What happened to setun?

[jshep89]

Could this be purchased? I heard there were several made at the moscow university, but I'm not sure if they even exist anymore. It would be interesting to see if it would be possible to acquire one if more than one were actually made.

[Shaos]

It had been produced in some quantity in 50s - almost every university in USSR had it and many factories but then all of it was obsoleted and thrown to garbage.
For example my university where I studied (1990-1996) and taught (1996-2003) last part of Setun was commissioned in late 1980s (but I had known about it much later - at 2004).
So I don't think that anything ternary was survived...

P.S. Later it was Setun-70 (designed in 1970s), but it was just a few experimental machines, so it's also hard to find...

[petrenko]

Only " hard to find..." ?
This is 99.99% impossible to find any "Setun`" somewhere because of some rare materials inside and abolition in 1992 the law prohibited trafficking of rare materials in the USSR
So T.S. is very late - about >30 years late.

[Shaos]

If I not mistaken, Mac Baster found ACTUAL punch tapes with software for Setun-70, but he was not able to decode it

P.S. And he also scanned A LOT of books and papers about Setun and Setun-70 (most of them with actual code listings)
I have most of them in digital form (TIFFs)
I hope I will find time to publish it here in near future...

[jshep89]

Just curious if we were to put an add up as looking to buy any Setun ternary computers and see if we get a hit. I mean weirder things have turned up, and its hard to imagine the soviets destroyed all of them considering the history the US had with trying to copy it.

[Shaos]

Some time around 60s it was decided that soviets computers must copy americans and everything original was eventually destroyed...

P.S. Translated story about Setun-70 punch tapes:
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.a ... ions%2F206