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News & Updates

Releases, guides, restorations and community finds from around the Tatung Einstein.

Pete Morris in his radio shack, radio equipment on the wall behind him and the computers on the desk in front

Every Byte Was Sacred: Pete Morris Remembers Tatung

October 8, 2026

The man who wrote Pete's Utilities worked at Tatung UK. Forty years on he got in touch, and sent us looking at the last sector of every System Master.

The Dragon's Lair title screen on the Tatung Einstein, drawn from the disc's decrypted data

A Hacker's Challenge Hidden in Dragon's Lair for Forty Years

October 2, 2026

The Einstein 256 disc of Dragon's Lair hides a message in its sector numbers, setting three Tolkien questions for anyone who got that far. We found all three answers, and then found the same loader on three more games.

The early Castle Quest's title screen on a grey background

Four Early Demo Versions Found on a Hand Labelled Castle Quest Disc

September 26, 2026

A plain disc in a Kuma Castle Quest case held 1984 demonstration copies of Castle Quest, Quest, Quadrax and Pelmanism, now in the library.

Mouse Art on the Tatung Einstein showing one of the pictures supplied on its disc: an archer drawing a bow beside a large red tree in a forest, framed by Mouse Art's pattern and tool icons

Wait, what? The Einstein had a mouse?

September 26, 2026

The Einstein never came with a mouse, but it could have one: EMSOFT's Mouse Art put one on the user port. We have it working in MAME, driven by the mouse on your desk.

The two recovered 1984 builds running on the Tatung Einstein: Hangman's gallows and castle with a word to guess, and the Keyboard Trainer's first typing test

1984 builds of two System Master games recovered from a deleted disc

September 24, 2026

Earlier versions of Hangman and the Keyboard Trainer, deleted and long buried on a reused Cursed Chambers disc, brought back with our new recovery tool - and quite possibly a trace of the System Master v1.0 we have been looking for.

The recovered GOLF game running on the Tatung Einstein: the title screen crediting MicroBurger UK and N.R.Murgatroyd, the instructions, the first tee at 183 yards with the strength selector, and the golfer being warned about the college fence

The Author Who Found His Games

September 24, 2026

Neil Murgatroyd wrote the 1987 MicroBurger sports compilation on his Einstein, sold the machine in the 1990s, and spent twenty years looking for his programs. He found them here. Then the disc image turned out to hold one more.

Manic Miner on the Einstein: the title screen, an XtalDOS DIR listing showing a file with no name, the original disc, and the colour matrix of the Software Protection Code sheet

What the Manic Miner Master Disc Left Behind

September 23, 2026

A flux dump of an original Einstein Manic Miner disc turned up a deleted Jet Set Willy and two unreleased FAST builds, all now in the library with their protection intact.

Four screens of 1D Life on the Tatung Einstein: colonies of asterisks growing, weaving and dying out down the screen

Life in One Dimension: L. Boffin Writes C for the Einstein

September 20, 2026

A new name on the site. L. Boffin has brought Life in one dimension to the Einstein in C, and written up the whole route from z88dk to a booting disc so anyone else can follow it.

The Xtal BASIC Compiler on the Einstein: XC compiling a program, Mouse In A Hole running compiled, the Family fun pack's compiled menu, and Solo Software's Gold Miner

The Xtal BASIC Compiler: Twice the Speed Without Leaving BASIC

September 19, 2026

In 1987 Crystal Research released a compiler for the Einstein's own BASIC. We ran it on our course's platform game and it went twice as fast - and it is now on the Xtal BASIC course disc.