Tatung Einstein MODERN UPGRADES & PLAYTEST! Custom Digital Disk Drive mount from
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 ม.ค. 2023
- ** This video is kindly supported by www.PCBWay.com - My choice for for high quality PCB manufacturing, 3D printing and more! **
Join me as we upgrade and playtest our (now working) Tatung Einstein TC-01 Microcomputer. This fairly obscure British home computer launched in the summer of 1984 for an astonishing £499! A lovely computer that never really made a dent in the british market and ended up being the system that other 8-bit games were developed on!
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Upgrades in this episode:
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💥 A custom mount, kindly produced for us by our channel sponsors PCBWay! They've produced this 3D print using a tough yet slightly flexible resin called Somos® Taurus. The detail is superb, and any dust picked up by the camera is mine!
You can find PCBWay's CNC and 3D Printing offerings here: www.pcbway.com/rapid-prototyp... and I thank them and the wonderful Elaine Hu for their help and attention!
💥 For Video output we are using an RGB SCART custom cable from the amazing Retro Computer Shack. Cables made by Ian Priddey are absolutely superb and I have no reservations about recommending Ian's work.
Find Retro Computer Shack here: www.retrocomputershack.com/RC...
💥 A whopping great 1 metre long dual drive lead from York-AV on Ebay: Seller www.ebay.co.uk/str/avyork - Item www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115419435601
🕹🕹🕹 We put all the parts together and playtest at the end. 🐔🥚🏃♂️💨
💾 For Flashfloppy information please check out the wonderful WIKI on Keir Frasier's brilliant project here: github.com/keirf/flashfloppy
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🤞 💔 THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SUPPORTING THE CHANNEL! 🆘 🏆
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🎶🎵🎶 Music Used in this Episode! 🎶🎵🎶
🎼 Subtract - Lofive 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/L...
🎼 Flower Burst - Giants' Nest 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/z...
🎼 Where My Heart Is (Instrumental Version) - Gamma Skies 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/c...
🎼 Techo Con Sol - Phello 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/A...
🎼 Lords of the Land (Instrumental Version) - Xavy Rusan 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/w...
🎼 Tibro Mountains 🔗 Daniel Fridell - www.epidemicsound.com/track/x...
🎼 1984 Lasers - OTE 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/9...
🎼 The Kill (Instrumental Version) - Particle House 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/X...
🎼 Sunset Dew - Lupus Nocte 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/u...
🎼 Rescue Mission - Lupus Nocte 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/1...
🎼 Memory Drive - ELFL 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/5...
🎼 It's Voodoo - Ash Nino 🔗 www.epidemicsound.com/track/d...
#retrogaming #retrogames #80s - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
My wife says exactly the same mate, if I go quiet for more than a week I suggest getting down hear sharpish 🤣.
Nice to see the Einstein fetched back to life, great mod matey.
For those who lived around Surbiton at the time, the computer shop on the Station Parade was the only place I saw one of these in the wild at the time. while impressive, I wondered how it would compete with the "used as school" appeal of the Beeb to the parents who were doing the buying. At the time I was not aware of its use in cross platform game development.
I'm impressed with the engineering of this machine. Very well built and the mechanical solutions like the way to fix the power supply are quite nice.
It was definite not cheaply made. I love it!
I ran Microsoft Word on my Einstein for note-taking while studying for an MBA. I had a Daisy Wheel printer. The machine was far more useful than just a gaming machine, although I remember a game called Froggy. It was a nice machine for its era and was built in Telford.
Yeah. A lot of the stuff I’m reading was that it was the software developer machine of choice as well. There was a huge amount of business software for it www.tatungeinstein.co.uk/front/business.htm
One tip for those molex/berg power cable extenders/splitters: plug it into something to hold it, then fill the back of the plug with hot glue, this will secure the cable and the pins at the center of the hole, they won't wobble and will be easier to plug next time.
That’s a great tip! Thanks so much!
