Beta-3M Mobile Computer System

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1. Beta-3M mobile computer system.
2. Chief designer: V. I. Shteinberg.

   Development engineers: N. I. Dementyev, V. V. Drozdov, V. I. Alekseyev, V. A. Belov, V. I. Bryksin, A. S. Salman.

3. Developer organization: Research Institute of Computer Engineering (NICEVT) of the USSR Ministry of Radio Engineering (since 1986 - Research Institute NII Argon).
4. Manufacturers: PO Zvezda (Sergiyev Posad) and Astrakhan Progress machine-building works (manufacturer of A-40 computer).
5. Completion of development: 1979.
6. Beginning of production: 1980.
7. Termination of production: 1990.
8. Field of application: military automated control systems.
9. Number of machines produced: 50.
10. Description: Beta-3M airborne computer system is intended for collecting, processing and displaying information in the form convenient for taking decisions and sending data to subscribers through communication channels. The system is installed on MTLBu multipurpose light-armored full-track chassis and can work in movement. It consists of a computational system, communication equipment for automated telegraph and telecode exchange, radio communication and telephone equipment, life support system and a mobile electric power station.

    The computational system includes an A-40 computer, a control console, an external devices control console, external memory devices and peripherals.

    A-40 computer is a medium-level model of unified high-end 32-bit mobile series based on ES EVM architecture and is fully compliant to the architectural concepts of this general-purpose computer family. Its specific feature is full software compatibility with Ritm-20 computer achieved by hardware and software emulation of Ritm commands. Such compatibility allowed running Beta-2 applications on Beta-3M system without any changes.

    Instruction set - full set of ES EVM-1 commands plus 60 Ritm-20 instructions.

    Performance - 140,000 operations per second in ES EVM mode (Gibson 3E mixture); 100,000 operations per second in Ritm mode.

    RAM capacity - 32 Kbytes.

    ROM capacity - 128 Kbytes.

    I/O channel throughput - 650 Kbps in burst mode; 65 Kbps in byte-multiplex mode.

    External memory:

    UOPBE high capacity ferrite core memory (Penza NIIMM Research Institute, chief designer G. A. Smirnov) - 640 Kbytes.

    ZUML-75 tape drive (Minsk NIIEVM Research Institute, chief designer A. M. Zhavrid) - 800 Kbytes.

    Peripherals:

    ACPU-64-6 alphanumeric printing device (NIISchetmash Research Institute, chief designer V. V. Melnikov): speed - 5 lines per second; number of characters - 96.

    FSM-8 photoreading device.

11. Software: the universal part of the software includes an operating system, service routines, tests.
12. Specifications:

    Total weight - 15,500 kg.

    Size - 7,866х2,970х220 mm.

    MTBF - 300 h.

    Average recovery time - 40 min.

13. Special features: software compatibility with Beta-2 system.