- Tatung Einstein
The Tatung Einstein was an eight-bit home/
personal computer produced by Taiwanese corporation Tatung, designed and assembled inTelford , England. It was aimed primarily at small businesses.The Einstein was released in the
United Kingdom in the summer of1984 , and 5,000 were exported back toTaipei later that year. A Tatung monitor (monochrome or colour) and printer were also available as options.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 simplemachine code monitor , called MOS (Machine Operating System). A variety of software could then be loaded from disk, including aCP/M -compatibleoperating system called Xtal DOS, and a BASIC interpreter (Xtal BASIC).More expensive than most of its rivals, and lacking an obvious niche market other than technically-advanced home programmers, the Einstein was commercially unsuccessful.
A later, revised version, called the Tatung Einstein 256 suffered a similar fate.
Technical specifications
*CPU:
Zilog Z80A @ 4 MHz
*RAM: 64KB system RAM; 16KB video RAM
*Video: 16 colours, 32 sprite planesee also
External links
* [http://members.lycos.co.uk/albertstc01/ Tatung Einstein Computer Web Site]
* [http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/tatung_einstein/ Tatung Einstein Computer Group]
* [http://www.tatungeinstein.freespaces.com Tatung Einstein Reborn! Site dedicated to the Einstein TC01 and 256]
* [http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=86 The Tatung Einstein at old-computers.com]
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