Elektronika BK

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Elektronika BK is a series of Russian home computers trademarked as Elektronika that are approximate clones of PDP-11. They are based on the КР1801ВМ1 (Soviet clone of 11/03 LSI-11) CPU and were available in several different versions.

Elektronika BK-0010 (Электроника БК-0010) was the first model. It had a membrane keyboard, 32 kB RAM (half of which was used for the frame buffer), 32 kB ROM with FOCAL interpreter supporting only 512×256 monochrome graphics, a TV connected via EuroConnector (a version of SCART) or a monitor could be used as a display device. A tape recorder was used for data storage in factory configuration.

There also was a separate Euroconnector for a color TV. It would display 256×256 graphics in four colours. This mode was accessible to assembly language programs.

Although the instruction set and the I/O ports were described in the documentation provided with the computer, the assembly language development tools were not included. A gray market of games and development software flourished.

Elektronika BK-0010-01 was more powerful with a conventional keyboard and a BASIC dialect p-code compiler (Vilnius BASIC) that supported color graphics as well as monochrome.

Elektronika BK-0010Sh (Электроника БК-0010Ш) was a model intended specially for school use. It had a special network adapter which could be inserted into the Q-Bus slot.

Elektronika BK-0011 came in 1990, had 128 kB of RAM divided into 16 Kb pages, a newer version of BASIC in ROM, 16 video palettes, and had the possibility to use a disk drive (The disk drive adaptor could also be used with BK-0010 series). One of the operating system was ANDOS. A modification of RT-11 also existed.

Elektronika BK-0011M was a modified version of Elektronika BK-0011, which fixed some incompatibilities with BK-0010. In particular, the sound in programs for BK-0010 didn't work on BK-0011. It was fixed in BK-0011M. BK-0011M quickly went into production, and most of BK-0011 series computers were actually BK-0011M.

A 16-bit universal port with separate input and output busses, present in all models, allowed to utilize a multitude of peripheral devices (joystick, mouse, printers, various sound output devices, etc.) for home entertainment, education, and for data acquisition and monitoring in various industrial and research settings.

Enthusiasts managed to connect more advanced devices to BK series computers. They developed a HDD controller, and 2.5" HDDs were successfully used with BK computer. Other popular enhancement was an AY-3-8912 sound chip.

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