------------------------------------ BULGARIAN COMPUTERS INFORMATION FILE ------------------------------------- Version: 1.02, 11.10.2003 (+ISOT 0250, 1001C, 1002 and some corrections) (1.01: 7.8.2002, 1.00: 19.7.2002) Written by: Todor Iliev Arnaudov (a.k.a. Tosh, a.k.a TodProg) Contains info about microcomputers: ISOT 1030C/1031C/1036C/1039C ISOT 0250/1001C/1002 IMKO, IMKO-2, Pravetz-82/8M/8A/8E/8C/8D Pravetz-16/16A/16H/286 EC-1831/1832/3216 Monitor: VMM 3101 ------------------------------- Contacts: todprog@yahoo.com dzbe@mail.bg ------------------------------- URLs: //World http://www.geocites.com/todprog ------------------------------- http://www.geocities.com/eimworld (Bulgarian) http://eim.hit.bg (Bulgarian) //Accesible from Bulgarian Internet ring: http://tosh.data.bg http://free.techno-link.com/todprog Character encoding: The Cyrillic used in some places here is under Windows-1251 encoding. Excuse: Sorry for my English :-) Note: The file is very-very short in this version :). Contents: 1. How Bulgarian Silicon Valey was built 2. Microcomputers 2.1 Pravetz 2.2 ISOT 3. Monitors. Part 1. How Bulgarian Silicon Valey was built Semiconductor devices Experimental constructive and researching activities in the semiconductor area in Bulgaria begin even as early as 50-ies in the former battery factory, but that perspective direction begins fast to progress not until the building of the "Factory for semiconductor devices" in Botevgrad. In late 1964 starts the first production line for Germanium point-diodes (see (1)). Year later begins producing of low-power and middle-power Germanium transistors. Starting of device making is by the licence of the French firm "Thomson". 1967 - Foundation of the Institute of Semiconductors. From the section of former Physical institute of BAS (2) in Sofia is created Institute for Microelectronics. The main activity of the Institute are researching and designing/construction in the field of MOS integrated circuits (Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor) 1968 - MOS ICs for the electronic calculator Elka-42(3) are created 1968-1969 - Creation of planar-epitaxial technology and producing diodes and transistors using it. 1968-1970 - Creation of MOS ICs from the series UNIMOS 1972 - First Silicon transistors and diodes (by technical support of USSR) 1973 - Adopting a family hybrid ICs for UHF radio stations. 1974 - Planar-epitaxial diodes and transistors, MOS ICs. 1974 - Creation of 10 types ICs for Elka-50 1974-1975 - Research and introducing of producing MOS ROMs - 2, 4 and 6 Kbits and MOS RAM with capacity of 256 bits. Creation of the family ICs CM500 for ISOT-500 - a microprocessor system (4-bit). Creation of microprocessor family ICs CM-400 for 4-chip calculator. ------------------------ Notes of the translator: (0):EC [es]: "Unified System" computers, founded in 1969 by USSR, Bulgaria and other socialistic countries. It's made like IBM 360. CM [sm]: "System small" computers. Found in early 70-ies. (1): point-diode: I'm not sure does that's the correct term in English. Point diodes oftenly were made with transperant plastic corps and you were able to see a thin wire inside. (2): BAS - Bulgarian Academy of Science (3): Elka - The mark of ISOT calculators. Stands for "ELektronen KAlkulator" - "ELectronic CAlculator". First model: 6521 was released in 1965. It was created by the Mathematics institute of BAS, with main designers: Stephan Angelov, Lyubomir Antonov and Petar Popov. It have been at high technical level at the time - able to calculate square root, to round the results, to select registers by their addresses and others. It's curious, that there is Bulgarian woman name Elka. As far as I know, there were very few calculators made before Elka-6521: British one ANITA(?) from 1960, Japanese "Sharp", West Germany "IME" and Soviet "Vega". (4): CM - sounds like [sm]. CM is a mark of the MOS ICs made by Microelectronics-Botevgrad. E.g. CM601 was fully compatible with Motorola MC6800 (I've got a picture of CM601 produced in October 1979), CM630 - 6502, CM688/CM688-2 - i8088/i8088-2... Part 2. Microcomputers In 1979, Bulgarian Techical Cybernetics Institute takes up with the problem to create small computer, based on microprocessors.