Looking at the Tatung Einstein TC-01
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 ก.ย. 2019
- We're taking a look at the Tatung Einstein TC-01 which arrived at the height of the 8-bit computer revolution but is rarely mentioned in the same company as the Sinclair Spectrum or Amstrad CPC, despite having a massive impact on the games created for them.
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I’m on a nostalgia trip as my dad passed about 8 months ago and I’m rethinking of our past. This computer was something that popped up in my head as I remember him buying it in the 80s as our home business machine. I spent many hours playing games like Chucky egg and Lemans. Great to see this again, fond memories 😊
My condolences, i'm happy I had a video with a connection for you :)
@@ReEnthused Thank you! It really did :) Keep up the great content!
Really interested to see this as I was part of the original development team back in the early 1980’s. I was one of two Industrial designers, responsible for the aesthetic and ergonomic design of products.
The Tatung Einstein (pronounced ‘TaT Ung’ not taytung) was designed in Telford UK and built in Taiwan. Tatung had originally bought out Decca Television in 1982 and had originally operated from two sites, the Hospital Street development laboratory and factory in Bridgnorth, Shropshire and a development laboratory at Clayton outside Bradford. Clayton was a satellite operation of some 15-20 mechanical and electrical engineers. There was a lot of political rivalry between the two sites, but eventually both relocated to Stafford Park 10 in Telford.
The original model was designed to carry a matching monitor, that’s why the footprint was so large. Not being a computer user at the time, I believe however that it was quite a good, if somewhat expensive, product.
The name of the unit ‘Einstein’ was an interesting development in itself. At Tatung, each department had English management but also a Chinese manager, so there was a fair amount of duplication. When major meetings took place, every senior manager in the company, with their Chinese counterparts, would attend. So when a new product development was in process, for example, even the site and HR managers were there, imparting their wisdom. Unsurprisingly, the meetings were often rather drawn out. There could be 30+ people in the room and it was a standing comment among the lesser ranks about how much the meetings would be costing.
At the time, mid 80’s, there were various computer brands emerging and there was a noticeable fruit theme; Apple, Apricot… and my boss suggested Banana! Apparent bananas were regarded as desirable fruit in Taiwan, but the cross cultural mis-alignment of the ‘Tatung Banana’ was missed, but however much appreciated by 50% of the meeting. There was also a suggestion following the theme of the BBC Acorn, and that was for the Tatung Conker (not conquer, which would have been a less comical fit).
Eventually the meeting decided on Einstein and an agency was briefed to develop the packaging. The final artwork for the box was duly prepared, but looked more like Lenny the Lion, a ventriloquist’s doll character from 1960’s children’s TV. What fun we had!
Wonderful, thanks for your background. The Einstein is one of my favourite machines and information like this adds so much to the story.
It's probably a good job it didn't end up being the Banana, I shudder to think about the jokes :)
Grinning ready your reply and information, I had one of these that was a package deal with a TV or sky subscription in the very early days, playing gronks was amazing in the day, after my pit shut in co.durham i moved to Belgium and eventually got a nice job offer at Brintons carpets Telford! and the company relocated me to Woodside LOL eventually, funny seeing the tatung factory there and always wondered
I remember asking my mum for a computer in the late 80s. I was too young to know much about them though. She dutifully looked at ads in the local paper, went out and come back with this. Like most kids I wanted games so it didn't take long for me to realise she'd made an horrendous error.
I can imagine most branches of WHSmiths didn't have a great deal in stock for it
That one line polygon command to generate lines onto the screen like an old school screen saver instead of the multi line equivalent in basic blew my mind.
I bought mine and a monitor to go with it for about £900 if I remember correctly. I bought a Juki daisywheel printer. I just loved it. Games were hard to come by but there was quite a lot of users that became useful, The games I enjoyed the most were the Infocom text adventures of which I had most of them. At one time the Infocom adventures cost around £40,,,,, but they began to offer them at around £15 to £20, which, in those days was a stupid amount for a text game.....My first gae was HHGTTH, I loved it which gave me the impetus to get the others...... happy times
I think the problem with the A button was due to the fact that it was a special key for that game, you can see it when screen flips over, it says A to abort or something like that. That's why you couldn't redefine the key to that one. Great video by the way!
