1984 · Microprocessor Process Control · Work 917 of 1,871
The control room of a chemical works near Leuna on a winter night, a pale console, on it two brown-beige monitor housings, their screens glowing softly with green lines of pipes and valves and small coloured blocks, in front two flat keyboards with beige keys and yellow, red and green special keys, beside them a small key switch, a hand in a light blue nylon work coat sleeve turning the key, the shift operator seen from directly behind with face turned fully away, at the side an open grey rack of plug-in cards with white cables, behind a tall window distillation columns and pipe bridges lit by orange lamps, fluorescent light.
What it was used for
audatec was the digital process control system of VEB Geräte- und Regler-Werke Teltow, a plant of the VEB Kombinat Automatisierungsanlagenbau; according to robotrontechnik.de the name stands for automation with digital data processing for technological processes. It was used to control and monitor larger industrial plants; robotrontechnik.de lists as the manufacturer's preferred fields lignite-fired power stations, process engineering and chemicals (paraffin and tar distillation, blast furnace technology), hot rolling mills and excavators in open-cast lignite mining. In the East German journal msr, W. Barge and B. Moltmann described in 1988 the information system for the country's 100 MW power station units; K. Köhler of the Institut für Kraftwerke reported on field trials at Cottbus in March 1988. Each functional unit was a K1520 microcomputer, and one base cabinet took up to 675 process signals.
What was new
What was characteristic was distributed multi-computer operation: several largely independent computers on a process data bus running at 250 or 500 kbit/s; in the earlier ursamat K400 system process computers had been integrated alongside conventional instrumentation. Added to that was self-monitoring - computers not otherwise busy tested their own hardware and reported faults over the duplicated network to the operating consoles - and a coupling computer shielded the process network from the control-room computer so that unauthorized access could not bring the system down. Lothar Starke, chairman of the Industriemuseum Region Teltow, writes that components were bought in consumer-goods quality, so all critical incoming components and assemblies were stress-tested under load and temperature. In 1988 alone, Starke says, 400 units were built.
What the sources leave open: The dates are of different kinds: 1984 for transfer to production and first industrial use (Industriemuseum Region Teltow, Starke, robotrontechnik.de), 1985 for introduction per brandenburgikon.net. On the start of development the museum and robotrontechnik.de say 1975, Starke 1980 for the direct work. Units, prices, export countries and plant names are not documented; the papers name only 100 MW units, no site.