(...) In 1980 the first three Bulgarian microcomputers were produced. Their creators named the machine "IMKO-1".(...) In 1981 one little series (few tenths) of IMKO-1 were released. Computers were momentaly grabbed out. The users were ravished from the universality of IMKO and the ease of operating with it. The price was not very high, too. The first international presentation of IMKO-1 comes at robotics symposium in England. Bulgaria demonstrates a robot, controlled by microcomputer! Japaneses and the Americans by that time use only minicomputers to do that! IMKO-1 robot system costs 10 times lesser and its maintenance is simplified much. In 1982 the first few hundreds of IMKO-1 were made. IMKO-2 was released in 1982. "Microprocessor Systems Pravetz" starts to produce it, under the trade name "Pravetz-82" [1]. ----------------------- P R A V E T Z factory ----------------------- *The Pravetz factory was found in 1966. Initially it produces electromechanical measuring devices, e.g. analog voltmeters. *In 1980 they begin to produce digital measuring devices, frequency-meters, electronic scales, digital electronic watches. *1982 - Pravetz-82 is released. *1984 - "Microprocessor Systems Pravetz" begins to make IBM-PC XT/AT compatible computers (Pravetz-16/16A/286), besides Apple compatibles. *1985 - Pravetz-8D (Domashen) and Pravetz-8M *1987 - Pravetz-8A *? - Pravetz-8E *1988(?) - Pravetz-8C Part 2.1 PRAVETZ Apple// line In production were Pravetz-82/8M/8A/8E/8C All used 6502 (8A - CM630, 8C - 65c02); 8M has also Z80 built-in. Initial caption on the screen of the mahcines is "������" ("PRAVETZ"). The town of Pravetz is near Botevgrad, where are placed producing facilities of "Microelectronics"-Botevgrad company. Referring to [2] "...At its peak, Bulgaria supplied 40 percent of the computers in the Eastern bloc. The electronics industry employed 300,000 workers, and it generated 8 billion rubles a year (US$13.3 billion)..." "Pravetz-82" is the first microcomputer of Pravetz. It has CPU 6502 running at 1.018MHz, 48KB RAM and 12KB ROM (including "Basic Applesoft" and "Monitor" for 6502 assembler) and 4KB I/O at address $C000-$CFFF. Pravetz-82 opearates with capital cyrillic and latin letters. Very first '82s had button "Repeat", which must be pressed when the user wants to repeat the key which is pushed at the moment. ========= Pravetz-82 ========== "82" just means "1982" - the year of first Pravetz-82 released. Reffering to [3] about 120 thousands '82s were made in the 80-ies. Pravetz-82 is market name of "IMKO-2" computer. Pravetz-82 has several modifications of its case, monitor and keyboard. Some of the first versions came with modified TV-sets for monitors. Widely used monitor was VMCH-01 (Video Monitor Cherno-Byal, i.e. Black-white). Pravetz-82 has 48KB Dynamic RAM, organized in 3 rows by 8 ICs (4116). The read-only memory is presented by 6 EPROM chips 2716 (2Kx8). Monitor resolution is standard for Apple2s - 280x192 pixels x 6 different colors (or 280x160 + 4 rows text) in HiRes or 40x40 (+4 rows text) or 40x48 in 16 colors mode. In text mode there are 40 columns and 24 rows. Although 82 and 8M have external floppies, they have also an output for cassette recorder. One Bulgarian diskette-saver system utilze that output. The system TRANSFERRER-8M, made by the author of this information file. http://eim.hit.bg/preh8m The output for cassette recorder is missing in the models after 8M. Pravetz-82, 8M and 8A have 8 expansion slots. =======--- Pravetz-8M ---========= Pravetz-8M was released in 1985, its end of production is maybe 1986 (I've got a machine made in 1986 with serial number 84011). Memory: 64KB DRAM (9 x 4164 [64Kx1]) and 16KB EPROM (2 x 2764 [8K x 8] ). Processors: Main: 6502 at 1.018MHz. Secondary: Z80A at 4MHz. Thus, 8M