Restoring A Soviet ES-4001 Mainframe Management Panel

Recently the [Chornobyl Family] bought their arms on an ES-4001 management panel for a Seventies-era Soviet mainframe, with the intention to restore it to full working order. Not simply because they’re actually into cool previous Soviet know-how, but additionally due to the connection that this management panel holds to the Chernobyl nuclear accident that was so instrumental to the world in trendy instances.

During the Seventies the USSR felt that it couldn’t be left behind within the race to create higher digital computer systems. This led them to not solely create a couple of authentic designs, but additionally successfully clone the IBM System/360 and System/370. This resulted within the ES EVM-series of mainframes, with an ES-1060 discovering itself put in on the Duga-1 early warning radar system close to what’s now the Chornobyl nuclear energy plant in Ukraine.

Although the radar arrays are essentially the most well-known function of the Duga-1, beneath it’s the laptop middle the place the ES-1060 was put in. It was by no means put into service following the ChNPP Unit-4 accident — all that continues to be of a as soon as pinnacle of Soviet engineering are the picked-over carcass of the mainframe and its management panel.

The management panel in query was obtained was from the early Nineteen Eighties, serving a extra mild service life in a datacenter and appears to be in a largely good situation. That mentioned, there was nonetheless sufficient to be performed to make it work and undo the injury of its violent elimination from the mainframe. Along the way in which we additionally learn the way the system was used and the way the management panel works.

Although related in some methods to the System/370, it’s nonetheless very totally different, and with solely about 300 of those mainframes produced, it’s value saving no matter parts nonetheless stay right now, together with the surviving documentation.