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An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1973 http://anycpu.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=464 |
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Author: | monsonite [ Wed Sep 27, 2017 8:57 pm ] |
Post subject: | An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1973 |
Not often you get to hear about obscure technology from the Soviet Block. The K-202 was an advanced 1uS cycle time 16-bit cpu developed in Poland then marketed in the UK in the very early 1970's An English language brochure is here http://www.zenker.poznan.pl/k-202/dokum ... ma-ang.pdf Ken |
Author: | BigEd [ Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:08 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Nice find! That does seem advanced- 7 general purpose registers and up to 4 cpus. |
Author: | monsonite [ Fri Sep 29, 2017 7:21 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Hi All, According to this article the K-202 used Western sourced components but was built in then Communist , Poland. This upset the political masters, and Jacek Karpiński was essentially outcast. In a single stroke of communist idealistic stupidity, Poland went from being at the cutting edge of computer design to being in the backwaters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacek_Karpi%C5%84ski The team worked for three years and in 1973 first prototypes were completed. The result was a minicomputer highly innovative in many aspects. K-202 was constructed entirely with microchips, using breakthrough 1971 Intel 4004 chips. It was also asynchronic and used floating point representation, as KAR-65. Moreover, K-202 used memory segmentation with paging, the first minicomputer to do so. Additionally, it performed close to a million operations per second. It suggests that it used Intel 4004s - could these have been used as 4-bit bitslices in the ALU of a 16-bit design? 4004 Datasheet http://datasheets.chipdb.org/Intel/MCS- ... l-4004.pdf |
Author: | BigEd [ Fri Sep 29, 2017 8:57 pm ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Oh, that's surprising, I thought the 4004 was extremely limited. |
Author: | monsonite [ Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:19 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Ed, I too was surprised to read that he'd used Intel 4004, particularly as the clock speed was no where near capable of 1 million instructions per second. It may be that a 4004 was used in the design for some minor function - and that fact has become embroidered into the restricted history of this machine. I suspect it was actually a TTL processor based on 74181 - as this was in commercial use (DG Nova 1200) by 1970 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/74181 A video about the K-202 and its designer - in Polish https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah7wAPCBuYI Ken |
Author: | BigEd [ Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:44 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Hmm not sure that's the right video - maybe https://youtu.be/KXJGrGhjBao Or https://youtu.be/gjqUxvESbsU ?? |
Author: | carronjack [ Sun Oct 01, 2017 1:02 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
Hi All, Yep think you're probably right, 74AS181's as the ALU ( 4 off ) and the rest v. early ttl and discrete logic.I don't think ECL chips were available until approx 1974 ( and expensive ). I think Schottky came out about '72 ish but I could be wrong, I've been wrong before. Looks very similar to a PDP-8. Keep up the good work people, it's entertaining, and informative. Best Regards Ian Hughes ( carronjack ) Computer Definitions :- Turnaround Time. The time between feeding a stack of 80 column cards into an IBM 1200 card reader, and getting back the remains. |
Author: | Tor [ Sun Oct 01, 2017 8:51 am ] |
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 |
monsonite wrote: The team worked for three years and in 1973 first prototypes were completed. The result was a minicomputer highly innovative in many aspects. K-202 was constructed entirely with microchips, using breakthrough 1971 Intel 4004 chips. It was also asynchronic and used floating point representation, as KAR-65. Moreover, K-202 used memory segmentation with paging, the first minicomputer to do so. But from what I could find about the machine it was very impressive. What happened to it is a shame. [but the part about 4004 can't be right - way too slow etc.] |
Author: | monsonite [ Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:41 am ] | ||
Post subject: | Re: An obscure, but advanced 16-bit computer from Poland c 1 | ||
Hi All, The schematics for the K-202 are here http://mera400.pl/K-202 - mostly dated 1972. There's an overall block diagram plus a breakdown of what parts of the machine are utilised for each of the instructions. An English text exists that holds significant detail of the inner workings of the machine http://www.zenker.poznan.pl/k-202/dokum ... ma-ang.pdf Most interesting is the 4-bit wide bitslice ALU http://mera400.pl/files/k202/k202-schemat-p-a3-2.png This contains the ALU and 4 bits of each of the various registers This uses 74xx83 as an adder, and has the means to invert the inputs or apply -1 to allow negation and subtraction. Other parts of the circuit provide OR and NOR and shift functions A bank of four 74xx150 - one of 16 data selectors is used to select the correct output from the ALU. Attached is the top level diagram - K-202 was similar to other TTL bitslice 16-bit machines of the very early 1970's - such as PDP-11 and DG Nova. Facinating how a team in Poland - relatively isolated from the rest of the technical world could design and produce such a machine. Ken
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