The Tatung Einstein 256

The Tatung 256 was the follow on to the TC-01 it was launched at the PCW show at Olympia in September 1986. As the review in the Einstein user said it was launched while the home computer market was in the Doldrums, this could be why it was not the success it should have been.

As the name suggests the Einstein 256 has 256K of RAM the memory is partitioned into 64K of CPU memory 192K of video RAM (VRAM) The Large amount of VRAM  and the V9938 MSX 2 display chip means that the 256 is capable of very impressive graphics for this reason the 256 came with a dedicated monitor.

The machine is built round the Z80 running at 4MHz and as previously mentioned 256K of RAM, it has 7 graphics modes the highest of which  has a resolution of 512 x 424. The text modes allow 40 or 80 columns in up to 512 colours. The machine has a Matsushita EME-150 3" disc drive with a formatted capacity of 376K. there are a number of I/O ports including Serial, Parallel , user, two joystick, cassette and the VAMP which is a combined port for Video Mouse and Light pen.

The Master disc supplied with the computer contains the BASIC, DOS, utilities, demonstration programs and five arcade games.

Although the machine came with a 14" Colour monitor which supplied the power for the computer there was plans for a Power supply unit, I am not sure whether this was a third party item or not.