Tatung Einstein

Tatung Einstein TC-01

Manufacturer	Tatung
Type	Professional Computer
Release date	1984; 34 years ago (1984)
Introductory price	GB£499 (equivalent to £1,472 in 2016)
Media	3-inch floppy disk
Operating system	Xtal DOS
CPU	Zilog Z80 clocked at 4MHz
Memory	64KB RAM, 16KB VRAM, 8KB-32KB ROM
Storage	3 inch floppy Drive 1770 FDC
Display	256 × 192 resolution, 16 colours
Input	51 key Keyboard, Joystick
Connectivity	RS232
Dimensions	43.5 × 51.5 × 11.5cm
Successor	Einstein256

The Tatung Einstein was an eight-bit home/per­sonal com­puter pro­duced by Tai­wanese cor­po­ra­tion Tatung, de­signed in Brad­ford, Eng­land at Tatung's re­search lab­o­ra­to­ries and as­sem­bled in Bridg­north and Telford, Eng­land. It was aimed pri­mar­ily at small busi­nesses.

History

The Ein­stein was re­leased in the United King­dom in the sum­mer of 1984, and 5,000 were ex­ported back to Taipei later that year. A Tatung mon­i­tor (mono­chrome or colour) and dot ma­trix printer were also avail­able as op­tions, plus ex­ter­nal disc dri­ves and an 80 col­umn dis­play card. It was also ca­pa­ble of em­u­lat­ing the Spec­trum 48k with the "Spec­u­la­tor" addon.

More ex­pen­sive than most of its ri­vals, the Ein­stein was pop­u­lar with con­tem­po­rary pro­gram­mers but was com­mer­cially unsuccessful.^[1]

A later, re­vised ver­sion, called the Tatung Ein­stein 256 suf­fered a sim­i­lar fate.

Design

The ma­chine was phys­i­cally large, with an op­tion for one or two built-in three-inch floppy disk dri­ves man­u­fac­tured by Hi­tachi. At the time, most home com­put­ers used or­di­nary tape recorders for stor­age. An­other un­usual fea­ture of the Ein­stein was that on start-up the com­puter en­tered a sim­ple ma­chine code mon­i­tor, called MOS (Ma­chine Op­er­at­ing Sys­tem). A va­ri­ety of soft­ware could then be loaded from disk, in­clud­ing a CP/M-com­pat­i­ble op­er­at­ing sys­tem called Xtal DOS (pro­nounced 'Crys­tal DOS', cre­ated by Crys­tal Com­put­ers in Torquay), and a BASIC in­ter­preter (Xtal BASIC). Thanks to the re­li­a­bil­ity of the ma­chine, and ample mem­ory, the ma­chine proved use­ful by many soft­ware houses to use for pro­gram­ming, and then port­ing the code to the ma­chines they were made for, namely the Spec­trum 48k, Am­strad CPC, and Com­modore 64. Even­tu­ally, it was su­per­seded by the PC and Atari ST as the de­vel­op­ment sys­tems of choice.

The fol­low on ma­chine, the Ein­stein256, ba­si­cally was the same as the orig­i­nal, with im­proved video (Yamaha V9938) and a more slim­line black case.

Technical specifications

TC-01

• CPU: Zilog Z80A @ 4 MHz
• 64K RAM
• 8K to 32K ROM
• Z84C30 CTC
• Z84C20 PIO
• intel 8251 SIO
• 1770 FDC Floppy disk Controllers
• Z80 'Tube' bus/interface
• Analogue joystick Ports
• RAM: 64 KB system RAM; 16 KB video RAM
• Video: Texas Instruments TMS9129 16 colours, 32 sprite planes
• Audio: AY-3-8910 (Also Reads keyboard Matrix)

Like the MSX spec­i­fi­ca­tion

256

• 64K User RAM 192K Video RAM
• Video : V9938, 512 colours

See also

•  Category: Tatung Einstein games

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tatung Einstein.

• Einstein Community Forum
• Tatung Einstein Computer Web Site
• Tatung Einstein Computer Group
• Tatung Einstein Reborn

This page was last edited on 16 March 2018, at 07:58