Elektronika MK-61 (opens in new tab)

Heh. Had one. I overclocked my calculator by installing lower resistor (like 1MOhm to 250k, don't remember actual values). It sure was brilliant back then. Numbers were expressed in scientific notation and despite there were only 2 digits for order, actually calculator was capable to calculate up to 10^999. Number greater 10^99 were displayed as "ERROR" (in 7 segment it was 'ЕГГОГ'), but if you lower order you can get correct mantissa. In fact, the situation was more complex, some numbers were '3ГГОГ'. It was very fun to discover hidden secrets.

The title reminds me of an interesting article about old Soviet and eastern block computers in a Finnish computer magazine Skrolli a few years ago. They have done couple of international editions in English, and this article happens to be included in 2016.1E [1]

[1] https://skrolli.fi/en/international/

Also have a look at the MK-90 (1988), its processor is a PDP-11 on a chip and it runs DEC BASIC.

https://elektronika.su/en/calculators/elektronika-mk-90/

Also from Elektronika there was the IM-02 Nu, Pogodi! [1] handheld game device, which I used to play obsessively as a teen in the early '90s. Very good times. I've only later (with access to the Internet) learned that it was a clone after some Western-made device.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9fqGVrh9vg

I had one as a kid. Incredibly capable machine with just a hundred bytes of RAM.

You could play real-time games on it, using GRAD-DEG-RAD switch as hardware joystick!

Perhaps off-topic, but .su is the TLD of the Soviet Union.

Cool website! I bought one of these for a pittance about 5 years ago on eBay. Came from Ukraine as ‘new old stock’, with the old manuals and everything. A time capsule! Unfortunately this thing has the worst buttons I’ve ever pressed. I’ll buy any RPN calculator I come across though.

Currently hugged, cache: https://web.archive.org/web/20220402000658/https://elektroni...

I have an MK-52, which I bought a few years ago very cheaply from an Ukrainian vendor on Ebay. It's interesting because it's programmable and even has a hardware expansion slot (although those expansions are hard to get). However, the keys are a disappointment, they're quite mushy.

I wonder if we in time will see a “new Soviet” block with a completely parallel ecosystem of computing devices - from military systems to toys, phones and personal computing.