5 ms·
The Soviet 1801VM2 LSI-11 Processor (2021)
- jhallenworld 3y agoIs there a datasheet for these Soviet PDP-11 chips? I mean assuming I want to make something new with it now..
- dmitrygr 3y agohttps://gid.pdp-11.ru/a/mpss/mpss86-04.html https://gid.pdp-11.ru/a/mpss/mpss86-04.html https://gid.pdp-11.ru/a/mpss/mpss84-04.html https://gid.pdp-11.ru/a/mpss/mpss84-04.html
- jhallenworld 3y agoI don't understand the reset sequence of the KM1801VM1 and VM2, but it's clear for the VM3 (it starts at 0173000 or 026 depending on WO pin). It looks like it has status signals so that program and data memory spaces can be split, the English translation has this funny comment: "When working with weapons of mass destruction, system memory is “hidden”, i.e. its addresses in program mode do not occupy RAM address space. "
- dmitrygr 3y agoCan you paste the original russian and i'll try to translate better? i suspect that " weapons of mass destruction" was a mistranslation of an acronym to WMD, which got then expanded
- binarin 3y agoYeah, it should be "single-chip microprocessor" (ОМП / однокристальный микропроцессор).
- kjs3 3y agoMany PDP-11s had "split I&D" (Instruction & Data) capability built into the MMU so you could address 128k memory instead of only 64k. See: https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11_Memory_Management https://gunkies.org/wiki/PDP-11_Memory_Management
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- genman 3y agoThere was this joke at Soviet time, mimicking the usual Soviet propaganda: Soviet microprocessors - the most large microprocessors in the world! They made many clones of Western designs but had also number of original designs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_microprocessors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_microprocessors
- 0xcde4c3db 3y agoI remember reading that some version of the MicroVAX CPU had etched into it, in broken Russian, something approximating "VAX: When you care enough to steal the very best". I'm not sure how many Soviet engineers would have been familiar with the Hallmark commercials to get the joke, though.
- genman 3y agoI think they would have gotten the point without it, given that they were into stealing its design - of course the subtle point might have been not familiar for them.
- IndrekR 3y agoYes, on CVAX: https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html https://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/creatures/pages/russians.html
- thriftwy 3y agoThe broken Russian reads more like an advertisement to buy the real thing. Until you have supplied that quote I had no idea, even though I saw this picture.
- avodonosov 3y agoHm, indeed, can be interpreted this way, if you imagine commas at right places. If you care, enough to steal, the real best. (The word "настоящий" used as the translation of "very" means "real". For the rest we can leave the original english words and with commas even have some similar broken language effect)
- kragen 3y agoelbrus 2000 is real power
- mrweasel 3y agoThe Elbrus 2000 is rather fascinating, but they can't even make them anymore. Perhaps the older models, but the newer ones where all manufactured by TSMC, and Russia doesn't have the ability to create anything below 90nm. There was an article about some Russian bank testing out the e2k, but they reported that the Elbrus-8C, was not acceptable. The 8C is 28nm, so made by TSMC, so even if it could perform it would be available. I'm still curious about the chip though.
- varjag 3y agoI happen to have three of those: one standalone NOS chip and two on Q-Bus SBCs. One however has a crack in its cerdip package. Here's what one of the boards looks like: http://blog.funcall.org/hadrware%20vintage%20pdp/2017/03/14/singleboard-pdp-clone/ http://blog.funcall.org/hadrware%20vintage%20pdp/2017/03/14/... Boards like these were used both in DVK systems and in different CNC controllers.
- FpUser 3y agoI used DVK for a while and yes good chunk of that time was used to play Tetris ;)
- varjag 3y agoYep they weren't exactly uncommon but generally were installed at various institutions and professional schools: there was no legal way to obtain one privately. They were also (due to peculiarities of militarized planned economy) ridiculously overbuilt and costly to make. It's rather hard to find a complete DVK on the market now as most of them were reprocessed for their very substantial content of precious metals. A factory in my hometown used to have CNC mills with these systems as controllers and they were regularly pilfered by the socialist workers. The backplane had insane amounts of gold plating (grams!) on edge connectors and boards themselves used platinum/palladium capacitors for bypass! These were stripped on the SBC specimen in my blog post above too.
- ruslan 3y agoArh.. nostalgia. I learnt to programme in PDP-11 assembly on ДВК-1 and БК-0010 somewhere in 89-90. That was my second assembly though. The first one was MOS 6502 on Atari 800s, they were quite popular in USSR in late 80th.Funny thing is that you still can purchase КМ1801ВМ3 chips in Russia for less than a $1 in bulk. I once considered building a ДВК clone to play with and to teach my kids some proper assembly, but then found this DVK-FPGA project on Github: https://github.com/forth32/dvk-fpga https://github.com/forth32/dvk-fpga
- jhallenworld 3y agoYou should resell them on eBay. IM6100s (PDP-8 CPU on a chip) are going for $50 / each.
- jacquesm 3y agoPossibly they wouldn't fit (metric pitch at 2.5 mm spacing for many Russian made chips). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_Eastern_Bloc_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_i...
- kragen 3y agoalso pdp-11 and pdp-8 aren't compatible
- orbital-decay 3y ago> I once considered building a ДВК clone to play with and to teach my kids some proper assembly I actually built a custom board with a K1801VM1 a while back to teach my son programming basics from the ground up. It's slow as molasses, but great at this purpose. The PDP-11 ISA is simple and comprehensible, as well as the 1801 microarchitecture. Underclocking and a few LEDs in the key points of the board can easily illustrate the entire process; it's very direct and you can almost physically see it "thinking" under the hood. We used that board to drive our Christmas lights and for simple games before moving to something more high-level.
- jan3024 3y ago[dead]
- yalok 3y agoI used to write all my code for this CPU in plain machine codes. Granted they weee very easy to remember- in octal form. Eg 10102 - mov R1, R2 Very elegant and human readable machine code. Btw, the same processor was used in the MK85 “calculator” which in essence was a mobile computer (ca 1990!). I owned one not knowing that fact, and was so amazed to realize it was actually a 1801vm1/vm2 architecture when I unsoldered ROM from it, connected to my parallel port and read its content - it had that familiar code there!!
- kragen 3y agowow, that's awesome! i've only ever looked at pdp-11 machine code a little bit