The Tatung Einstein has characteristics very near those of the MSX machines (same video modes, same sound chip, sprites, etc.) but is not compatible with this standard. It was built in the UK at Tatung's plant in Telford in Shropshire.
The Einstein runs under Xtal/DOS which is an operating system compatible with CP/M. It was possible to connect an other floppy disk drive and a 80 column card was available.
The Einstein was a very attractive computer but it was too expensive to have great market success.
Ste Cork recalls:
Pretty much every 8-bit development house in the NW of the UK was using these machines in the late '80s, we'd develop for Atari, C64, ZX, Amstrad, MSX, C16, you name it. Superb keyboard, and the power-supply was so stable that you could quickly flick the switch off and on without the machine even noticing. No mains spikes could ever interrupt these things. I even wrote / sold a couple of games on it natively, they did ok. We mainly used them with 5.25 inch disks though, since the 3-inch disks it used weren't so reliable if you were writing to them continuously. The 256MB silicon-drive was a must-have.Doomed to be for hobbyists / developers only though, since it had no mass market appeal at the price / performance.
Alan Wilson reports us: This computer at the time was a programmers dream, the operating system was easy to reprogram, and an excellent MOS (Machine operating system) mode meant that disk sectors or tracks could be easily loaded into memory, edited, then written back. Because of this, they were used to develop disk copy protection for the up and coming next generation Amiga and Atari ST.
Trefor Hazlewood-Jones adds:
Unlike most home computers this one boots up in MOS, it is then necessary to load Xtal/dos and a high level operating system. Xtal/basic was supplied with the machine but I also have disks to boot it into BBC/basic FORTRAN and Pascal. The right hand drive bay will accept a 3.5 inch floppy drive and the machine will happily format and use 3.5 inch floppy disks.
Note: A 3.5" drive requires modifications to the case and it will only format 720K floppies. You need an updated DOS system first to enable you to access more than the standard DOS
Einstein and Spectrum games, by Matthew Wilkes:
There was a nifty assembler specially written that we used to use at Elite Systems for programming the ZX Spectrum games - enabling you to write and assemble Z80 code, then download to the Spectrum via interface I (F5 I think it was :-)) - if your buggy code crashed, you could simply re-boot the Spectrum and debug on the Einstein.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
mike westwood, if you still have the einstein for sale, email me at oliverconlon53@gmail.com :)
Sunday 21st May 2023
oliver conlon (United Kingdom)
WOW ! This forum takes me back a few years!! After a ZX*),etc finally purchased my favourite ever - the Einstein. Can''t remember the year but it must have been an early one aasI always looked for improved models from my existing one at the time.
I had a business in those days in a small North Wales town and I always hoped to have a unit which would enable me to keep track fo my sales, VAT etc. The Einstein was a godsend !
In fact I had two models - one I kept at home to do my accounts on a Saturday afternoon, and the other in the shop. I found Xtal Basic a very easy programming language and wrote several programmes ( kept me up until two in the morning ! ). The main one was to enable me to keep track of sales in the different categories for stock control purposes. I purchased a program the calculated my VAT liability and printed out a program for the Revenue at the end of the month, This was a fantastic benefit for me !
Another valuable program which I enjoyed writing was to do with a further activity of mine - I was a swimming coach. The club in which I was a member ran competitive Galas with other clubs. Keeping track of yhe results was very primitive ( by hand calculator) and by the time the final result was known most of the spectators had gone home ! So I set to and penned a prog. the kept a running total of each swimmers results in four different lanes in real time, The final results were known and printed out in less than 20 seconds !
Another program forecast lottery winning numbers - never won more than £10 !! and so the list goes on. Happy computing - VERY HAPPY ! and sincere thank for a wonderful computer,
Thursday 25th March 2021
DENNIS PARR (UK (Wales))
i have a fully boxed (original) einstien with discs and manuals is it worth anything or will anyone want it
Wednesday 6th January 2021
mike westwood (weston super mare)
NAME
EINSTEIN TC-01
MANUFACTURER
Tatung
TYPE
Home Computer
ORIGIN
Taïwan
YEAR
1984
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Full-stroke QWERTY keyboard. 51 keys + 8 function keys
CPU
Zilog Z80 A
SPEED
4 MHz
RAM
64 KB (44 KB free for user)
VRAM
16 KB
ROM
8 KB (up to 32 KB)
TEXT MODES
40 / 32 columns x 24 rows
GRAPHIC MODES
256 x 192 dots
COLORS
16
SOUND
3 voices, 7 octaves
SIZE / WEIGHT
43.5 (W) x 51.5 (D) x 11.5 (H) cm
I/O PORTS
RS232c, Centronics, User port, Joystick (2), Bus Z80, Floppy Disk
