9 ms·
Soviet PCs
- xfour 11y agoFeel like these in no small part explain why Russians seem to have a disproportionate amount of programmers compared to all other countries outside the US.
- oblio 11y agoThere's another former Communist country with a "disproportionate amount of programmers": Romania. It even had its own PC clone: https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_PC (in Romanian, sorry, but you can probably figure things out just from the dates and numbers :) ). Edit: How cute! At the bottom there are links to all the Romanian-made computers. There are at least 20 models I didn't even know of.
- foobarian 11y agoI heard it said that this was because of Ceausescu's regime's fixation on surveillance and intelligence. So they allocated top resources to information technology, resulting in an unusually IT-capable population.
- nathell 11y agoI'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. In Poland, for example, there were the 8-bit Meritums [1], the Elwro 800 Juniors [2], the Bosman 8s [3], the Mazovia PC clones [4] complete with their own Polish characters encoding that has the peculiarity of containing one character that had never existed in Unicode [5], to name but a few, not to mention the Odra mainframes [6]. [1]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File:Meritum_II_komplet.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File... [2]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:Elwro_800_calosc.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:E... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y [4]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File:Mazovia_1016_PC.jpg https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer)
- oblio 11y agoCommunists had 1 positive obsession: exact sciences. See all that focus on math, physics, etc. They probably thought they could solve all the world's problems as equations, with the head of state as the "master variable manipulator".
- 59nadir 11y ago> I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers. There's this beauty from Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80 I'm guessing a lot of countries overall had their own computers, not just eastern block. We don't usually hear much about them because we base our computer history mostly on the canon of the US. I was surprised to read in "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" that my former university's computer science department made a very prominent sendmail version back in the day (IDA sendmail) and that this was noteworthy in that context. This field has been international for a very long time.
- interfixus 11y agoYou are aware that Sweden was not a member of the "Eastern Block"?
- 59nadir 11y agoThat was exactly my point. Most likely every country (overall) had their own computer. It wasn't an "Eastern block thing". The degree of separation was obviously higher, but not all "western" manufacturers were American. (Also: danskjävel...)
- prodmerc 11y agoYep, we're one of the top countries when it comes to engineers per capita, must've gotten that from the soviets :-). Too bad there's not enough resources to do much in the country, so everyone is fleeing it (not for long though, I hope)...
- oblio 11y agoI'd say that retention is a lot better in the IT sector, definitely a lot better than in the 90s or early 00s.
- rdtsc 11y agoPlus what I understand a good mathematics school. That helps as well.
- degenerate 11y agoIt's also very cold outside. Forever.
- gtrubetskoy 11y agoI don't think so because nobody could afford these. It was the education system. Standard curriculum for everybody. By the time you finished 10th (last) grade you had studied pretty advanced math, physics, chemistry, etc. Even if it's not your thing, even if you could only get the lowest passing grade, you still had to do it or fail school. It was kind of rough, but I'm still reaping rewards from what it gave me.
- yankoff 11y agoAlso may have to do with the prestige of being an engineer in USSR. That was a popular profession.
- sliverstorm 11y agoI feel like I can only dream about such a time, such a place. Engineer? Prestige?
- tormeh 11y agoI think it's the inverse. Disregard for engineers seems like an anglo-saxon phenomenon to me. The Germanic countries are, of course, famed for holding engineers in high regard, but so do most third-world countries, and China. I think the anglo-saxon opinion of engineers is caused by blurring the line between engineer and technician.
- fit2rule 11y agoI think its caused by the inappropriate elevation of the marketing classes, who don't have a job unless someone else does the work of building something...
- yankoff 11y agoWell, I think, being a software engineer is still pretty cool in Silicon Valley :)
- prodmerc 11y ago
- rdtsc 11y agoYap, agree 100%. That is why I am a programmer. Story time: Growing up in the late 80's, early 90's I liked to take apart electronics. Biggest treat for me was finding an old TV or radio to disassemble. Then I found out about computers. We got them at school for an "Informatics" course -- which is what they called "Computer Science". I thought those were great. The teacher let us play logic games on it for grades even -- Sokoban, Lemmings and others. My mom saw that I liked computers and started saving money, even though we were pretty poor. She saved for a year, but didn't tell me then, on March 8, 1993 she bought me a Soviet ZX Spectrum clone. That was the best gift I ever received in terms on impact on my life since. The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. We connected it to our old black and white TV that still had vacuum tubes in it. That computer helped me learn programming (had a C compiler, Pascal, assembly, lots of games) and English (since documentation, games and programs were all in English). Fast forward many years later and programming is my day job and I still like it.