I learnt how to program on this machine . The BASIC language was very forgiving, then I added a bit of machine code ( MON80 I think ). Made a version of asteroids which was stupidly fast. At the time this was a great piece of kit for programming.
Picked up one if these In the 90's from a car boot sale, probably for around £10, didn't pay much more for computers back then. Been in a large plastic trunk with a lot of other old computers since then. Been moving house, so have been fixing out my collection. Had a few games disc's and a joystick. Plugged it in tonight and ran no problems. Had thought the drive belt may have perished but load some games no problem. Very well built bit of kit.👍👍
I didn't know about them at all, another random purchase. Astonishing machines though.
Back in the early 80's I was given one of these for completing an in house computer course at a company called Factron Schlumberger in Dorset. Great PC, spent ages playing Elite, Chucky egg & Quogo, not much programming though :-)
Thanks Nigel, I always love hearing stories about people who actually used these machines at the time. Yeah I guess we always talk about development on a lot of these machines, but if we're honest it was mostly about the games :)
I had a go on one of these on Friday 13th at that Cambridge Museum!
Chuckie Egg! The Birdie Song is still BIG in France. Gets played at parties ALL the time.
Sound level is fine. It's a noisy beast even so, with a nice "hitting a big bamboo" sound for the walking.
Interesting to hear about the development history, as a dev machine for the Speccy!
Just bought a tc01. I've got to look into putting a gotek in it though. Any resources/info available to help with this please?
Very good and informative video.
This computer could have been competitive with the Apple II. You would think with the large case and internal power supply, that they would have put an internal expansion slot. Had they done that, it could have been the Apple II of the UK. 500 Pounds is way less than an Apple II and with slots could have offered the expandability of the Apple II.
But as it is, I don't know how they thought this could compete with anything. It is too much money for the average person and lacks the expandability needed for business.
I had one of these back in the day. There is a volume knob on the side to quieten down the internal speaker.
I remember having problems with the joystick port on mine. And the TV cable port. Had to solder a resistor back on the board
Yep, found the volume AFTER playing the games because I recorded everything out of order :D
I had one of these too, it was top dog and more useful than the competition with the 80 colunm card fitted on the back
It is a lovely machine, one of my favourites
Great machine - only have the PSU and floppy from it left and maybe a copule of disks/games. It replaced my Speccy 48K but sadly mine got smoked somehow (I think it was a lightning strike) but I have fond memories of it including hacking a printer 'driver' for an OKI 182 printer (it never did line feeds properly). Never realised it's impact on the gaming world TBH. I think 'Crystal Basic' came from somewhere near me (in Torquay?) and I remember doing a pixel art image of Albert for the local Einstein fanclub
Thanks Paul. Shame to hear about the destruction of your Einstein, but it's always nice to hear experiences from the time.
Taking me back to my youth! I got one of these with the matching monitor one Christmas! I loved playing the Konami 5 game disc that came with it! Could never find any other games for it. Didn’t know it was popular with devs! Ahh the memories....
It adds a lot to the videos when people share their own experiences and i'm glad we could tell you something new too :)
Re.Enthused it was a lonely time when I owned my Einstein. All my friends had Spectrums or C64’s. I was totally spoiled that Christmas. I got the Einstein and monitor then an afternoon suprise of a Raleigh computer bike! My parents had a good year I think! Thanks for the video!
@@trzarector Blimey, I am jealous about the Raleigh
@@ReEnthused I still have both!!! Raleigh Vektor! so 80's so cool!
Great video - very cool to see this in action. Do you happen to know if there are any schematics for it available online?
Thanks, there are some schematics online as part of the technical manuals from here: www.tatungeinstein.co.uk/front/mans.htm
@@ReEnthused Thank you so much - that's perfect.
Great computer, I played many MSX Konami games on Einstein, is amazing.
