TAP 34 is a self design of Terta company from Hungary. Primarily it was designed as a terminal for big computer systems but it was also able to process data alone. The main integrated circuits were assembled in the USSR and in Hungary by Tungsram, but several parts were imported from other countries.
The built-in monitor was a DME-28 monochrome CRT made by Orion. This company was famous for its televisions in Hungary and the other KGST countries.
The floppy drive attached to the computer was regular 8 inch 77 track drive using IBM format. This drive, which could use single and double sided disks, was a hungarian product also, made by the MOM.
The first design had some communications software in the EPROM, but at the end of the 80's the computer was redesigned. This second design had only 2 kBytes of EPROM, containing the bootloader software for the CP/M. The CPU card, the Ram card, the CRT card and the floppy controller card were all placed into a coloured plastic case.
The system was designed around the classic 8080 circuits.
- Display controller: i8275
- Floppy controller: i8271
- DMA: i8257
- i8255 PIO, i8253 CTC, i8251 USART
TAP-34 had the number EC-8534 in the EC-serries (united serries of computers) of East block and ex-USSR. Abbrevation "TAP" states for Teletype Abonents Point. There were three known modifications of EC-8534: original one, EC-8534.02, and EC-8534.3. The last one had optional capability to boot CP/M clone called VDOS.
The standard software included some built-in teletype programs and BASIC (Terta-BASIC). There was also a so called DP (Developer Package) floppy bootable system for assembly development (included editor, assembler and debugger).
Some constructive features of TAP-34 and the mentioned software suggest that there was some prototype CPU as well as original development software which were borrowed to design the TAP-34.
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This is the first copter I''ve used for programming when I was a kid. I had an access to the room with 3 TAP-34 in the university (I was just a schoolboy, so I couldn''t be there officially).
This was the first machine I used for something non-trivial. It was used by Express-2 - the computerized ticketing system designed and deployed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Railway Tap-34 were used to manage repair and maintenance of cash registers. It was deployed at major railway ticket parlors at major stations and in Moscow and St. Petersburg central offices. Tap-34 used modems to connect to mainframes (ES-1045, a Soviet clone of IBM-360/370). One Tap-34 was deployed at the high school I attended and we interned with the Express-2 doing software development in Intel 8080 assembly.
Sunday 29th December 2019
Ilya Usvyatsky
I had one in 1996-1998. It was originally decommissioned from CSTI (centre of scientific and technical information) in Belgorod (Russia), then it was obtained by my friend, he used it a while, and then I purchased it from him. I do not think it had CP/M, it had some custom localised OS they used in organisation. It was possible to load Basic and Astra (text processor) from floppy, there were some other software coming with it, but those two were the most useful for me. It had Consul printer A3 size with red/black ribbon on the spools (like in typewriter, not the cartridge), I do not remember the exact model.
At the point when I sold it, I have got just enough money to buy an ordinary PC keyboard.
