Silver Dream Machine

So this rather lovely item arrived a few days ago. It’s the Timex Sinclair 2068 which is essentially the US version of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, although it incorporates quite a few features that the Spectrum would either get later or not at all.

First things first. This computer is significantly bigger than the Spectrum. Without seeing it in person, I had assumed that the 2068 would be a Spectrum with an additional bit to the right-hand side.

As you can see, it is significantly larger than that.

The keyboard is another big difference. The keys are hard plastic rather than the original rubber keys of the Spectrum, and it has a space bar, but it’s definitely not a “proper” keyboard. I’d imagine I could type reasonably quickly on this keyboard after a bit of practice, but given that the 2068 uses the single key BASIC command setup as the Spectrum (and ZX80/81), you’d be unlikely to end up with much of a speed improvement while programming.

The other immediately obvious difference is the large section on the right-hand side labeled “Timex Command Cartridge”. Upon lifting the lid, you can see this a slot for ROM cartridges.

These are not the same cartridges that the Spectrum finally introduced with the ZX Interface 2 (which if I remember correctly, wasn’t a huge success, mostly because the games on cartridge were significantly more expensive than their cassette counterparts).

The cartridges are quite a bit smaller than you might expect, given the size of the lid. I got one cartridge with the 2068 - Flight Simulator. This is actually the Psion Flight Simulation program slightly renamed. The artwork on the cartridge label bears no real resemblance to the in-game graphics. Multiple runways and taxiways? Nope.

The left-hand side of the 2068 has a joystick port and an on/off switch (fancy!).

The rear includes an edge connector which I don’t think is the same as the edge connector on the Spectrum…

… and a monitor port (very fancy!), a cassette in and out, AC adapter input, and TV connector.

Finally the right-hand side has another joystick port.

As well as the physical differences, the 2068 also had a few enhancements over the Spectrum, such as a multi-voice sound chip and a couple of extra graphics modes.

‘The 2068 definitely has some features that would have made the original Spectrum a better machine out of the box. However, even if you could get hold of a 2068 in the UK and were able to afford a monitor (the built-in TV connector wouldn’t work with PAL TVs), you wouldn’t be able to run very much Spectrum software and Any that would run wouldn’t be coded to use the improved sound and graphics abilities.

I remember reading about the 2068 in computer magazines, and thinking it sounded pretty damn cool. 35 years later I’m happy to be able to report, it kinda is.