Elektronika B3-34

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"I bought in 1978 my programmable B3-34 for 80 rubles (my two-month student's stipend) and used it during my studing in the university, it works till now. Really, it helped me to do various calculations among them integration by Simpson and Gaussian rules, solving ordinary differential equations by simple Euler ou Runge-Kutta methods, interpolation and finding roots of simple nonlinear equation by Newton method, statistical calculations (correlation coefficients, simple regression). Of course, the limited number of program steps and memory cells was the main obstacle (e.g., it was almost impossible to solve the system with more than four linear equations). There were published some books with a lot of programs for this calculator in assembler-like language, even the popular scientific journal "Science and Life" (like Scientific American) have published from time to time some articles with useful tricks and programs for it. "

- Sergei Zybin

I like this one a lot. It has a nice, quality feel to it. The B3-34 arrived around 1979, and it was a huge sales success judging by its availability now. The improvements over the B3-21 included 98 program steps, full scientific capability, and indirect addressing for more sophisticated programming. Through a cosmetic change it then became the MK-54, the first of the highly popular MK series of calculators. The B3-34 cost 80-85 rubles, a significant improvement over previous calculators but still the equivalent of two week's salary for the average worker. Its price (as on nearly all of the calculators) was marked into the injection-molded plastic cases, making price changes difficult and demonstrating the Communist regimes famously inflexible pricing philosophy. A User's Perspective by Dr. Linas Balciauskas You made me remember my start years - when I got my own B3-34, I was just after the university, perhaps in 1981 or 1982? I can't remember exactly the year. The price was, I think, 65 rubles - a bit more then half of my salary. In these years I already had some experience in programming and enough experience in using HP-25, but it was not possible to obtain this calculator, so when B3-34 arrived, I was happy enough not to hesitate about the price. B3-34 was the only one available - and programming of this calculator turned to a way of life. I am not professional programmer, but in programming of this I reached some level! I programmed mostly statistical calculations, some of them very complex. Having limited memory and program steps, I used chain calculations (two or more programs keyed in, saving intermediate results in memory registers, or even saving part of the program). The worst thing was poor coding of display - program steps were hardly to memorize. Without test run no one was sure program steps were entered correctly, unless you read and understant cryptical codes of the program steps. Iterations sometimes took days, for example, finding coefficients for the negative binomial distribution. If you accidentally pulled out the cord, without accumulators your results were lost. But it was possible to carry this machine, still running, home from the office - and back to the office in the morning. It was also unbreakable - dropped to the floor, sometimes even did not stopped running. The box for the calculator, along with it's vinyl carry-pouch. The document is a list of the addresses of 166 factories which repair the b3 series of calculators (including b3-09|14M, b3-14, b3-21, b3-32, b3-34) Number of programs I wrote is maybe 500 or so; some of the codes lost forever after PCs arrived. Some are still used by my friends at the institute - specific biological calculations are not included into statistical packages. In 1988 I at last obtained HP-25, thus some programs I adapted for this one, some remained for B3-34 only. My personal calculator newer broke down completely. I think, I have had some of these calculators (real B3-34, MK-54, desktop version of one of these) Weakest parts of B3-34 were switches and power source (accumulators). My personal calculator is still alive, used by my friends. It is literally breaking down, kept in the piece by adhesive tape, contacts are very weak, accumulators ballooning, but - it STILL works. I personally used this calculator last time maybe 2-3 years ago, but in 1996 or 1997 I wrote some short programmes I was asked. I keyed them in, made test calculations. Crazy, isn't it? When I published my book on programs for biological calculations, suddenly I became famous in former USSR. This book became rarity at once. In other country it was possible to do a business - I merely sold some of the books. A lot of them were simply given as gift. I can remember we got a caviar as payment ... For a long time I kept letters from the whole USSR - even academicians were trying to get this book. I do not think my programs were briliant - they were just suited to my needs, thus, suited to the needs of other biologists. Up to now I am not sure, was it B3-34 or BZ-34. There were a lot of publications in Russian language, but Cyrillic is not my native. For a long time we all were sure, that design is stolen from some western example. First soviet BASIC calculator was just a poor copy of SHARP; DVK-series of the desktop computers were exactly the PDP's... If not, this soviet machine was really worth its price. I remember it with nostalgy... As I said, calculator programming was our way of life. Dr. Linas Balciauskas Inst. of Ecology Akademijos 2 Vilnius 2600 LITHUANIA

Demonstration Machine

© Sergei Frolov A classroom demonstration model of the B3-34.

Hacking the Machine

The B3-34 was a popular machine for hackers, and many variants of upgrades and modifications to this machine were made. Some of these (for example, a homebrew cassette interface for loading and saving programs) are shown in the Hacking It! section of this site.

How To Calculate on the B3-34

Sergei Frolov has written an interesting article on calculation with the B3-34 and similar machines. He writes... Here is, in brief, told how to work with the calculator B3-34, its analogues MK-54, MK-56, and also the MK-61 and MK-52. Information here has been gathered from articles in the magazine "Science and Life".

To B3-34 or not to B3-34? Sort-of looks like a b3-34? A real b3-34. The calculator on the far left was tentatively been identified as a b3-34. The problem wass, this image appeared in a collage of calculators which included a definite b3-34. So, is this a b3-34... or not? We thought we may never know. But we were wrong! This is not, in fact, a b3-34, but a MK-47 - unique because of its capability to store short programs on magnetic cards.