Tatung Einstein
The Tatung Einstein is 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 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 running ZX Spectrum software with the "Speculator" addon.

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

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 in the UK 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 Eventually, it was superseded by the PC and Atari ST as the development systems of choice.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

References

External links 

Tatung Einstein Computer Group
Tatung Einstein Reborn

Z80-based home computers
CP/M
Computer-related introductions in 1984
Computers designed in the United Kingdom