New Arrival: Tatung Einstein

A new machine has joined the collection: a Tatung Einstein in its original box. The box is battered and scuffed, but the striking artwork is still there: Albert Einstein's face over a sunset, a Union Jack reading "Designed in Britain, Built in Britain", and the slogan "Colour Micro Computer: Sheer Genius".

// HISTORY

Tatung is a Taiwanese electronics company that ran a TV factory in Telford, Shropshire. In 1984 it launched the Einstein TC-01, which was designed and built in the UK. It cost around £499. That was far more than a Spectrum or Commodore 64, but it came with a disk drive built in at a time when most home users loaded software from cassette.

The Einstein never became a big seller with home users. It found a different niche: it was popular with games studios as a development machine. Its fast disk storage and serial ports made it a good host for writing and cross-assembling code for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and MSX.

// SPECS

// HOW IT WAS USED

Tatung marketed the Einstein to small businesses, schools and homes, as the list on the box says. Because Xtal DOS could run CP/M programs, it had access to business software such as WordStar and dBase II. It also had its own BASIC and a modest library of games, many of them conversions from MSX, which used similar graphics hardware.

Its longest-lasting role was as a developer's workstation. Several well-known 8-bit games were written on Einsteins and then sent over a serial link to the target machine for testing.

// WHAT'S NEXT

Here's the plan before it gets switched on:

Progress updates will be posted here. For more vintage machines, see the hardware section.