Fascinating.. a computer I have no knowledge or experience of, and literally had no idea it would have had Spectrum and MSX ports.. I guess that's a Z80 processor for you!! I've seen a few around, and I might take an ebay punt one day. It looks lovely to work on, gives me real BBC Model B vibes
I can totally back up Ian and Retrocomputershack, I've ordered all kinds of cables from him, and they have never been less than excellent.
Finally.. you are a brave man not testing the gotek at all before you installed it! Maybe that's just confidence, experience, or the advantages of editing :)
I've only seen portable tape players from Tatung. Looks like a nice system to upgrade.
Thanks so much for this, I'll finally pull up the courage to add a gotek to my Einstein now.
Interesting video :)
I remember being demoed one of these with my mum back in the mid 80's. They were being sold cheaply I recall as they weren't selling. We didn't get one in the end, but got a hand me down spectrum which I enjoyed then an electron to learn BBC basic and 6502 assembler. Great times.
I loved this computer and learnt to program on it. Was very lucky at the time to have one. My dad got it brand new, I remember he haggled it down from an already hevily discounted price, I believe they just couldn't sell them.
I never seen one of those actually!it is so awesome to see one in action!!thank you for restoring it broski!! always enjoy your content!!
Even though I watch most of your videos mark, this one got me hooked purely on the computers name alone!! 😁
Brilliant!!!
"The knob is slightly larger than the shaft itself"
"That's actually a really really tight fit. I like it"
😆
STOPPIT DEN! You'll get me in trouble!
There's also just enough thread to get his nut on.
Thanks for showing some Einstein love Mark!
Interesting that you found so many spectrum ports and then the better ones were MSX games - because that’s exactly what I found with the MSX. So, so many lazy Spectrum ports, then I got to the good Konami stuff and really saw what the MSX could do.
Same with MSX- cassette games are mostly slowed down Spectrum games hacked across worth little care. The cartridge games are usually a lot better. Like a different machine almost.
Very cool computer. Thanks for sharing the adventure. I had never heard of this one.
Very nice, some nice touches to bring this back into use.
Thanks douggie dude!
I know I sound like a heretic to vintage computer enthusiasts, but this machine just has one of those cases that I would love to retro-mod.
Shhhh… they might hear you James!
The Einstein was used as a development machine for some Spectrum titles - worth getting the 80 column card for it. The game I kept playing on it was Lazy Jones...great music.
I’ll try that out. It’s still set up on the bench!
Excellent quality video, thoroughly enjoyed it.
Thank you Steve. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment!
Another project completed. Nice work Mark.
Thanks Colin :)
Sweet! Would have spray painted the front bezel of the Gotek contraption but other than that: Great stuff!! :)
I did not play any games on the Tatung Einstein that I had to use from Binary Designs Only a z80 compiler to write games on and send the data via Rs232 to my Speccies. The one I used had two floppy drives installed. great memories. Looks like your Glue Gun has seen some action 😉
Ohh! What games did you write??
No version of Chucky Egg has ever come close to the Einstein version. Combined with the amazing keyboard, it's fluid and eminently playable.
Really quick as well. I’m inclined to agree with you after playing it for hours!
@@MarkFixesStuff Yes, it's very addictive.
@@Retrohertz BBC B version... " Hold my beer!"
Dragon 32 version was best.
@@cheddarfish225 We will find out soon, because I have a Dragon 32 waiting for attention!
Exelent work with the Gotek, Mark.
Another one of those "slightly before my time" things, pretty interesting to see. Yie Ar really showing how good it was for its day.
I definitely feel you on the magnetic media thing. Having been working with my A1200 the last few months, by some miracle, the hard disk still works fine, but only Sensible Soccer 1.1 and the original Lemmings disks survived. Been using an odd combination of an Ubuntu Live CD(Windows 11 doesn't support 720k floppies, or at least mine doesn't) and USB floppy drive to get disk images over, and then installing them using WHDLoad. I should probably just get myself a Gotek.