- da02 11y agoJust out of curiosity, what languages do you use today?
- rdtsc 11y agoErlang, Python, C, C++, wrote some Android apps in Java, looking at Rust next probably.
- digi_owl 11y ago> The clone was pretty crappy with rubber buttons and it loaded everything from tape recorder. Well the original was not much better...
- digi_owl 11y agoFrom elsewhere i got the impression that there was less pre-compiled software to be had, so unless you wanted an expensive paper weight you basically had to learn to code.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoRelatedly, the German Democratic Republic had an arcade machine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly_Play
- togusa 11y agoThey also had full VAX 11/780 clones! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_K_1840 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_K_1840 Oh and wonderful art ( http://imgur.com/GPPI56E http://imgur.com/GPPI56E ) but that's another topic.
- krylon 11y agoI still think Robotron is about the coolest name of any computer manufacturer EVER. Imagine how cool it would be to own a laptop or smartphone or whatever with that name on it.
- DanBC 11y agoTIMTronic - (ticket issuing machine, electronic) is my favourite name for any bit of hardware. I used to fix them. Real keyswitches, 7 segment displays, ink ribbons. Really retro now.
- detaro 11y agoSince there were jokes further up, this reminded me of another one: A delegation of Japanese visits the GDR and of course is shown many important companies and places. At the end, they are asked "What did you enjoy the most?" "The three great museums: Pergamon, Pentacon and Robotron"
- krylon 11y agoHehe, that is a good one! Earlier this year, I visited the Heinz-Nixdorf museum, not far from where I live, which actually has a mainframe built by Robotron on display (a clone of an IBM S/370, I think).
- gtrubetskoy 11y agoCuriously the only PC in my school in Moscow in 1988 was an IBM PC (the 5150?). Actually, that may have been 1987 or 86 even... Then we moved to the US. I've never seen or knew of existence of any of the machines in this article.
- yankoff 11y agoYup, I wrote my first Basic programs on the Korvet. And it was 1994.
- samstave 11y ago>It could be had for 440 rubles - two average monthly salaries at that time. Which is .88 Euros today.
- rocky1138 11y agoSoviet Rubles are different than today's Rubles, no?
- venomsnake 11y agoThey were backed with more tanks back then ...
- ommunist 11y agoYou can compare Soviet Ruble to Sterling Pound of the 60-ies. A nice cottage in St. Albans was £500 back then, now its £250000 more like.
- prodmerc 11y agoHow are you comparing two currencies that have never existed at the same time?
- anon1mous 11y agoIf apples were ever compared to oranges, this is it :) Here's an alternative comparison - 440 rubles was the annual rent for a 2 bed room state apartment in Moscow. Today the same is rented for 40 000 EUR.
- guard-of-terra 11y agoLet's start with the fact that it's 6,3 euros, not 0,88.
- gesman 11y agoIn 1985-87 I worked on plant that manufactured personal computers with russian-translated DOS in Minsk, Belarus. The cost of this computer was close to the cost of car so blue collar workers established multiple schemes to steal either parts of computers or the whole computers. The best plan by far was to throw computers out of the windows of factory so it would land on the soft grass right outside of the secure perimeter fence. Then whatever was thrown - would be picked up by co-conspirators and drove away immediately. Usually during the night shifts. Clever, simple and working scheme that took a while to discover and crack for local security and law enforcement.
- Igglyboo 11y agoThat is a fascinating story, If you don't mind would you expand on it? We're you stealing computers yourself as well? How dangerous was it? Where would you normally go to sell a computer like that in the soviet union?
- ASalazarMX 11y agoNot OP, but I would guess the components were not to sell, but to use.
- prodmerc 11y agoNo, you could easily sell or barter them, too. We stole car parts and fuel this way, too. Because, you know, at the end of that unholy union, they were struggling to produce stuff for themselves (military, politicians and their relatives), much less for the citizens...
- gesman 11y agoI didn't steal anything, but wanted to assemble my first computer following radio schematics in Radio magazine (that article mentioned). Collected slowly bunch of parts frmo electronics store but never got into completing the project due to lack of parts.