is able to run CP/M OS without expansion card. 8M has 8 jumpers on his mainborad, which allow the user to switch on/off the CPU Z80, its additional 16KB RAM (48+16), internal speaker, to change the second char table between cyrillic capital and latin small letters and to utilize some other functions I don't know about. ========= Pravetz-8A ========== '8A (1986 or 1987) uses chip-set specialy designed in Bulgaria by IME: ��-63x (where "C" is cyrillic, so in latin is proprounonced like "S"), i.e. CM630 (6502 compatible), CM631 (Memory Control Unit) and CM632 (Input/Output Controller, including 80 column monitor card on the chip). ========= Pravetz-8E ========== '8E (1987) is export version of 8A (?) - don't know about. ========= Pravetz-8C ========== '8C is the most advanced Pravetz-8x; released in 1988, out of production not before 1990. The machine has 65c02 CPU and 128KB of RAM. Only 3 expansion slots were available, because many functions were built-in the motherboard itself: floppy card, printer card, RS-232 card, RGB-out card and 80-column card. All these required expansion cards in 82 and 8M (except in '8A, where a built-in 80 column card is on-board). '82 and '8M can be expanded with memory cards up to 128KB. (Or 1MB?) '8A and above could be expanded with up to 1MB of RAM. ---------=========== ORIC LINE =============------------- Pravetz-8D is a clone of "Oric Atmos". Start of production: 1985 End: (?) I've got one, made in 1988. '8D manipulates with cyrillic and latin capital letters. The key "ESCape" is marked with "OCB" (OSV), Ctrl is MK (MK) and there are C/L key (instead of Funct) and two Shifts, marked with uparrows (active until are pressed), for switching between cyrillic and latin alphabets. Also, the DEL-key is not placed up from the Return, but under the left Shift. When latin is active, caption "���!" (LAT!) is shown in the right corner of the screen (instead of "CAPS") The "Hello" message in 8D is: +----------------+ | ������-8� | | ��� # BASIC | | 37631 �� ����� | | | | ����� | +----------------+ In English looks approximate like: ============== PRAVETZ-8D BRV # BASIC 37631 FR BYTES READY =============== Ready message is also in Bulgarian - "�����" (GOTOV) which means "ready". "BRV" stands for "Base for developing and introducing" (Baza za razvitie i vnedryavane). Motherboard of 8D is not exactly same to Oric. There are some little differences, like these: - Some soviet 74xxx compatible TTLL logical ICs (K555xxx, K155xxx) and one Bulgarian - 1������ (1LBOOSHM) were used instead of West and Far East 74xxx in the "Oric Atmos". EPROM chip used in 8D (at least in mine) is Toshiba 27128 (16Kx8). "D" comes from "Domashen" which means "home", "for home use". ================= PC line ======================== "PC" in Bulgarian sounds like a call to a cat in a combination of words: "Maahtz peesee-peesee". "Matzeh" sometimes is used to call a PC. ;-) -- Pravetz-16 (1984), Pravetz-16A,, Pravetz-16H, Pravetz-286... (More information eventually in next versions of the file) ============= Some Personal computers with mark ISOT ============= Notes: the abbreviation "EC" is in Cyriliic thus it sounds like "ES". It stands for "Edinna Sistema" i.e. "Unified System". EC was created in 1969 by USSR, Bulgaria and other countries - see below. ISOT is founded in 1967 and the abbreviation must be pronounced [IZOT] {IHZOHT} (IZchislitelna i Organizatzionna Tehnika). ISOT-1030C/1031C/1036C/1039C ISOT-1030C is a microsystem for computer aided design, based on i8086. ISOT-1031C has for its CPU Z80. * ISOT-1036C: CPU: analogue of Intel 8086/8088 (I suppose in some or in all items is used Bulgarian one: CM688) Clock: 4.77MHz ROM: 48KB RAM: 128KB, up to 640KB -- Graphical monitor ISOT 7301C Colour of the screen: GREEN Text format: 25x80 characters Graphic mode: 640x200 pixels -- Printer ISOT 6305C Speed: 150 chars/sec Characters per row: 132 -- FDD EC5088M1 Disk: 133mm Capacity: 250KB Transfer rate: 250Kbit/s Writing method: MFM -- Keyboard: Capital and small Cyrillic