TS-7063: Remember the 80s
Greetings, colleagues!
Last year’s surge in publications on the history of Soviet PCs (for example, this one and this one ) quickly faded away, I will try to reanimate this topic and recall the device with which my first steps in the programming field are connected, especially since there is practically nothing about it on the Internet (almost the only thing I found was links to “Ethanol consumption rates for organizations and enterprises” - whoever is in the subject will understand what it is about).
It will be about the TS-7063 computer terminal for the EU, which was an integral part of the EU-7970 display complex (there are a few more references to this complex on the Internet, but almost all are limited to phrases such as “In such and such a year they introduced ...” ):
Judging by the materials published here, someone in the early 80s had the opportunity to get microchips of the K580 series, had access to the first Soviet PCs. I worked at that time in a rather large research institute working for the defense industry, in the capital of one of the Union republics - but we did not have either one or the other. I remember, in one of the projects we persuaded the customer to include, it seems, Iskra - specially so that you could look at it, they waited for two years, I did not wait ...
Therefore, when, already in 1985, a display complex, 8 units of these TS-7063 (they were manufactured in Kanev, a small town in Cherkasy region) was brought to the information center of an industrial enterprise in one of the regional centers of the Russian Federation, where I was working at that time - this was an event ! The first connection to our EU 1035, system messages on the display, the FOCUS system (maybe someone remembers this) - a software package for interacting with the EU computer, with several toys in it - all this made a huge impression. But I'm not talking about that now.
But the fact is that the TS-7063 was created on the basis of the microprocessor of the K580 series and was, in fact, a completely normal PC for that time. Here are some of its specifications:
Rear view, mounting boards and power supplies:
Processor board:
ROM:
The idea was to create a distributed data processing system. The intelligent terminal had to take on some of the functions and, without interrupting the operation of the computer, perform some tasks locally - for example, editing small texts, preparing data, preparing tasks, ... True, the basic software flashed in ROM (you can, in principle, , call it the operating system), performed only the simplest functions - processing interrupts from the keyboard, entering and editing up to two screens of text, and ensuring communication with the computer. But a black suitcase came to the terminals - a debugging device from which you could enter the program in machine codes into RAM, run it for execution, and walk through it in steps. In addition, a punch tape reader (!) Was built into the suitcase, i.e.
I remember the first leaflet with hand-written microprocessor instruction codes that someone brought me, I remember the first program, short and completely stupid - and the joy when it worked ... The second program was Assembler with the link editor - tired of programming in machine codes and calculating transitions to the tags. He wrote in a school notebook (still shore), then manually translated into machine codes, entered it with his hands on a data preparation device for punched tape (I had to do this several times, right away nothing works).
However, I did not use it for long - a couple of months later I brought from Leningrad University, where, as it turned out, software for these devices was developed, the Janus system, which included a cross-assembler for executing computers on the EU and some programs for TS-7063 - Fort-83 interpreter and several toys. I take this opportunity to thank the people who were involved in the development of this software - S.N. Baranova, which included V.A. Kirillin, A.A. Klubovich and N.R. Nozdrunov. Of the toys, I remember, I especially liked the Labyrinth.
Fort then made a great impression with its beauty, ease of implementation and incredible compactness of the resulting code. As far as I understand, the first in the USSR began to study this language precisely at Leningrad State University and precisely for TS-7063. Let me quote you from Baranov’s article"FORT programming language in the USSR, Russia and St. Petersburg" :
But I didn’t have to write something serious on Fort - mostly they wrote in assembler and here the cross-system from LSU was very useful. And we did quite serious things, including the process control system and software for it - we used the TS-7063 as the central control device of the system.
One of the systems created back then in the late 80s still works in the same form - I never cease to be amazed at the survivability of this device - 25 years in continuous production 365 x 24, in conditions of high humidity, temperature and dustiness! Here is this hero:
Last year’s surge in publications on the history of Soviet PCs (for example, this one and this one ) quickly faded away, I will try to reanimate this topic and recall the device with which my first steps in the programming field are connected, especially since there is practically nothing about it on the Internet (almost the only thing I found was links to “Ethanol consumption rates for organizations and enterprises” - whoever is in the subject will understand what it is about).
