Tatung Einstein
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| Manufacturer | Tatung |
|---|---|
| Type | Professional Computer |
| Release date | 1984 |
| Introductory price | £499 |
| 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.
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.
A later, revised version, called the Tatung Einstein 256 suffered a similar fate.
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 Eventually, it was superseded by the PC and Atari ST as the development systems of choice.
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