On Sun, Dec 24, 2017 at 03:49:11PM -0500, william degnan via cctalk wrote: Hi, I can see that nobody gave longer answer, so I guess I may try. tl,dr - I am not going to be helpfull beyond writing this email, because I am way too newbie to consider engaging myself into this, and I am a bit too loaded to learn new things in comfortable setting while a sh*tload cries for my attention... So now when we all know what my opinion is worth, here you are. SM EVM (?? ???) was name given to few lines of clones (or if you prefer, hardware emulators) of some Western computers made by Soviet Union (and later few more countries of Soviet block - like, Poland, Hungary, Cuba, Bulgaria, East Germany/German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia - I am not sure about Romania, but otherwise everybody has been involved, apparently). There were three lines (or four), which emulated the following families [1][2]: - HP 2000 - PDP11 (beyond SM EVM, there were few other projects for cloning those) - VAX (11/730 etc) - Intel 8080 up to 80386 Yours belongs to the first line, and seems to be a part of bigger system [3]. A complete system could look more like [4] (please note, a programming-capable astronomer is not included in a package) or [5]. On [1] they claim "???? ????????? ????????? ?? ????????? ?????????? ????" which (AFAICT) means they were based on soviet-made electronics, thus I would not count on them being able to get plugged with western-made modules (like, disks, floppies, memory banks) and work without problem. Likewise, while it is possible to do various great projects with soviet hardware, say in this (smaller) case [6], where a programmable calculator Elektronika MK-85 (??????????? ??-85) is being retrofitted with bigger RAM and ROM, which are more or less western and contemporary, but a CPU itself is soviet made and PDP-11 compatible. There is no close, drop-in replacement, however - as claimed by [7] [8], one of the closest is said to be DEC T11 cpu - so once this cpu goes, I guess the calculator is gone, too. The hardware was being accompanied with software. I guess it was possible to run western "binaries" (unclear - I had no time to dive deeper, there are mentions of running things like FOCAL, without details - and if so, how the software was being transferred onto soviet computer, did they plugged a floppy/tapereader in? or what). There were also clones of operating systems, like quite a few made of RT11, with mods allowing to use cyrillic alongside latin script [9]. So I think knowing Russian is a must for your type of project, like William mentioned (I know it well enough to read without GTrnaslator, but I have to make up unknown words from the context, which slows me down quite much, but learning hurts, so I should rejoice). And knowing electronics to the point of being adventurous is probably a must too. In case the computer was manufactured in another country, I am afraid manuals would be in a language of that country (i.e., Polish, Spanish, Hungarian and so on), so that means another language. As of parts, I think most manufacturing facilities went tits up. If there are some still in business, and they keep servicing old HW (big if, but it seems at least in Russia, some of those consoles are still blinking), then I do not think they have intention to sell on civilian market. This means (murky) adventure(s) and I have no info. Without having abovementioned properties, I think the PITA is going to kill you. I might also be wrong, see above, and more above. Those computers, while not a secret, were almost totally unknown to me, until I started hitting wikipedia, decades later. So finding anything related is going to be hard. Just MHO. I recall reading about soviet computer once, short article with small photo - in those days of Amiga craze, such constructs were no sexy at all. And much more expensive than anything I might be buying here in Poland - I think they were made to sell for industry, mining, production lines, sometimes military, thus a teenager had no business to know about such things. Adults only market. Which is why I happen to know Atari 800xl a bit better than Polish Odra 1300. Sources: [1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/??_??? [2] (sptth)://www.(yabe).com/itm/USSR-Soviet-SM-EVM-A131-10-CPU-OPERATING-CONTRO… To get proper url, reverse words in parentheses. [3] http://oldpc.su/pc/sm/sm.html [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ESO_Hewlett_Packard_2116_minicomputer.jpg [5] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Komputery_PRS4_.jpg [6] http://www.mk85.republika.pl/sprzet.htm [7] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/???????????_??-85 [8] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/1801BMx [9] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT-11#?????_?_???? Happy New Year, everybody. -- Regards, Tomasz Rola -- ** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. ** ** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home ** ** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... ** ** ** ** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com **