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MEROD Base Station
The MA-4420 was a base station for messages sent and received by
MEROD devices,
developed by Racal COMSEC
in the early 1990s. It was at the heart of a message center that allowed
secure messages to be sent, received, recorded and printed.
The MA-4420 is known to have been used by several UK services, including
the Army, Special Forces (SF) and Diplomatic Services.
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The image on the right shows a typical MA-2240 unit as it was used with
the Dutch Special Forces during the 1980s. The unit is housed in a 3U
19" rack mount case with a Power Supply Unit (PSU) bolted to the rear;
a rather heavy black 'blob'.
All controls and indicators are on the front panel, whilst all connections
are placed at the rear.
Once powered up, the mode of operation is selected
with the KESO key at the center.
It has four positions: RUN A, RUN B,
TEST and RESET. In case of compromise, the user would press the CLEAR KEYS
button to delete the crypto keys.
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The diagram below shows the position of the MA-4420 in a possible configuration.
At the left are the MEROD units used in the field in combination with a manpack
radio. At the right is the message base station. The MA-4420 is at the heart of
the message center. All connections to other equipment are
at the rear.
The following connections are available: REMOTE, IEE 488, Printer, Radio 1,
Radio 2 and Clear Keys (Zeroize). The printer connector is a DB25 male socket
that is probably wired for a standard parallel (Centronics) printer.
The IEEE connector is probably used for external control by a PC, which is
a rather common standard. The pinout of the REMOTE connector is currently
unknown.
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The MA-4420 was also used by the Dutch Special Forces (Corps Commandotroepen).
In The Netherlands,
the device was known by its Army-designator KY-5589/TGC-5578.
It is also known as NSN 5830-99-777-0457.
In the field, the Dutch SF used MEROD terminals connected to
an AEG Telefunken SE-6861 manpack radio.
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At present we have no further information about the MA-4220. If you now
anything about it, or if you have a user manual or circuit diagrams,
please contact us. You help is much appreciated.
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© Copyright 2009-2011, Paul Reuvers & Marc Simons. Last changed: Sun,01 Jan 2012.09:16:40
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