Ural (computer)

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Ural is a computer series built in Soviet Union.

Contents

[edit] History

The Ural was developed at the Electronic Computer Producing Manufacturer of Penza in the Soviet Union and was produced between 1959 and 1964. In total 139 were made. The computer was widely used in the 1960s, mainly in the socialist countriesHungary had three, for example—though some were also exported to Western Europe and Latin America.

[edit] Attributes

Models Ural-1 to Ural-4 were based on vacuum tubes (valves), with the hardware being able to perform 12,000 floating-point calculations per second. A binary, single-headed device. One word consisted of 40 bits and was able to contain either one numeric value or two instructions. Ferrite core was used as operative memory[citation needed].

A new series (Ural-11, Ural-14, produced between 1964 and 1971) was based on semiconductors.

[edit] Function

It was able to perform mathematical tasks at computer centres, industrial facilities and research facilities. The device occupied approximately 90-100 square metres of space. It consumed triphasal flux (380V±10%/50Hz) and contains a triphasal magnetic voltage stabiliser with 30kVA capacity.

[edit] Main Units

Keyboard unit, controlling-reading unit, input punched tape unit, output punched tape unit, printing unit, magnetic tape memory unit, ferrite memory unit, ALU (arithmetical logical unit), CPU (central processing unit), power supply unit and electron tubes (6N8 type).

[edit] Trivia

  • Charles Simonyi, who was the second Hungarian in space, stated that he would take old paper tapes from his Soviet-built Ural-2 computer into space with him: he kept them to remind him of his past. [1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://go.sosd.com/servlet/nrp?cmd=sty&cid=RIM&pgn=1&ino=1061860&cat=Science&lno=1

[edit] External links