ES PEVM


ES PEVM was a Soviet clone of the IBM PC in 1980s. The ES PEVM models lineup also included analogues of IBM PC XT, IBM PC AT, IBM XT/370.
The computers and software were adapted in Minsk, Belarus, at the Scientific Research Institute of Electronic Computer Machines.
They were manufactured in Minsk as well, at Minsk Production Group for Computing Machinery.

Description

The first models of ES PEVM, unlike the IBM PC, had two units: a system unit and a floppy drives unit. These models used a backplane instead of the main board. Although the system bus was compatible with ISA bus, it used a different type of connector, so the IBM PC expansion cards could not be installed in ES PEVM.
Later models were fully compatible with IBM PC XT and IBM PC AT.
Unlike IBM PC using the Intel 8088 processor, the early ES PEVM models used K1810VM86 processor with a 16-bit bus and a clock frequency of 5 MHz. The processor was placed on a separate board. Early versions of the board did not have a socket for the floating point coprocessor.
The following boards were produced for ES-1840 and ES-1841:
Volume of production for a number of models:
Model nameYear of production startYear of production endVolume of production
ES-1840198619897461
ES-18411987199583937
ES-18421988199610193
ES-1843199019933012
ES-1849199019974966
ES-1851199119973142
ES-1863199119973069

Software

The computers were shipped with AlphaDOS, an entirely Russified version of MS-DOS/PC DOS 2.x and 3.x. All commands were entered in Russian, for example, СМЕНКАТ for CHDIR. Files and file extensions were also in Russian, such as АТРИБ.ИСП for ATTRIB.EXE. The operating system used the main code page, hardwired into the display ROM; it was compatible neither with CP 866 nor CP 855, although partially with ISO/IEC 8859-5.

Reliability

Early models of ES PEVM were prone to failures due to manufacturing defects. The mean time between failures MTBF was around 350 hours.