Ryan's SepTandy Spectacular! 3: Send in the clones Part #9 - The Electronika MK-85

Welcome back to part 9 of my SepTandy Spectacular 3. In the last post we took at look at the Laser Portable Computers, which were almost clones of the Tandy Pocket Computers. In this post we're going to a look at a Pocket Computer clone from behind the Iron Curtain, The Electronika MK-85.

The Electronika MK-85 (1986)

Released in 1986, The Electronika MK-85 was was the world’s first 16-bit handheld computer and one of the few portable computers available in the Soviet Union.

Electronika was the major brand used by the Soviet Министерство электронной промышленности (Ministry of electronic industry or MEI for short) or Minelektronprom for short. They were established in 1961, and were responsible for producing all of the electronics for Russia and the Soviet Union. By the 70's, Electronika became known for their calculators, which they began producing in 1968.

The Elektronika B3-21 programmable scientific pocket calculator (1977)

In the late 70's they got into the computer market, producing computers for businesses schools and government agencies. However due to how Communism worked, their computer ended up being behind on the times. Their first computer was the Elektronika 60, a rack-mounted terminal computer released in 1978, and was a clone of the DEC LSI 11 computer, released in 1975, which itself is based on the PDP-11 minicomputer released in 1970. The Elektronika 60 is probably most famous for being the computer system Alexey Pajitnov used to create Tetris.

The Elektronika 60 (1978)

In the 1980s, Elektronika bought their PDP-11 technology into the home consumer market with the introduction theElektronika BK0010-01 in 1985, soon becoming the only official (government approved and accounted for in economic planning) Soviet home computer design in mass production.

The Elektronika BK0010-01 (1985)

They took it a step further, by introducing a pocket computer running on their PDP-11 clone architecture with the MK-85, released in 1986 for ₽115 rubles. It was quite expensive, considering that the average Russian's salary was around ₽130 rubles, but still managed to gain popularity despite the its short supply and price tag.  The MK-85 was based on the Casio FX-700P, which itself is a higher memory version of the Casio PB-100 (AKA The Tandy PC-4). 

Left to right: The Electronika MK-85 (1986), The Casio FX-700P (1983), The Casio PB-100 (1983), and The Tandy PC-4 (1985)

On the front of the machine is the 12 character LCD display, 5 buttons for Mode, using the red "S" legended commands, using the blue "F" legended commands, and scrolling the screen left and right, the keyboard, and the numpad.

The front of the Electronika MK-85

On the right side, There is the power plug, and nothing much else.

The back of the Electronika MK-85

On the left side, there is the wheel for adjusting the contrast, quite useful for a device like this.

The left side of the Electronika MK-85

And finally on the bottom is the model information sticker, or rather stamp, and underneath is where the batteries reside.

The bottom of the Electronika MK-85

Powering up the Electronika MK-85 drops you into BASIC where you're greeted by a start up screen with a READY P0 prompt. while it looks like the Casio FX-700P BASIC its not compatible but does operate pretty close to it.

Storage wise, unfortunately, there is no storage. There's no dock to hook up a cassette recorder and printer, at all. however you can store up to 10 programs by using shift and numpad to write and store a program in P0-P9.

For the hardware of the computer itself, It uses a K1806VM2 CPU clocked at 455 KHz, 2K of RAM, 16K of ROM, a 12 character LCD display (capable of displaying graphics at a resolution of 80 x 7 pixels), and could on either  4 AG13 batteries or a 220V external AC adaptor.

The Electronika MK-85 Motherboard

While this computer is modeled after the Casio FX-700P, its not compatible with due to the differing architecture.

However despite its incompatibilities, high price, and short supply, it managed to still be incredibly popular, selling over 150 000 thousand units were sold between 1986 and 2000. the MK-85 also was Famously used to combat economic fraud, with Zelenograd’s Angstrem collaborated with Ankort on mods for Elektronika’s MK-85B and MK-85C models.

The MK-85 was followed up by the MK-90 released in 1988, which had a bigger screen, the ability to hook up a docking station and had slots for expanding RAM.

The Electronika MK-90 (1988)

Electronika kept producing electronics for the Soviet Union until 1991 when it collapsed, although the name is still in use in Belarus.

So how do I rate the Electronika MK-85 on compatibility? Unfortunately, it ranks as Incompatible due to the differing hardware, and while the BASIC is similar, its not enough to get it into Semi Compatible.

This concludes Part 9 of my third Septandy Spectacular,  join me next time as we move from pocket computer clones  to Tandy 100 clones by visiting Japan, to take a look at the NEC PC-8201.