History of computer hardware in Soviet Bloc countries
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The history of computing hardware in former Soviet Bloc is somewhat different from that of Western countries. Since Communist party propaganda maintained that western construction was next to useless, and the West had strict export restrictions on this technology, everything had to be constructed from scratch or tacitly studied and reproduced.
This led to adaptations such as the use of metric inches when interpreting Western blueprints.
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[edit] Soviet Computers
[edit] MESM
One of the first universally programmable computers in continental Europe was created by a team of scientists under the direction of Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev from Kiev Institute of Electrotechnology, Soviet Union (now Ukraine).
The computer MESM (МЭСМ, Малая Электронно-Счетная Машина, Small Electronic Calculating Machine) became operational in 1950. It had about 6,000 vacuum tubes and consumed 25 kW of power. It could perform approximately 3,000 operations per second.
[edit] Strela
The Strela computer 1953–1956, used 43-bit floating point words, with a signed 35-bit mantissa and a signed 6-bit exponent.
Seven Strelas were manufactured in Moscow by a factory in the Ministry of Instrument Making and Automation Means of the USSR; they were the primary debugging platforms for computing, the most productive computers in the Soviet Union during this period. Strelas could process 2000 instructions per second. The last version of Strela used a 4096-word magnetic drum, rotating at 6000 rpm.
[edit] Polish Computers
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[edit] Odra
One of the original constructions were the first Odra computers. They were manufactured in Wrocław, Poland (the brand name comes from the Odra River that flows through the city of Wrocław) and exported to other communist countries. The production started in 1959–1960; the computers were built at the Elwro manufacturing plant, which was closed in 1989.
The last series of Odra computers, so called Odra 1300, consisted of three models: Odra 1304, Odra 1305, and Odra 1325. Although the hardware was developed by Polish teams, the software the above machines were using was provided by a British company ICL (ICL 1900 compatible).
[edit] East German Computers
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[edit] Robotron and ESER
In East Germany the main manufacturer of computer hardware was Robotron. They were involved in the ESER development of a standard across Comecon countries.
[edit] Mikroelektronik
Another important Kombinat beneath Robotron was the Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt. For example, it manufactured integrated circuits and also some series of computers.
[edit] Bulgarian Computers
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In the 1980s Bulgaria manufactured computers according to an agreement within the COMECON:
- Mainframes: IZOT series and ES EVM series (abbreviation from Edinnaya Sistema Elektronno Vichislitelnih Machin, or Unified Computer System — created in 1969 by USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, GDR, Poland and Czechoslovakia).
- Personal computers: IMKO, Pravetz-82/8M/8A/8E/8C/8D — an 8-bit machine, based on Bulgarian-made 6502 variants, IZOT 1030 — based on Czech-made U880 (a Z80A clone), Pravetz-16/16A/16H/286 (16-bit) — based on Bulgarian clones of 8086/186/286.
For example, Pravetz-8M featured two processors (primary: Bulgarian-made 6502 at 1.018 MHz, secondary: Z80A at 4 MHz), 64KB DRAM and 16KB EPROM.
The largest computer factory was some 60 km from Sofia, in Pravetz. Another big facility was plant "Electronika" in Sofia. Smaller plants throughout the country produced monitors and peripherals, notably DZU (Diskovi Zapametyavashti Ustroistva — Disk Memory Devices) — Stara Zagora made hard disks for mainframes and personal computers.
At its peak, Bulgaria supplied 40 percent of the computers in COMECON. The electronics industry employed 300,000 workers, and it generated 8 billion rubles a year (US$13.3 billion). Since the democratic changes in 1989 and the subsequent chaotic political and economic conditions, the once blooming Bulgarian computer industry was allowed to disintegrate almost completely.
[edit] See also
- History of computing hardware
- List of Soviet computer systems
- BESM
- HRS-100 — a hybrid computer jointly designed by engineers from USSR and Mihajlo Pupin Institute and deployed in Russian Academy of Sciences in 1971.
[edit] External links
- Pioneers of Soviet Computing
- Bulgarian Computers
- Bulgarian Computers Information File
- Steal The Best, a microphotography of a Digital CVAX microprocessor used in the MicroVAX 3000 and MicroVAX 6200 series. It contains "VAX — when you care enough to steal the very best" translated in broken Russian as a message to Soviet reverse engineers.
- Soviet Block Computers with references to Romania
- Computing in East Germany (in German)
| List of Soviet computer systems |
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| A | Agat | Aragats | Argon | ATM Turbo | BESM | Besta | Dnepr | Dubna 48K | Elbrus | Elektronika (DVK | Electronika BK-0010 | UKNC | Electronika 60 |Electronika 85 | Electronika SS BIS) | ES EVM | ES PEVM | Hobbit | Iskra | Irisha | Kiev | KVM-1 | Korvet | M-1 | M | MESM | Micro-80 | Microsha | Minsk | Mir | Nairi | Orion-128 | Pentagon | Poisk | Promin | PS-2000, PS-3000 | Razdan | Radon | Radio-86RK | Scorpion | Setun | SM EVM | Sneg | Specialist | Strela | SVS | TsUM-1 | UM | Ural | Vector-06C | Vesna |
