wire around to try and get a picture I can read. Most the time, even moving the wire around doesn't help. Too bad I threw away my 1980 VCR. It had manual tuning for each channel. That's the problem, the TS1000 rf modulation drifts over time so it is ALMOST channel 2.

Does anyone have the TS1000 composite video mod bookmarked??

I did "google" for hours looking but no luck. I imagine I could figure it out on my own but a picture would be nice.
 
I found that one just about as fast. My memory remembers taking a 75 ohm cable, solder one end to a rca female jack and the other inside (hot) end to some point where NTSC signal is available. It didn't involve any transistors or resistors. Maybe it was a mod for some other computer and I have them confused. Guess I'll have to open it up and look around or see if my VCRs have a manual fine-tuning.
 
I dunno why people complicate things....

All ya gotta do, is open up the rf modulator box, snip the 3 wires coming in the box from the PCB. THen, on the center conductor of the RCA jack, unsolder everything going to it, which is a wire coming up underneath, and an RC bridge, then solder a jumper wire from one of the 3 wires coming in, being the one closest to the edge of the PCB, to the center conductor of the RCA jack, and voila - composite video.

No hacking a connector in, nothing - uses the original RCA connector for composite out, and it works.

Biggest problem will be trying to plug the keyboard membrane back in - all of mine are broken. They are old, dried-up, and brittle, and rarely will plug back in nowadays.

T
 
Tony; doesn't that method require the video signal be of a certain strength to yield a stable picture on most monitors? I know it pretty much works on a ZX Spectrum (have done it myself), but I've read about other home computers and video games (e.g. Intellivision IIRC) that have weaker signals, good enough for the RF modulator but you need some amplifying for using it as composite video. The ZX-81 hack you linked to uses a transistor for amplifying.
 
Worked on mine - just tried it on the kids CRT-based TV.
My plasma doesn't appreciate it....but the standard tube-based TV's in the house worked fine with the signal.


T
 
This thread got me interested in 'once again' firing up my trusty Timex 1000.
I've not had a stable picture with it since I tossed out an old B/W TV I had that it worked with.
It just won't work going my usual way; through my PC capture card to use my regular monitor. (I can't do a fine tuning adjustment, necessary with my T1000.)
I therefore hooked it up to the only old style TV I have left - a 5" B/W job. I put the TV on channel 2 and flipped the switch, oops! forgot, no switch on a Timex 1000 :) I just plugged her in and shazam, there was that beautiful gray screen with a blinking K at the bottom. High tech personified. I wrote my usual test:
10 FOR J=1 TO 10
20 PRINT J
30 NEXT J
Trouble was, I couldn't type NEXT, or in this case, Timex's version, by pressing the N key. Arrg! No N key response. In fact no keys are working past V on the bottom right side. Horrified, I pressed harder on the membrane but to no avail. This thing is only 27 years old and already it's not working right! Can't they make things that last anymore?
Now what? I was just getting into the mood of making that cool Timex video mod so's I can have nifty Composite vid and this happens.
What am I to do? I guess I could just go buy another T1000 off eBay. What are they now, 3 for a dollar?
In reality though, I do have an attachment to these cool little black wedges. Like another one I had that bit the dust. I keep it's board around just because it's such a cool compact chunk of history.

picture.php
 
Short of spending 10GBP for a new membrane from sinclairshop in the UK, I wouldn't be buying any off eBay expecting too many working keyboards. Or, keyboards that can be unplugged and then plugged back in. The membrane has just gotten too brittle over time. It might work right now, but you need to unplug it to do the work, and then you're stuck.

T
 
Sharky has convinced me!! I just BARELY managed to get the brittle cable plugged back in last time I was in there. As he says, pull that brittle thing out of the PCB and it will be all over. Must be time to see if my older VCRs have any fine tuning on them. If the VCRs still work that is, they have been out in a storage shed for years.
 
Is the membrane keyboard ASCII or multiplexed? We should be able to design an adapter to use a standard keyboard. Does anyone have the pin-out of the keyboard connector?
 
