The Specialist (russian: Специалист) is a DIY computer designed in

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 ...

. Its description was published in ''Modelist-Konstructor'' (russian: Моделист-Конструктор), a magazine for scale model builders in 1987. It was the first such publication in a magazine not oriented on electronics.

Overview

The original construction was developed by a

professional technical school A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...

teacher two years earlier. It was much more advanced than previous DIY computers, because it had a higher graphical

image resolution Image resolution is the detail an image holds. The term applies to digital images, film images, and other types of images. "Higher resolution" means more image detail. Image resolution can be measured in various ways. Resolution quantifies how ...

(384x256) and a "transparent" video system, which did not slow down the CPU when both the CPU and the video system tried to access the

RAM Ram, ram, or RAM may refer to: Animals * A male sheep * Ram cichlid, a freshwater tropical fish People * Ram (given name) * Ram (surname) * Ram (director) (Ramsubramaniam), an Indian Tamil film director * RAM (musician) (born 1974), Dutch * ...

simultaneously. It gained limited popularity with hobbyists, though some factories produced DIY kits (Lik for example).

Technical specifications

* CPU:

KR580VM80A The KR580VM80A (russian: КР580ВМ80А) is a Soviet microprocessor, a clone of the Intel 8080 CPU. Different versions of this CPU were manufactured beginning in the late 1970s, the earliest known use being in the SM1800 computer in 1979. Initi ...

(

Intel 8080 The Intel 8080 (''"eighty-eighty"'') is the second 8-bit microprocessor designed and manufactured by Intel. It first appeared in April 1974 and is an extended and enhanced variant of the earlier 8008 design, although without binary compatibil ...

A clone) clocked at 2 MHz. *

: 32 or 48

KiB The byte is a unit of digital information that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, the byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the smallest addressable unit ...

. *

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * ...

: 2 KiB, expandable to 12 KiB. ROM contains

monitor Monitor or monitor may refer to: Places * Monitor, Alberta * Monitor, Indiana, town in the United States * Monitor, Kentucky * Monitor, Oregon, unincorporated community in the United States * Monitor, Washington * Monitor, Logan County, West ...

firmware. * Video: monochrome graphics mode. The

is 384 × 256

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a raster image, or the smallest point in an all points addressable display device. In most digital display devices, pixels are the smal ...

s. Text can be displayed using 64 columns × 25 rows of characters. Images for the upper case Cyrillic and Latin characters in KOI-7 N2 encoding are built in the Monitor ROM. * Storage media: cassette tape. The recording format is compatible with the one used in

Radio-86RK The Radio-86RK (russian: Радио-86РК) is a build-it-yourself home computer designed in the Soviet Union. It was featured in the popular ''Radio'' (russian: Радио) magazine for radio hams and electronics hobbyists in 1986. The letters R ...

. * Keyboard:

membrane A membrane is a selective barrier; it allows some things to pass through but stops others. Such things may be molecules, ions, or other small particles. Membranes can be generally classified into synthetic membranes and biological membranes. B ...

type, 72 keys. The keyboard matrix is attached via programmable peripheral interface chip KR580VV55 (

Intel 8255 The Intel 8255 (or i8255) Programmable Peripheral Interface (PPI) chip was developed and manufactured by Intel in the first half of the 1970s for the Intel 8080 microprocessor. The 8255 provides 24 parallel input/output lines with a variety of pr ...

clone) and scanned by CPU.

References

Soviet computer systems {{Comp-hardware-stub