As some of you will know, my Tatung Einstein broke down last year, right on its 40th anniversary! I was originally looking for a replacement motherboard, but decided eventually to look for a competent repair shop to bring my old childhood friend back to life.
This is when I found Mark at Rude Dog Retros. He has a great passion for computers of the 80's and 90's, and as he puts it on his website, he has lived through that era and has owned almost every computer released during those decades. He has over 20 years of board level repair and diagnostics experience, and he can repair just about anything.
I decided to put him to the test! He was a perfectly pleasant chap to talk to. He has repaired many Tatung Einsteins in the past as I found out. I dropped off the Einstein with him and work was underway. Having diagnosed the fault he established that two multiplexer chips for the RAM were bad, as well as a ROM chip if I remember correctly. He also re-capped the entire Einstein (changed the Electrolytic Capacitors), re-capped the power supply, provided brand new ribbon cables for the dual disk drives, and gave the motherboard a full IPA (isopropyl alcohol) clean. When I received the Einstein back and looked inside, the motherboard looked brand new.
Mark did an amazing job, and from being broken this Tatung Einstein will go on for another 40 years! The price I paid was perfectly acceptable too.
As of writing this, I'm about to deliver another Tatung Einstein that was donated to me for repair to Rude Dog Retros.
If you have a Tatung Einstein, or any other 80s or 90s computer that you need repaired, and just haven't had the motivation to get round to it yet, then I can't recommend Rude Dog Retros enough!
You can visit the Rude Dog Retros website HERE.
Below are some pictures of the repaired Einstein!
MY EINSTEIN HAPPILY PLAYING ELITE LIKE NOTHING EVER HAPPENED
THE CLEANED, RE-CAPPED, AND REPAIRED MOTHERBOARD LOOKING BRAND NEW
THE TWO MULTIPLEXER CHIPS THAT WERE REPLACED - WITH SOCKETS ADDED FOR EASE OF REMOVAL IN FUTURE
THE ROM CHIP (I THINK) - ALSO WITH A SOCKET ADDED