WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 30865226

Elektronika MK-61

64 points| auvi | 3 years ago |elektronika.su

23 comments

order

rmrfchik|3 years ago

Heh. Had one. I overclocked my calculator by installing lower resistor (like 1MOhm to 250k, don't remember actual values). It sure was brilliant back then. Numbers were expressed in scientific notation and despite there were only 2 digits for order, actually calculator was capable to calculate up to 10^999. Number greater 10^99 were displayed as "ERROR" (in 7 segment it was 'ЕГГОГ'), but if you lower order you can get correct mantissa. In fact, the situation was more complex, some numbers were '3ГГОГ'. It was very fun to discover hidden secrets.

egorfine|3 years ago

3ГГ0Г!! Oh this brings back memories from my MK-52 :-)

teel|3 years ago

The title reminds me of an interesting article about old Soviet and eastern block computers in a Finnish computer magazine Skrolli a few years ago. They have done couple of international editions in English, and this article happens to be included in 2016.1E [1]

[1] https://skrolli.fi/en/international/

paganel|3 years ago

Also from Elektronika there was the IM-02 Nu, Pogodi! [1] handheld game device, which I used to play obsessively as a teen in the early '90s. Very good times. I've only later (with access to the Internet) learned that it was a clone after some Western-made device.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fqGVrh9vg

d_silin|3 years ago

I had one as a kid. Incredibly capable machine with just a hundred bytes of RAM.

You could play real-time games on it, using GRAD-DEG-RAD switch as hardware joystick!

octobus2021|3 years ago

Wouldn't exactly call it capable, it had 20 memory registers and 106 bytes of programming memory. Plus Reverse Polish Notation is not exactly easy to use. Still great memories, so many kids of my generation discovered computers through those. I actually got one from eBay last year, cost me about $60 with 220->110 converter. I think somebody's selling unsold inventory from the factory. Printed out some old articles and went through first 2 legs of Kon-Tiki journey. Fun times :)

orbital-decay|3 years ago

Yes, MK-52 and MK-61 always had a large community of tinkerers around them, exploiting hardware and software bugs (or rather the machine's extreme simplicity) to write seemingly impossible programs. The bugs were never fixed in later revisions though, so while they were fun to play with as a kid, I have mixed feelings about it as an adult engineer. Having an errata instead of actual bugfix wasn't very helpful. My uncle hated them back in the days for this, and when home computer kits appeared, he got one and never looked back.

d_silin|3 years ago

To illustrate its capabilities, it could find a solution to 8-queens problem in 5 hours, but the program size was only 54 bytes.

implying|3 years ago

Perhaps off-topic, but .su is the TLD of the Soviet Union.

ggm|3 years ago

Removing a top level domain (TLD) from the DNS when people still want to use it is a no-no. There's a vibrant, active community in .su, and I hope they continue.

It's mostly completely distinct from the political question "what does it mean" regarding 2 letter top level domains, and the ISO3166 list, and the status of entities in the ICANN process. (well.. maybe not the last bit: ICANN has enough fights on its hands without trying to reclaim some namespace territory)

joeman1000|3 years ago

Cool website! I bought one of these for a pittance about 5 years ago on eBay. Came from Ukraine as ‘new old stock’, with the old manuals and everything. A time capsule! Unfortunately this thing has the worst buttons I’ve ever pressed. I’ll buy any RPN calculator I come across though.

jonathanstrange|3 years ago

I have an MK-52, which I bought a few years ago very cheaply from an Ukrainian vendor on Ebay. It's interesting because it's programmable and even has a hardware expansion slot (although those expansions are hard to get). However, the keys are a disappointment, they're quite mushy.

throwaway4good|3 years ago

I wonder if we in time will see a “new Soviet” block with a completely parallel ecosystem of computing devices - from military systems to toys, phones and personal computing.