Setting Up MAME to Emulate the Tatung Einstein

Setting Up MAME to Emulate the Tatung Einstein

Introduction

MAME is currently the only emulator that supports the Tatung Einstein, and it does a genuinely thorough job of it - full Z80A CPU emulation, the Einstein's own DOS/MOS operating system, both floppy drives, and even the rarer Einstein 256. This guide walks through installing and configuring MAME to boot the Einstein and load a disk image on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

What you'll need

• MAME itself (free, open source).
• The Einstein "system ROM" - a small archive called einstein.zip containing the machine's boot ROM. MAME cannot emulate the Einstein without it. Download it from our Einstein System ROM entry.
• A disk image to boot - any .dsk file from our Downloads library.

1. Install MAME

macOS

The simplest route is Homebrew. If you don't already have it, install it from brew.sh, then run:

brew install mame

This pulls in MAME and everything it needs and puts a mame command on your path.

Windows

Download the latest Windows binary archive from the official MAME site (mamedev.org) and extract it to a folder of your choice - there's no installer, it's a self-contained folder containing mame.exe. Run it from Command Prompt or PowerShell.

Linux

Most distributions package MAME. On Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install mame. On Fedora: sudo dnf install mame. If your distribution's version is old, you can also download a pre-built binary or build from source from MAME's own GitHub repository.

2. Set up the ROMs folder

MAME needs to find einstein.zip in one of its ROM search paths - and the file needs to stay zipped, don't extract it.

• Portable installs (Windows, or a manually-downloaded macOS/Linux build): create a roms folder next to the mame/mame.exe executable if one doesn't already exist, then drop einstein.zip straight into it.
• Package-manager installs (Homebrew, apt, dnf): MAME usually looks in ~/.mame/roms/ or a shared system path such as /usr/share/mame/roms/. Run mame -showconfig to see exactly where it's looking, and put einstein.zip there.

You can generate a configuration file at any time with mame -createconfig, which writes a mame.ini you can edit - its rompath line controls where MAME looks for ROMs, and can be pointed anywhere convenient.

Once einstein.zip is in place, verify it's correctly recognised:

mame einstein -verifyroms

If it doesn't report the set as good, double-check you haven't accidentally renamed or extracted the archive.

3. Boot the Einstein and load a disk

Put the .dsk file you want to run somewhere handy, then from a terminal/Command Prompt in that folder run:

mame einstein -window -flop1 GAMENAME.dsk

-flop1 mounts the image in the Einstein's first floppy drive on startup, and -window keeps MAME in a resizable window rather than fullscreen (drop it if you'd rather go fullscreen). The machine boots straight into DOS/MOS with the disk already in the drive - type DIR to see what's on it, then run the program's own load command if it doesn't boot automatically.

Prefer not to use the command line? Launch MAME on its own (mame einstein), and once it's running press Tab to open MAME's menu, then choose File Manager to mount a disk image into Floppy Disk #1 without touching a terminal at all.

4. Typing on the emulated keyboard

The Einstein's keyboard layout doesn't map cleanly onto a modern one key-for-key. Add -natural to your command line (e.g. mame einstein -natural -flop1 GAMENAME.dsk) and MAME will translate what you type on your real keyboard into the correct Einstein keystrokes - far less fiddly than MAME's default raw input for anything text-heavy, like BASIC programming or a word processor.

The Einstein 256

The later, black-cased Einstein 256 has its own MAME driver, since it uses a different (Yamaha V9938) video chip. Swap einstein for einst256 in any of the commands above - e.g. mame einst256 -flop1 GAMENAME.dsk - and MAME emulates the 256 instead of the original TC-01. Disk images made for the 256 (our "Original Game 256" category) should be run this way rather than under the plain einstein driver.

Troubleshooting

• MAME reports the ROM set as bad or missing - make sure einstein.zip is sitting directly inside a folder on MAME's rompath, and that it's still a .zip, not extracted or renamed.
• Nothing happens when the disk boots - not every Einstein disk auto-boots into a program. Type DIR at the DOS/MOS prompt to see what's on it, then run the relevant file directly.
• Keyboard input looks wrong - see the -natural tip above.
• Still stuck - get in touch and we'll help sort it out.