It will be about the TS-7063 computer terminal for the EU, which was an integral part of the EU-7970 display complex (there are a few more references to this complex on the Internet, but almost all are limited to phrases such as “In such and such a year they introduced ...” ):
Judging by the materials published here, someone in the early 80s had the opportunity to get microchips of the K580 series, had access to the first Soviet PCs. I worked at that time in a rather large research institute working for the defense industry, in the capital of one of the Union republics - but we did not have either one or the other. I remember, in one of the projects we persuaded the customer to include, it seems, Iskra - specially so that you could look at it, they waited for two years, I did not wait ...
Therefore, when, already in 1985, a display complex, 8 units of these TS-7063 (they were manufactured in Kanev, a small town in Cherkasy region) was brought to the information center of an industrial enterprise in one of the regional centers of the Russian Federation, where I was working at that time - this was an event ! The first connection to our EU 1035, system messages on the display, the FOCUS system (maybe someone remembers this) - a software package for interacting with the EU computer, with several toys in it - all this made a huge impression. But I'm not talking about that now.
But the fact is that the TS-7063 was created on the basis of the microprocessor of the K580 series and was, in fact, a completely normal PC for that time. Here are some of its specifications:
- Central processor: KR580VM80A
- Display capacity, characters: 80 x 25
- ROM capacity (556RT5), kB: 4
- RAM capacity (565RU1A), kbyte: 32
- Regeneration memory capacity, kB: 4
Rear view, mounting boards and power supplies:
Processor board:
ROM:
The idea was to create a distributed data processing system. The intelligent terminal had to take on some of the functions and, without interrupting the operation of the computer, perform some tasks locally - for example, editing small texts, preparing data, preparing tasks, ... True, the basic software flashed in ROM (you can, in principle, , call it the operating system), performed only the simplest functions - processing interrupts from the keyboard, entering and editing up to two screens of text, and ensuring communication with the computer. But a black suitcase came to the terminals - a debugging device from which you could enter the program in machine codes into RAM, run it for execution, and walk through it in steps. In addition, a punch tape reader (!) Was built into the suitcase, i.e.
I remember the first leaflet with hand-written microprocessor instruction codes that someone brought me, I remember the first program, short and completely stupid - and the joy when it worked ... The second program was Assembler with the link editor - tired of programming in machine codes and calculating transitions to the tags. He wrote in a school notebook (still shore), then manually translated into machine codes, entered it with his hands on a data preparation device for punched tape (I had to do this several times, right away nothing works).
However, I did not use it for long - a couple of months later I brought from Leningrad University, where, as it turned out, software for these devices was developed, the Janus system, which included a cross-assembler for executing computers on the EU and some programs for TS-7063 - Fort-83 interpreter and several toys. I take this opportunity to thank the people who were involved in the development of this software - S.N. Baranova, which included V.A. Kirillin, A.A. Klubovich and N.R. Nozdrunov. Of the toys, I remember, I especially liked the Labyrinth.
Fort then made a great impression with its beauty, ease of implementation and incredible compactness of the resulting code. As far as I understand, the first in the USSR began to study this language precisely at Leningrad State University and precisely for TS-7063. Let me quote you from Baranov’s article"FORT programming language in the USSR, Russia and St. Petersburg" :
Cross-assembler development was conducted in the PL / I language and took more than six months. The source code for those views turned out to be huge - more than a thousand lines on PL / I. To broadcast it, it was necessary to remove all batch jobs running in parallel and give the entire reserve of RAM (and there were 512 K in total) to the translator with PL / I.
At this time, we came across a copy of Dr. Dobb's Journal, which listed the assembler for Intel 8080 in the Fort language, which consisted of only 54 lines of text, a third of which was occupied by a table of familiar mnemonics for assembler commands. At the same time, the authors claimed that this is a complete assembler, covering all modes and features of the Intel 8080 teams!
We had no other texts about the Fort at this moment, and we had to understand how the indicated sequence of fort words could work exactly as required.
But I didn’t have to write something serious on Fort - mostly they wrote in assembler and here the cross-system from LSU was very useful. And we did quite serious things, including the process control system and software for it - we used the TS-7063 as the central control device of the system.
One of the systems created back then in the late 80s still works in the same form - I never cease to be amazed at the survivability of this device - 25 years in continuous production 365 x 24, in conditions of high humidity, temperature and dustiness! Here is this hero:
