Setun 70 Hardware Details

[Ternary Wannabe]

I discovered this forum a couple of months ago, and am very impressed with the amount of information here. I am very interested in the efforts to design new ternary systems, as well as the information on the Setun machines.

One thing I noticed is that there seems to be some good detailed documentation about the original Setun, but not as much about the Setun 70 hardware (although the software model seems to be well documented). This makes sense, as the original Setun was produced in numbers, but I was wondering if there is any more documentation on the Setun 70.

I thought this paragraph from "http://www.computer-museum.ru/histussr/12-2.htm" (courtesy of Google Translate) was especially intruiging:

Technically, "Setun 70" has a number of improvements over the "Setun". Thus, the implementation of three-digit single-wire transmission signal allowed by almost 2 times to reduce the number of electrical connections, logical elements have become easier, miniature and more bang consumes 2.5 times less energy, significantly improved parameters of ternary memory and magnetic recording ternary code. Further developed threshold machinery operations of three-valued logic. Developed in relation to electromagnetic means, this technique is portable and semiconductor elements, such as type I2L.

Is there any information on this "three-digit single-wire transmission signal" and "threshold machinery operations of three-valued logic"?

(My apologies if this has been covered before.)

Thanks!

[Shaos]

Google translated it wrong - basically it's saying about "three-value single-wire transmission", not "three-digit". So it looks like the way that we here use to represent balanced ternary - negative voltage is -1, positive voltage is +1 and about ground is 0.

Unfortunately there is not enough information available about actual schematics and instruction set of Setun-70. Anyway it was not a mass-produced machine as Setun and it is less interesting because of that.

P.S. I have some scans of ternary Russian articles from 70s and 80s - some of them have ternary program listing in it, but it requires significant amount of time to translate it for the world and analyze it...

[Ternary Wannabe]

Google translated it wrong

I've got used to that in this process. It's sometimes pretty funny - on some pages it refers to the Setun as a "car" instead of "machine".

basically it's saying about "three-value single-wire transmission", not "three-digit". So it looks like the way that we here use to represent balanced ternary - negative voltage is -1, positive voltage is +1 and about ground is 0.

I should have been more clear in my post - I assumed that was what it meant. I was just wondering if they had invented any clever techniques that might still be of use today. (This also implies the the original Setun used two wires per trit.)

Unfortunately there is not enough information available about actual schematics and instruction set of Setun-70.

That's a shame. By the way, some of the articles seem to say that the Setun 70 was still in service, or at least intact. Do we know if that is still the case?

[Shaos]

My understanding was that Setun-70 is not functioning anymore - may be I'm wrong...

P.S. Yes, in Russian both car and computer are called "a machine"