The PC 1715 was an office computer produced by

VEB Robotron VEB Kombinat Robotron (or simply Robotron) was the biggest East German electronics manufacturer. It was based in Dresden and employed 68,000 people (1989). It produced personal computers, SM EVM minicomputers, the ESER mainframe computers, sev ...

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

starting in 1985. The system featured an 8-bit

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

, the

U880 The U880 is an 8-bit microprocessor that was manufactured by VEB Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt (abbreviated as MME; part of Kombinat Mikroelektronik Erfurt) in the German Democratic Republic. Production of the U880 started in 1980 at VEB ...

, a clone of the

Zilog Zilog, Inc. is an American manufacturer of microprocessors and 8-bit and 16-bit microcontrollers. It is also a supplier of application-specific embedded system-on-chip (SoC) products. Its most famous product is the Z80 series of 8-bit microp ...

Z80 The Z80 is an 8-bit microprocessor introduced by Zilog as the startup company's first product. The Z80 was conceived by Federico Faggin in late 1974 and developed by him and his 11 employees starting in early 1975. The first working samples were ...

. It was built for office work and education, but also had an interface for a

pacemaker An artificial cardiac pacemaker (or artificial pacemaker, so as not to be confused with the natural cardiac pacemaker) or pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to the chambers of the heart eith ...

. The 1715 had minimal graphics and sound capabilities. The price was 19,000

East German mark The East German mark (german: Mark der DDR ), commonly called the eastern mark (german: Ostmark, links=no ) in West Germany and after reunification), in East Germany only ''Mark'', was the currency of the German Democratic Republic (East Germa ...

s. In contrast to the A5120 predecessor, the PC1715 was not built around the K1520 bus standard. There was no back plane, but the main board had 2 58-pin connectors that were largely K1520 compliant, with some signals omitted and replaced with custom internal signals. The floppy controller of the PC1715 used one of those internal bus extensions and was built with discrete components and logic chips, whereas other robotron computers of the 1980s used a clone of an Intel 8272

Floppy disk controller A floppy-disk controller (FDC) has evolved from a discrete set of components on one or more circuit boards to a special-purpose integrated circuit (IC or "chip") or a component thereof. An FDC directs and controls reading from and writing to ...

. The floppy controller board clearly appears to be based on the one used in the A5120. The graphics subsystem on the other hand was part of the main board circuitry and relied on a Intel 8275 compatible CRT controller with a portion of main memory used as video memory. A second U880 processor was used in the keyboard, together with a small firmware ROM to decode the keyboard matrix and transmit the keycode via a serial link to the main board. Though it was common practice at the time for processors that failed normal quality tests to be reused with much reduced clock frequencies and this may have been the case here. In 1987, a new version was produced, the PC 1715W (1715M in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

). The system was identical to the PC 1715, except the processor was clocked at 4 MHz and the machine had 256KiB

DRAM Dynamic random-access memory (dynamic RAM or DRAM) is a type of random-access semiconductor memory that stores each bit of data in a memory cell, usually consisting of a tiny capacitor and a transistor, both typically based on metal-oxid ...

. In total, about 93,000 PC 1715 and PC 1715W units were manufactured. An estimated 50,000 of those were exported to the

. In March 1987, a stamp was issued by the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

featuring the PC 1715. 8 million copies were printed.

Images

File:RobotronPC1715MB.jpg, Mainboard of the PC 1715 File:Robotron1715SCREEN.gif, Screenshot of SCP (

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

clone) running on the PC 1715 File:Stamps of Germany (DDR) 1987, MiNr 3132.jpg,

stamp featuring the PC 1715

References

Products introduced in 1985 Goods manufactured in East Germany Science and technology in East Germany {{compu-hardware-stub

Images

See also

References