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The Timex FDD 3000 was a nearly complete computer by Timex of Portugal. It began its development at Timex Computer Corporation in the U.S., but it was at Timex of Portugal that the work was finished.
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The Timex FDD 3000 is an upgraded Timex FDD (sometimes known as the FDD3 because it consisted of three separate boxes: the disk drive, the controller and the power supply). The Timex FDD3 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's also possible to connect a Hitachi 3″ disk drive to an IBM PC Compatible computer).
Later, Timex combined the three boxes of the FDD into one big box called the Timex FDD 3000. Timex also added 64K RAM, a second 3″ floppy disk drive and a line in the controller cable to pass the video signal generated by the Timex Terminal 3000 to the back of FDD 3000 box.
Timex FDD/FDD 3000 usage
The FDD/FDD 3000 can be used as a disk drive peripheral or as a CP/M computer.
To use the FDD or FDD 3000 with a computer, an interface module is needed. It's called Timex Interface (TI) and contains the FDD/FDD 3000 initialization code in a ROM.
Because of the differences between the TC2048 and the TC2068 ROMs, there are two TI versions: an all-black version for ZX Spectrum/TC2048 and a black with silver reset button for TS/TC2068. The TI TC2048 version can be used with TS/TC2068+emulator cartridge (it has to be a "bootable" cartridge as you cannot type OUT 244,3 because the computer will crash). Zebra Systems sold an all-silver TI. There is a TI ROM version that will work with 128K ZX Spectrum.