Timex FDD

The Timex FDD consists of three separate boxes: the disk drive, the controller and the power supply). It was intended as a floppy disk peripheral for the Timex TC2048 or TC2068 microcomputers. It usually had 16K RAM and only one 3" disk drive, but it could be upgraded to 64K RAM, making it capable of running CP/M and a second disk drive. Since the controller is electrically compatible with today's disk drives, it is possible to connect a 3.5"/5.25" disk drive to the Timex FDD3 Controller (it is possible too to connect a Hitachi 3" disk drive to a IBM PC Compatible computer).

The FDD/FDD 3000 can be used as a disk drive peripheral or as a CP/M computer.

• As a disk drive system running TOS (Timex Operating System) it is connected to a ZX Spectrum, TC2048/2068 or TS2068 in Spectrum mode with a twister board for the rear buss connection.
• As a CP/M computer using a TC2048/2068 running Timex Terminal Emulator, or using a Timex Terminal 3000 and a video composite monitor, as a console.
• Timex FDD/FDD3000 does not have a built-in operating system so a disk with TOS is needed to boot it. Timex released TOS A.2 and CP/M. In Poland TOS was modified and released as TOS A.4 and Jarek Adamski developed a new OS called ZXVGS. To use CP/M on the FDD3000 without TT3000, a terminal emulator must be loaded on the computer (ZX Spectrum/TC2048/TC2068/TS2068 in Spectrum mode) before CP/M will boot.

To use the FDD or FDD3000 with a computer, an interface module is needed. It is called Timex Interface (TI) and contains FDD/FDD3000 initialization code in a ROM.

Timex FDD/FDD3000 specifications

• Z80 running at 4 MHz
• 16K RAM (64K RAM on FDD 3000)
• 128 bytes ROM (boots system from floppy)
• WD1770 floppy disk controller
• WD2123 UART (2 serial ports)