<story><title>K340A: The Brain Computer of Chernobyl Duga Radar [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHiCHRB-RlA</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>grishka</author><text>Oh, I visited it in 2015. There were some very odd-looking huge boards with pins inserted into them that I assumed were ROMs. Also panels that were clearly intended to display some part of the state of the CPU. Here&amp;#x27;s some pictures I took:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-70.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f0d&amp;#x2F;vLVISoaL8Ww.jpg?size=2560x1920&amp;amp;quality=96&amp;amp;sign=ac41e1c73e1a07b089e6b9224ea22d7d&amp;amp;type=album&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-70.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f0d&amp;#x2F;vL...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-67.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f5d&amp;#x2F;i8AgeUZgmRA.jpg?size=2560x1920&amp;amp;quality=96&amp;amp;sign=1c891e470434d7bf157d9d4f2d31b515&amp;amp;type=album&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-67.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f5d&amp;#x2F;i8...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-28.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f53&amp;#x2F;cfltU5WRhYs.jpg?size=2560x1920&amp;amp;quality=96&amp;amp;sign=a8ceccd03503ecaf813930043b3aa9f5&amp;amp;type=album&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;sun9-28.userapi.com&amp;#x2F;impf&amp;#x2F;c621621&amp;#x2F;v621621231&amp;#x2F;20f53&amp;#x2F;cf...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;edit: these ROM &amp;quot;cassettes&amp;quot; appear in the video at around 12:40</text></comment>
<story><title>K340A: The Brain Computer of Chernobyl Duga Radar [video]</title><url>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHiCHRB-RlA</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s a strange machine. It&amp;#x27;s too bad so little is known about how it attached to the rest of the radar system. It&amp;#x27;s clearly a special purpose machine, one with manually programmed ROMs, built to do a very specific task. But what? Did it beam-steer the radar? Process the returns? The special-purpose I&amp;#x2F;O gear that must have been present is gone. The console is clearly just a programming and debug console, not something for seeing what the radar was seeing.&lt;p&gt;The US&amp;#x27;s main over the horizon radar of that era was Cobra Mist.[1] It never really worked well. Too much interference, supposedly. Trying to bounce radar off the ionosphere is inherently iffy. 
The US instead deployed line of sight radar chains, such as BMEWS. This required sites strung across northern Canada, but worked.&lt;p&gt;More modern over the horizon radars do work, but have much more compute power behind them.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cobra_Mist&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cobra_Mist&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>