New to the Tatung Einstein? This page is the map. Everything it points at is a guide, course or download on this site.
Start with one question: do you have a real Einstein, or not? If you do not, you can be running Einstein software in about five minutes and it costs nothing. If you do, skip ahead to the hardware section.
Emulation is the quickest way in, and there are two good options.
MAME runs on macOS, Windows and Linux, and emulates both the TC01 and the 256. Our guide Setting Up MAME to Emulate the Tatung Einstein walks through installing it. Albert is a Windows only alternative that is quicker to set up and has a debugger built around the machine's annotated firmware; see Albert: Running the Einstein on Windows.
Either way you need two things: the machine's ROM, from the Einstein System ROM download, and something to load.
For that something, a good first disc is the TC01 System Master, the disc that came with every machine. Our guide The TC01 System Master Disc explains what is on it and how to run each program. After that, help yourself to the Downloads library, or take the lot at once: the whole software library is one archive of 239 files, 86 MB.
A booted disc usually leaves you at a prompt reading 0:. That is the disc operating system waiting for a command. DIR lists what is on the disc. To start a program you type its name, but only programs ending .COM will run that way: a .XBS file is an Xtal BASIC program, so you type XBAS first to get into BASIC, then LOAD "NAME" and RUN.
On a real machine, Ctrl and BREAK together is how you start a disc that was put in after switching on. Under MAME the BREAK key does nothing, so reset the machine instead; in Albert, use Machine then Boot disc.
The Tatung Einstein TC01 was launched in 1984 by the British arm of Tatung, a Taiwanese electronics company. It was unusual for a home computer of its time: a Z80 processor, a built in 3 inch floppy disc drive, a TMS9929 video chip with hardware sprites, and a disc operating system in ROM, all in one case. Games looked and moved like MSX titles, while the disc system made it a credible small business machine.
A later model, the Einstein 256, added more memory and a different video chip and is not fully compatible with the TC01, so it helps to know which one you have or are emulating. The Introduction Manual and the Tatung 256 Manual are both in the library.
The same disc images work on real hardware, once you can get them onto something the machine will read.
Most Einsteins still in use have had the original 3 inch drive replaced with a Gotek, a small unit that reads disc images from a USB stick. We do not have a guide to fitting and configuring one yet; if you have done it and would write it up, please get in touch.
If your original drives still work, How to Load a Disk into the Disk Drive covers the basics and How to Add a Second Disk Drive takes it further. For getting a picture onto a modern screen, see Connecting the Einstein to a TV.
The community has also built modern add ons: the EinsDein SD card interface, which is the other common way to get software onto a real machine, a PS/2 keyboard adapter, and a remade TC01 motherboard for machines beyond repair.
Einstein software is distributed as disc images: files ending .dsk that hold the contents of one floppy. Every game, application and utility in the library comes as one. You will also meet .mfi, which MAME can write changes back to, and .scp, a flux level preservation master. Our guide DSK, MFI and SCP: Which Disc Image Do I Need? explains which you want.
The Einstein's disc format is a close relative of CP/M, and Discs, DOS and CP/M on the Einstein explains how a disc is organised and what the DOS commands do. To move your own files onto a disc image, or get files off one, the Einstein Disc Tools are Python scripts that create, fill, extract and check .dsk images on any modern computer. The MOS DOS Reference Manual is the original documentation for the operating system itself.
If you want to program the Einstein, start with the Z80 Assembly for the Tatung Einstein course. It assumes no prior assembly knowledge and takes you from your first instruction to a complete game, with every fact verified on the machine rather than copied from an old manual. Its second lesson sets up the toolchain, built around our VS Code extension, which assembles your code and loads it straight into a running MAME with one click.
Prefer BASIC? The Einstein shipped with Xtal BASIC, and our Xtal BASIC course teaches it from the beginning, building a platform game; the BBC BASIC course teaches the BBC BASIC that also ran on the machine. Our guide BASIC on the Einstein: Which Version Is Which sorts out the machine's BASICs and their manuals, and CVBasic is a modern BASIC compiler that also targets it.
Tatung and a handful of publishers wrote good introductions at the time, and the library has them as PDFs. The Einstein Primer is the gentlest start, an illustrated beginner's guide to the hardware, the peripherals and BASIC. The DOS/MOS Introduction is Tatung's own explanation of the disc system and its commands. The Einstein Reference Card is the one page cheat sheet to keep beside you.
When you want to go deeper, The Source is a complete programming manual covering BASIC, Z80 assembly, graphics, sound and sprites, and the Einstein Compendium collects programs, utilities and technical notes from the machine's user community. Everything else under Book and Manual in the Downloads library is there when you need it.
Original Einstein discs are forty years old and will not last forever. If you have some, a Greaseweazle or SuperCard Pro can read them at the flux level, and the Einstein Disc Tools turn those dumps into images MAME can boot and files you can extract. If you find software that is not in the library yet, we would like to hear about it.
The Community page introduces the people who write for the site and lists other places Einstein owners gather. The News section carries new releases, ports and finds. And if you have a question, a disc, or a correction, the Contact page reaches us directly.
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