Dubna 48K


The Dubna 48K is a Soviet clone of the ZX Spectrum home computer. It was based on an analogue of the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. Its name comes from Dubna, a town near Moscow where it was produced, and "48K" stands for 48 KBs of RAM.

Overview

According to the manual, this computer was intended for:
By the time this computer was released, there were already much more powerful x86 CPUs and commercially available advanced operating systems, such as Unix, DOS and Windows. The Dubna 48K had only a built-in BASIC interpreter, and loaded its programs from a cassette recorder, so it couldn't run any of the modern operating systems, and as such, wasn't suitable for "studying the principles of PC operation". However, the Dubna 48K and many other Z80 clones, hopelessly outdated by that time, were largely introduced in high schools of the Soviet Union. Many of the games for the Z80-based machine were ported from games already available for Nintendo's 8-bit game console, marketed in Russia under the brand Dendy.

Included items

The Dubna 48K was shipped with the following units:
Additionally, there were some optional items:
The computer could also connect to a ZX Microdrive, but such device was never included.

Technical details

A device named Dubna 48K is referenced in the American film Jason Bourne. In the film, rogue agent Nicky Parsons uses a "palm-sized authentication device" named Dubna 48K to get connected to the mainframe computer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Parsons downloads all the files on the Agency's black operations. The Agency later finds out that the Dubna 48K unit was reportedly destroyed back in 1993, and its access to the mainframe was never revoked. The Agency did not know that it had actually survived its reported destruction. The film does not explain how a device from the 1990s could be still compatible with a mainframe computer of the 2010s. The film also does not point out that the real Dubna 48K was a Soviet home computer which was primarily used to play ports of video games. The video games available to the real Dubna 48K were released by Nintendo and were products of the third generation of video game consoles.