and Latin, 10 functional keys. *EC-1039C - specialized 16-bit CPU - 256KB RAM (up to 1MB) - 5.25" FDD (up to 2 drives * 500KB) - 5MB HDD, made in Bulgaria by DZU (?) - monitor 960x240x1bit graphics 24 rows x 80 columns text mode 24 rows x 132 columns text mode - RS232 adapter at 9600bps - OS "OS/PRO" - multitask, one-user operation system. - includes system for BASIC programming with graphic features and word processing. EC-1831 - IBM-PC clone EC-1832 - IBM-PC clone EC-3216 - CPU i80286(?) Eventually I may expand the list, add details and fix mistakes if find any. I'm making a page about Bulgarian computers. If you're interested in, check http://www.geocities.com/todprog/ time by time and you'll see a link to the page when it's ready for users. Notes: *ES means "������ �������"~"Edinna Sistema" ~ "Uniform System". Initialy, this system was created in 1969 by USSR, Bulgaria, Hungary, GDR, Poland and CSR (Czech-Slovak). In the beginning it's only for mainframes and peripherals for mainframes. ===================== ISOT-0250 ========================= Computer for ecomonical computations. Contains: MPU (unknown details), 12 KB RAM, 18 KB ROM, keyboard; digital and functional indication, alpha-numerical printer, two FDD EC 5074. ===================== ISOT-1001C ========================= Check-point computer. 16 KB of ROM, up to 48 KB of RAM, real time clock, magnetic-card reader ISOT 6500C, terminals ISOT 6600C, FDDs EC 5074, printers EC 7187, can be conneced with ISOT-0250 ===================== ISOT-1002 ========================= Computer for text processing, based on microprocessor family of CM-600. ISOT-1002 is a two processor system with DMA. The first MPU has 40 KB of RAM. The second processor has 8KB of RAM; it is a printer processor. MPU I : CM-601 (M-6800 compatible) MPU II: CM-601 (?) RAM: 40 KB (I) + 8 KB (II) Screen: 24 rows x 80 columns Character set: 256 symbols: Cyrillic and Latin small and capitals, numbers and special graphical symbols. FDD: EC 5074 There are three types of diskettes: System : With the kernel of the OS of the system Archive : For documents Distribution : OS + utilities Printer: EC 7187; high-quality daisy printer, up to 5 copies per printing; average speed: about 30 cps. ============================================================================ *DZU = ��� = "������� ��������� ����������" = "Diskovi Zapomniyashti ustroystva" - Bulgarian company, located in Stara Zagora, which have been producing Disk drives - from personal computer's ones, to mainframes' (nowadays too, but at most CDs and magnetic heads, AFAIK). There a fragment from the DZU's web page:(http://www.dzu.inetg.bg/dzu/history.htm) 1968 � DZU foundation for disc drives manufacturing 1969-87 � Expansion of disc drives range � disc drives with removable discs, floppy disc drives, Winchester type hard disc drives 1989 � Summit in the production volume /1.620 billion USD/ Beginning of 90-ies � Disintegration of Council for Mutual Economic Assistance /CMEA/ 1993 � Start-up of new Point 5 family of 3.5� HDD production capacity 250, 360, 540 MB, aiming at 5 GB standard form factor, 0.5� low profile 1999 � Privatization by Videoton Holding (Hungarian firm) ---------------- Part 3. MONITORS ---------------- The monitor "VMM 3102" was widely used in Pravetz-8M and above. Producer: Bulgarian firm "Analitik" from Mihaylovgrad - "the town of Mihail". Now that town is named Montana. Model: VMM-3102 (Video Monitor Monochrome 31cm). Green Luminifor. Tube: Unitra (Made in Poland) Diagonal of the Tube: 31cm (12.2") Visual Region: ~ 8.6" (I measured that from my monitor :)). The image is concentrated in the center, to limit corner-distortion. Max. Resolution with Apple//-compatibles systems: 280x192 (560x192 with 80 column card) Dot pitch: about 0.65mm Refresh Rate for Pravetz-82/8M/8A/8E/8C: about 50Hz (little more, it's determinate by the internal frequencies, like that's in Apple// ) Power supply: AC 220V/50 Hz (+22 V -33 V). Power Consumption: 20 VA --- Well, that's it for now.