Einstein as a cross-development platform

[decle]

Hi,

I'm doing some research into the use of the Einstein 8-bit machines as a cross-development platform for the Spectrum, CPC, etc back in the day, with a view to possibly constructing a museum exhibit to demonstrate how this was done.

I've seen mention of the Einstein being used for this purpose in several places, along with some high-level descriptions, for example this one from deanb01's introduction on this forum:

I used Tatung Einstein's for a few years as a games developer in the North West back in the late 80s, early 90s, working at a company called Software Creations, using Mike Webb's excellent Z80 Assembler to write the game code on the Tatung, and squirting the assembled binary down to the target machine (Amstrad CPC or Spectrum) to test over the parallel port.

I was wondering if anyone can provide some more technical details of the hardware and software used (unfortunately as a new user I can't PM Dean - yet), and any opinion as to whether it might make an interesting subject for an exhibit.


Cheers

decle

[MikeDHalliday]

Check out Kevin Edwards on X (Formally Twitter) - A while back, he had examples of cross compiling running and has imaged many of Tim and Mike Follins 3" disks from back in the day.

No examples of it 'squirting' to the target machine unfortunately.

[decle]

Cool, thanks. I also found this page (on your site ) which has some high level descriptions that are backed by contemporary magazine articles.

I'm hoping to get the next level of detail, so that we can assess what would be required to put together something representative, and whether it could be made interesting for visitors.

[vanpeebles]

I think theres interviews online with Matthew Smith talking about using it to develop games.

[MikeDHalliday]

Found this on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/zxspectrum/com ... ake_games/

[deanb01]

Hi,

I'm doing some research into the use of the Einstein 8-bit machines as a cross-development platform for the Spectrum, CPC, etc back in the day, with a view to possibly constructing a museum exhibit to demonstrate how this was done.

I've seen mention of the Einstein being used for this purpose in several places, along with some high-level descriptions, for example this one from deanb01's introduction on this forum:

I used Tatung Einstein's for a few years as a games developer in the North West back in the late 80s, early 90s, working at a company called Software Creations, using Mike Webb's excellent Z80 Assembler to write the game code on the Tatung, and squirting the assembled binary down to the target machine (Amstrad CPC or Spectrum) to test over the parallel port.

I was wondering if anyone can provide some more technical details of the hardware and software used (unfortunately as a new user I can't PM Dean - yet), and any opinion as to whether it might make an interesting subject for an exhibit.

Cheers

decle

Hi Decle,

The development system was a Tatung TC-01. In addition to the standard internal 3" drive (maybe a second drive was fitted in some) there was an external volatile RAM drive that plugged into the back of the unit (can't remember which port, sorry).

The target system was connected to the Tatung either by the serial port, or on later revisions, via the parallel port. For the target machines with no parallel port (Spectrum/Amstrad) there was a parallel board with a PIO chip on it that plugged into the back of the expansion port. A ribbon cable connected the target to the Einstein.

The target system had a small boot loader that would load from cassette / disk / microdrive into memory (no more than a few dozen bytes). This would wait for data from the Tatung. The assembler (written by either Ste Ruddy or Mike Webb) would assemble the code on the Tatung, and squirt the resultant object file to the target machine.

There was no debugging from the Tatung at that point, i.e. single-step, breakpoints.

There are links here for sample source files I've pulled from the disks Tim Follin gave me (I've subsequently loaned them to Kevin Edwards), including raw source files, the assemblers, and detokenised source.

https://github.com/breakintoprogram/archive-follin

Hope that helps.