Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Difficult to know where to place this:-

Just tripped over this on iplayer -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...f-timex-dundee

...Mainly a social history with ex personnel reminiscing about work and troubled times there, but at about 22 minutes in there is a short section regarding Timex's involvement with (and building of) Sinclair computers and at the end of that segment a brief sight of some other piece of (audio?) equipment with an STK power amp slab hanging off it.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Tick a tick a Timex, tra la la. The advert used to run just before Christmas each year during the early/mid 60's. Black and white 405 line of course.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Timex also made the CRT's for the Sinclair FTV1 / TV80.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

In the US, a version of the Sinclair ZX81 (with NTSC modulator) was sold as the Timex-Sinclair 1000. I believe these were initially made at the Timex factory in Dundee.

Unlike the ZX81 in the UK market, the TS1000 never made it big in the US - everyone there bought Radio Shack or Commodore.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Points of trivia:

The ZX81 / Timex 1000 wasn't a colour (or should I say color?) machine so 'NTSC' may not be the right terminology in this context. Certainly it would have had a modulator specifically aimed at the USA TV system - VHF perhaps?

The USA version also had 2K of RAM as standard rather than the 1K the base model sold with in its home territory. It had two switchable TV output channel frequencies. Presumably they didn't have a 'default' TV channel for low power RF TV devices, the way UHF channel 35 seemed to have been adopted here.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Would NTSC not cover the system, the Nation Television Standards Committee decided on the Mono system in 1941. Colour added to the standard in 1953.
Although when we mention NTSC we usually refer to colour it covers the monochrome system as well.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Most US spec home computers / consoles with a modulator seemed to be switchable between channels 3 and 4.

I had thought that channel 36 was the European standard, though I've noticed sometimes I've had to adjust a preset slightly to fine tune in another device.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Could well have been 36, it was such a long time ago and at the time I used primitive 'knob tunable' (rather than preset) TV sets with my ZX81 so I didn't necessarily know exactly which UHF channel I was tuning into.

The oscillators in those Astec modulators were free running as well, so they tended to drift slowly off frequency as the machine warmed up.

I have two ZX81s here, one is my original one and I know Dundee didn't build that because I did, although it may well be that the kit was packaged there before it was dispatched to me.

The other machine came to me in a DkTronics full sized keyboard / enclosure and the PCB may very well have been Dundee-built. In the documentary Clive Sinclair said that 'Most' of their ZX81s were being built by Dundee, but, that being the case, who was building the remainder? (The end users, perhaps?).

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

I know the Spectrums were built by Thorn at Enfield, as was the final assembly of the TV80.

Thorn made a monitor version of the TX designed to work with the Spectrum & QL.

Link for monitor, scroll to bottom as I can't link pictures directly https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/ferguson-portables-82-86/

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

Channel 36 was no doubt chosen because channels 35 to 38 inclusive were originally not used for broadcasting because that part of the UHF band was used by something to do with aviation. When those users moved elsewhere, those channels became available for Channel 5.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

IIRC Channel 38 was reserved for radio telescopes & I don't think even Channel 5 used it.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

For some reason, radios-tv.co.uk redirects to Google. Is anyone else having this problem? Is the webmaster active in this thread or a forum member?

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

The radios.tv.co.uk link in RichardFM's post works O.K. for me, Maaarten.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

I'm getting "access denied" for that entire website (and I have given them permission to run scripts and cookies).

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

OK here too, W10/Firefox.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

According to what I have read on the site radios-tv.co.uk uses some rather strict IP geoblocking.

HTH

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

I would clear the cache or try a different browser the UK should not have access problems.
The other problem is if you are using a VPN with the VPN server outside the UK.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

36 was used for ground RADAR at Manchester Airport. Used to play havoc with VHS machines out of the box.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

I got mine as a kit, you saved £10 that way. I don't know how long the option was offered, I imagine there were a lot of returns.

I managed to solder the thick-film resistor module in backwards, but managed to correct it.

Re: Rise and fall of Timex Dundee - BBC iplayer
 

In a William Gibson novel, he observes that the ZX81 was shipped to the US without the ram packs, making it virtually unusable, so was discarded in favour of games consoles, which explains, he goes on, why America became a nation of games players, whilst Britain became computer programmers. Think the book title was Pattern Recognition.