While testing a new deleted-file recovery feature in Einstein Disc Tools, we stumbled onto a small piece of the Einstein's early history: 1984 builds of two of the TC01 System Master programs that predate every copy in our archive.
They were hiding on a second-hand, non-commercial disc. Its live contents were the commercial adventure Cursed Chambers, but before that, someone had used the disc to hold Tatung's own System Master games - Hangman, Mastermind, Snakes, Picture Pen, the Keyboard Trainer and more - then deleted them and copied the adventure over the top.
On the Einstein, deleting a file barely touches the disc: the directory entry's first byte is changed to mark the slot free, and nothing else. The file's name, size and data all remain until the space is needed again. That is exactly what our new einstein_dsk_recover tool reads back, and on this disc most of the deleted games were completely intact.
Two of the recovered games turned out to be older builds than the ones on the System Master we hold:
The other recovered games - Mastermind, Snakes and Picture Pen - proved byte-identical to the versions we already have.
What makes this interesting is that every game on the disc is dated to a tight window in mid-June 1984: a coherent, self-consistent snapshot, and earlier than the game builds on any System Master in our collection. The master we hold appears to be a later revision - the one usually catalogued as v1.1. These earlier builds are just what you would expect to find on an earlier System Master, quite possibly the v1.0 we have long been trying to track down.
To be clear, this disc is not a System Master itself; it only ever held the games, copied and then deleted. So it does not hand us the v1.0 master - but it does preserve two of its most likely game builds, and it is the closest we have come. If you own an early Einstein system disc, especially one that might pre-date 1985, please get in touch through our Contact page.
The two earlier builds are now in the download library, clearly labelled by version and date so they are not confused with the later System Master copies: Hangman (V008, 1984) and Keyboard Trainer (V009, 1984). Each is a standard Einstein disc image holding the Xtal BASIC program.
We have barely begun a proper sweep of our disc images for deleted files, and this first look has already turned up plenty worth a closer read. More to come.