Yes. I’m afraid that floppy disks won’t get more reliable as they age.
It reminds me a bit of the KonTiki 100 machines we had in Norway, a rock solid case and drive bays on either side. They were built for schools at the beginning of the 80s, but had really basic graphics and didn't really exist outside of classroom because of it (as well as the price). The machine was most known for its pirated CP/M because they forgot to license it 😅
Lovely video, I enjoyed the journey. You could probably use a piece of packing foam, the black sheets cut to size to fill the gap - a bit of negative space usually works wonders.
KonTiki you say… [adds to wants list]
I might make a second version of the front part. One that fills the bay completely
The stepper on the 3" is huge, quite a chunky mech for such a small disk size.
It's a big old boy!
@@MarkFixesStuff oooo eeerrr 🙃
Back in the day I knew 2 people with an Einstein, a science teacher and one of my friends. Really they are a bit ugly, kinda the same power as a CPC464 and very expensive... but hell that keyboard is amazing. For programming they were easily the best 8-bit machine, a lot of developers preferred to work on these and push code to machines like the speccy... I mean nobody liked to code on a dead flesh keyboard, night and day compared to using the Einstein.
Back in my distant memories I remember being a trigger on scart that may cause the OSD to be appear, then again it could be my old memory failing..
Another great video Mark! It's a shame the machine didn't do better. I get your point about the cost at £499 but then compared to a BBC Model B at £399 with no disk drive it doesn't seem bad value. I guess because it wasn't used in schools and the majority of the games were Spectrum ports (or the other way around depending on how you look at it) it didn't have as much appeal. I know I really liked the look of it when it came out. let's not forget that it had double the RAM of the BBC Model B as well as an extra 16kb of video RAM. I don't think it was such bad value.
I do love these machines one of those i always wanted but never got .Superb work mark on the psu replacement and the flash floppy you can run bbc basic on these machines .This is one of those machines that price stopped it from becoming as popular as it could have been if it had been more affordable it would have been a great games machine like the bbc micro it was well thought out and had plenty of expansion possibility.
Yep Wang Hung Lau lovely fella.
Oh my I wish i had a gotek back in the 90s when i bought my einstein lol
Love the quality, of the resin print!
It looks really good, compared to "normal" 3D prints...
Great video and restoration. I remember this being in the shops but never really did anything with it. Shame the Spectrum ports didn't take advantage of the sound chip (relatively speaking). I also remember the Sord M5 in the shops which was a cool looking beast. Any plans on sourcing one of these? On a different tack, I notice that your voiceover sounds calmer and more measured. I don't know what has changed but I can hear a difference in your tone of voice from previous videos. I felt a little more relaxed watching this video compared to the previous Tatung one.
Relaxed? I NEVER SAID YOU WERE ALLOWED TO RELAX! 😂 Thanks for the feedback :)
Nice one! No plans to source a SORD M5 (too expensive) but I do have some rarish weird computer stuff coming up this year, including a home computer from Exidy!
@@MarkFixesStuff What Sorcery is this?
@@MarkTheMorose very good!!
25:15 I can hear it fixing in the air tonight.. oh Lord.. I've been waiting for this Einstein all my life..
Do you remember....? (where I put those screws?) I remember don't worry 🪛🪛🪛
Glue Gorilla on drums
"The next thing that will happen to this machine is it will get thrown into a skip the day after I die." 😂
[material anxiety intensifies]
You're only anxious because you want to know when the skip is booked for!
The superglue that doesn't create the white mist is called "low bloom"
I had no idea. Thank you for that! The bloom is one of the reasons I don’t use superglue much.
I don't know how dry the hole was but I would have lubed the shaft before mounting .
We now need mark to do his best karaoke version of Jack Action by Wasp replacing "Jack" with "Track".
It probably never occurred to the company to sell them as a multiplatform development kit, if they had catered to that they might have had more success in the long term.