Quite a powerful computer the TC01 (Tatung Einstein) it was actually the first computer I ever learnt to properly program, I saw a video recently regarding OCEAN software and yes they used the EInstein to port there titles over to different Z80 platforms back then. I had two Einsteins one in the 1980s and again the 2000s - I bought my first in 1988 from Dixons for only £129.99 it was reduced from £499.99 which was the retail introduction price and thats the machine I started my journey into developing software with 8 bit systems, eventually I had to sell the system around 1996 due to various issues in my life! anyway I always loved the computer so I kept a close eye for another on Ebay .. and around 2007 I got lucky .. I managed to get a brand new one off Ebay for £49.99 .. in its box still with the original receipt priced at £499.99 with boot disks and various manuals not the Xtal BASIC though! but I did buy that book later to complete the package, the box was a little tatty but the computer had never been used and is in mint condition only had to re-sit the space bar as it came off its position it's rom was Xtal MOS 1.21 which could go up to 2.1.1 and I did have a few old 3" CFF disks which were bootable and it all worked perfectly!! so happy :D .. I still have the computer in a box along with all my old other computers including a few other old stuff.. anyway there at my daughters house in UK and I now live in the Philippines but certainly planning visit to get them back and bring them here!! good video nice to see people are still using them makes a change from the Sinclair Spectrum, C64 ect or the emulated crap being produced now!... sick of the Spectrum Next lol you cannot recreate something thats a classic but ill let you off with a go tech drive lol -- in addition note the rom's MOS 2.11 which was the machine level editor had to write everything in HEX from letter based commands such as D for dissassemble and M for Modify ... I remember writing a Z80 assembler in that MOS so that I could use Z80 commands instead of HEX! and wrote it to a disk which actually was better than Zeap which was another Z80 assembler back then ... but writing all the coding in HEX was nightmare lol and then would port applications to CPC and managed to link CPC disks with the Einstein so I could access CP/M files back then ... one of the best computers I ever had definitely the best choice at time .. because back in the 1980s it was a choice between the MSX, EINSTEIN & SINCLAIR QL ... anyway the QL was £119 and the MSX £169 but I was drawn more to the Einstein so ... glad i did ! the QL was over hyped and the MSX well I ended up with a few donated to me back when i was programming .. LOL oh on Chuckie Egg if you hold all redefined keys at same time .. it has to be perfect you can jump the level :D LOL
Thanks for you memories. Yes even though I was a Speccy fanatic at the time I never heard of the Einstein until much later, finding out the impact it had on the UK games industry was an absolute shock. Plus it is a fantastic machine with incredible build quality
My dad got same discount at Dixons too and I also learnt programming in this platform. And many hours spent on lazy Jones, chucky Egg and let flicks
awesome
I think Raff Cecco may have used one of these for developing his early games.
I believe you could be right!
Many hours if fun, lazy Jones anyone?
These Machines are REALLY rare and expensive now! Only 50,000 made!!
The good thing about them is that they seem to be incredibly reliable and they're certainly well built. So still a few available to buy
@@ReEnthused None on eBay. Only parts. Mostly in hands of collectors now. Boy are these things super rare and their prices shot up now. Like gold dust to collectors like the Amstrad CPC664 , only 10,000 ever made. These can go for £3000 plus!
why you giggle so much.. anyways great review
I'm just happy in my work :)
Time Trap was always good fun on this machine, but you died too easily..
Why, exactly do you think this machine having a proper power supply, a power switch, its proper keyboard and cord is so funny? What is actually funny is just how cheaply and poorly many of the 8 bit computers were built. The spectrum didn't even have an on/off switch. Why, exactly is a" big" (the only size that will plug into a UK mains socket) power cord "retro?" Is your toaster "retro" because it has a "big" UK style plug?
The general move to external power supplies is awful. They get lost. They are more cheaply made. ANYTHING that plugs into the wall should have an internal transformer (if it needs one). If it can run on both batteries and the mains, portable stereos figured this out many decades ago with the figure 8 plug.
I didn’t find it funny, I found it fascinating. This is one of my favourite machines - any amusement you may have detected is based on how much better built this was than the other machines we had available in the UK