"Plamya-KV" mission computer ferrite core memory

The DSh-128 (ДШ-128) board is part of Magnetic Random Access Memory of the "Plamya-KV" onboard computer from the S-200 air defense system (NATO reporting name SA-5 Gammon). It has a thermostat, ferrite core memory cube and 128 decoder cells (on my copy, one cell is broken off). In total, four such boards were installed in a computer. On the back side of the printed circuit board, tinned inscription "ДШ-128", production number, and wire numbers.

Internal structure and specifications

The cube is a plastic base, in the grooves of which there are ferrite boards stitched with an enameled copper wire. The cube can store 128 of 16-bit words and consists of forty ferrite plates with 272 holes. Address and discharge wires pass through the holes, and the discharge wire is made in a printed way by metallizing the surface of the ferrite board. To store 0 or 1, two cells are used - one for storing one and the other for zero.

The cube is inserted into the internal volume of a special thermostat, closed with a lid and installed on the board. A thermostat designed to ensure a constant temperature of ferite boards when operating the board in various temperature conditions. The thermostat maintains the temperature of the ferrite boards within the range of +40 to +60 degrees Celsius at an ambient temperature range of -40 to +50 degrees. At temperatures above +50 degrees, the thermostat turns off automatically. The constancy of the temperature of the ferrite boards of the cube ensures the constancy of the characteristics of the ferrite material and thereby the constancy of the load for the write and read currents. The time for warming up a cube within external temperatures from -40 to +50 degrees does not exceed 30 minutes.

Additional information

Developed by Central Design Bureau number 17 (now the St. Petersburg concern "Vega"). The details indicate 1990, the memory cube 1992, the decoders indicate with the dates for March 1993. These may be the dates of the last check.

You can read about the ROM of the same computer right here

Full technical documentation for the "Plamya-KV" digital computer, including a description of the RAM operation, can be downloaded on the page site dedicated to the S-200 air defense system.

Images (click to enlarge)