There were about 20 manufacturers who made aftermarket keyboards for the Sinclair 1000 / ZX-81. Here is an example, by Suntronics, from my web site (with some other Sinclair pics):
http://www.vintagecomputer.net/sinclair/

I would think that some of these aftermarket keyboards would still be around, but I have not seen many. There was a thread about this subject (who made aftermarket parts for the ZX-81/1000?) on classiccmp last year. Not sure what came of it.

Bill
 
I would think that some of these aftermarket keyboards would still be around, but I have not seen many.
Bill

One of those ended on fleaBay just a couple weeks or so ago...
I had an urge to bid, but I mean, I couldn't justify spending the $30-40 on a freaking ZX81 ;)

I mean, the ZX80/ZX81 was my VERY FIRST computer, and it was such a dang toy, even then, that it was embarrassing. My parents got sucked in by the Clive drivel, and bought that thing - all my friends/schoolmates had Apple II's with floppies, another used his dad's Rainbow 100...

WHen they came over my house, and asked where the computer was, I was embarrassed to pull out the doorstop. They would ask where the rest of it was, where th keyboard was, where the floppies were, etc...

No...I won't spend much money for ZX stuff...what I have, came in that huge load from Fort Myers, and I think I bought a Memotech 32kb multipack, and a $10 ZX81 ZX-RAM pack from Vlad here.


T
"Timex Traumatized"
 
Sharky has convinced me!! I just BARELY managed to get the brittle cable plugged back in last time I was in there. As he says, pull that brittle thing out of the PCB and it will be all over.

I don't know how useful this would be, but, when I was running my first computer repair operation (after leaving Radio Shack), we used to get a lot of stuff sent to us by computer stores and other repair places because we would tackle anything.

Even back then, there was OLD computer stuff that needed to be repaired and maintained. Brittle flex cables were around even then.

What we used to do was, before even removing the cable, was take a couple of thicker pieces of flexible plastic, each a few inches (or as much as the cable could take before it branched) and epoxy one to the top side of the cable and one to the bottom side, right up to the connector. You have to be careful not to get any epoxy IN the connector, of course.

This would keep the flex cable fairly rigid and , because there wasn't anywhere for the end that fit into the connector to bend, would allow easy insertion and extraction.

YMMV
 
Death in the O.R.

Death in the O.R.

. . .All ya gotta do, is open up the rf modulator box, snip the 3 wires coming in the box from the PCB. THen, on the center conductor of the RCA jack, unsolder everything going to it, which is a wire coming up underneath, and an RC bridge, then solder a jumper wire from one of the 3 wires coming in, being the one closest to the edge of the PCB, to the center conductor of the RCA jack, and voila - composite video.
. . .

All-righty then, I'll give that a shot . . .

Here's my story (in pictures) -

The T1000 on the operating table

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Open her up

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Flip the board over - leaving the keyboard ribbon cable attached.

picture.php


Pop the RF mod. cover off

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Snip the wires per Sharkonwheels instructions.

picture.php


Install jumper wire for composite video.

picture.php


Make sure there are no shorts - button it up and test it out :D

No pretty gray screen - no blinking K at the bottom. Just one dead T1000.
Check line for Composite, that's ok
Recheck connections, that's ok
Check T1000 is getting power, that's ok

Just one dead T1000. Well, since I was already having problems with some of the keys, I doubt it would have ever been fully functional again anyway. I have no reason why it died during this op. - but it's gone for sure :confused:

On the brighter side, if a leg breaks off my couch, I'll have something to prop it up with, like Terry has :)
 
Did you make sure to snip the wire coming UP from the board, to the center conductor?
There's also an RC-bridge connecting from bottom right-corner (as viewed in the above pics) inside the RF Modulator can, going to the center conductor. This has to be desoldered, as well. i kinda' unsoldered+yanked with small needle-nose. I did an initial mod, tested, acted completely dead, and then worked after making sure ALL was removed from the center conductor of the RCA jack.

Although, as I mentioned, I couldn't get keyboard cable back in. Wish I woulda' thought of just flipping the board back
like you did, or I'd probably have a still-working TS1000! the kb cable looked fine until I messed with it :)

T
 
Does anyone have the pin-out of the keyboard connector?
I own a few old computer magazines describing how to build your own ZX-81 keyboard. If you're seriously interested, I could scan those articles. Unfortunately they'll be in Swedish, but all the technical details should be possible to figure out.
 
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