Definitely can hurt your product making it too good, when the consumer can barely notice the increase in build quality you're going down the wrong path. For contrast the first ZX80s were simply too low in quality, cheap sure but also looking like it came out of a cereal box lol.
Interesting platform, looking at the VDP the TE is in the same graphics realm of the Colecovision, MSX1, and TI-99/4A. It does have the advantage of no attribute clash in comparison to the Speccy. Anyway, excellent upgrades Mark . :D
This is basically an MSX without being an MSX I think.
Classic MFS video, excellent detail. To my eyes, the bezel gap slightly lets down the quality appearance of this wonderful machine. BTW, is it scheduled for a bath? 😊👍
I'm surprised you didn't do the activity sound mod for the gotek, for when you're loading games. It sounds like a disk drive, and you know when something is happening.
I got mine, brand new, for £99 IIRC when Dixon's were selling them off. Sadly, I fried it some decades ago and apart from the PSU (yup, that was working!) and floppy drive, I have nothing of it left.
Oh no! This is like the worst sad story I’ve ever read.
😅@@MarkFixesStuff
21:35 I haven't seen you swap the power pins in the drive cable yet and your cables use different colour codes to the service manual. It looks like pin 1 (left) of M0009 on your is white red blue which should be white red. thats 12v and It looks like its going to the yellow on the molex so should be good. don't know if you swapped it off camera or just got lucky...
Hi Mark, what solder you would recommend, can you link me to some, thanks
When will someone build a new Tatung Einstein running the ZILOG Z8000 series of chips.
Shame got a port of the Spectrum Elite instead of the superior MSX version with multi colour graphics and extra missions
Totally agree
hotglue has an annoying habit of forming no bond at all. Can always do the CA glue + baking soda thing to form a solid hard lump to secure stuff.
I always played gronks lol
Needs a HDMI out to feed the digital input of modern LCD TV sets.
RetroTink is the answer.
Where did you get the wire stripper from?
It's a Pro'sKit CP-511A
@markfixesstuff Finally getting round to adding a Gotek to my Einstein with the help of these vids cheers! Any chance PCBWay may want to release that 3D print file sometime? Happy to order it from them even, it looks much nicer than the one I got from Thingiverse.
Plus, I have a resin printer, and it loves to curl up anything at the edges. Using supports gives the bottom this really ugly bevelled look, but it's functional I guess.
Hi mate. I actually made the bevel design. I didn't release it because it needs a couple of tweaks (face plate made a bit larger) which I haven't done as yet.
@@MarkFixesStuff ah, I misunderstood your comment in the vid in that case! I'll keep my eyes peeled for that one 👍
MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO 🐮
MoooooOoooOoooooOooooooo
16:05 No way are the M3 thread screws! M3 always needs a nut. self tapping M3 does not exist according to the international standard. Maybe according to the Chinese backyard standard.
M3 is just the diameter (2.9mm), at least here in the UK Jens? Then the thread is determined secondarily as self tapping / machine threaded etc. By default here, an M3 screw is self tapping (like a wood screw) unless you shop for machine threaded with for use with nuts 🔩.
Here’s a link to Farnell showing the options I have to use. Interested in what you have to deal with. uk.farnell.com/c/fasteners-mechanical/fasteners-fixings/screws-bolts/self-tapping-screws?thread-size-metric=m3
Apologies if I’ve got this wrong btw. It’s just how I’ve always referred to it?
Maziaks?
I've never played it, but that game certainly looks like Maziacs on the Spectrum, or Mazogs on the ZX81, from screenshots I've seen. There was a version of Maziacs for MSX, I wonder if the Einstein game is a renamed version of that, or a homebrew game.
Looks exactly like Maziacs on the Spectrum, a game I've not played in years.
Your knob doesn't stand out far enough.
I’m trying to keep it small and undetectable. Some might say I’ve achieved that goal.