- prodmerc 11y ago
- santaclaus 11y agoIs the red color scheme an homage to the Soviet flag?
- exhaze 11y agoFor anyone interested in more info about this topic, my father and his friend run a fan site for the BESM-6 (including an emulator!), a Soviet-era mainframe computer: http://www.mailcom.com/besm6/ http://www.mailcom.com/besm6/
- bholdr 11y agoI wrote a blog post about a soviet start-up from 1989 that used SM-4, mainframe type computer. http://yansh.github.io/articles/rhythm/ http://yansh.github.io/articles/rhythm/ A lot of the architecture was cloned from Western or nearby countries. In any case, it was a fascinating period that in my mind produced some of the best programmers in the world. They did amazing things with little resources they had.
- nine_k 11y agoSM-4 was very much like PDP-11, running a lot of compatible software "appropriated" fromthe West.
- nikolay 11y ago... and some Bulgarian ones: http://www.pravetz.info/ http://www.pravetz.info/ A broader overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_Soviet_Bloc_countries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_i...
- grhmc 11y agoSo this post was original posted this morning, but after HN requested I repost it got to #1: http://s.gsc.io/hn-repost-request.png http://s.gsc.io/hn-repost-request.png
- jakejake 11y agoWow that's quite interesting. I've never gotten one if those so I don't know if it's new or I just never post anything interesting?!
- striking 11y agoHN mods have had this tool at their disposal for quite a while, but they've used it rarely until now. Source: I got one of these for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9083672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9083672 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086223 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9086223
- bootload 11y ago"HN mods have had this tool at their disposal for quite a while, but they've used it rarely until now." Not as rarely as you think.
- dang 11y agoWe've only recently built software support for this. Before that we did it manually for several months to test the idea. More on this at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395389 and the links from there.
- arama471 11y agoAs cool as it is you guys are giving good stories a better chance of hitting the front page. I can't help but wonder: 1. How a post is determined to be "good"? - Is it just if any of the moderators like it? - Is there a voting system for mods to determine this? - Would these not require a lot more work for the mods for possibly little benefit? 2. How do you ensure that feature isn't abused by a "bad" mod to promote their own content or views?
- more_original 11y agoThis is the first I hear about the Robotron 1715 being developed in Russia. All other sources I can find say that it was developed and built in Eastern Germany (Robotron was an Eastern German company that developed a number of computers in the 80s). Even the russian wikipedia say so. Wikipedia says that even the U880 processor, a Z80 clone, was produced in East Germany. https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_1715 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_1715 http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=864&st=1 http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=864&s... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U880 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U880
- mindsuck 11y agoThe article doesn't say it was developed in Russia, it says "The computer itself was developed at a research institute outside Moscow, and production was transferred to the German Democratic Republic"
- more_original 11y agoHow do you read "The computer itself was developed at a research institute outside Moscow" to mean anything other than that the computer was developed in Russia?
- detaro 11y agoYep, the U880 was made at the VEB Mikroelektronik „Karl Marx“ in Erfurt. After the reunification parts of the VEB were converted to a company that still runs a semiconductor fab there (X-Fab).
- msie 11y agoIt's too bad that no one is taking a risk on developing an entirely new desktop computer anymore.
- stuxnet79 11y agoFunny comment. Precisely what is the incentive? With smartphones coming to the fore as the main platform of computing in recent times?
- efoto 11y agoThere was another IBM PC soviet-made clone, somewhat similar to Iskra 1030 mentioned in the post. It was designed and manufactured in Kiev, Ukraine in mid to late 80s and was called Нейрон (neuron). I was a part of that software team, porting IBM PC/XT BIOS code, so if you have any questions do not hesitate to ask. There is a Russian language wikipedia article dedicated to it: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD_%D0%989.66 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B5%D0%B9%D1%80%D0%BE...
- selestify 11y agoDo tell more! How behind was the Soviet Union in computing (if indeed it was behind) compared to other countries at the time?
- efoto 11y agoIt was hopelessly behind in hardware. The processors were cloned by thinly slicing them and making pictures. This is how i8086 was "designed" anyway. http://www.cpushack.com/soviet-cpus.html http://www.cpushack.com/soviet-cpus.html There was very little original software written at the time, multiple teams were tasked with reverse-engineering popular software tools and programs and translating them into Russian for internal consumption. The gap in software development is somewhat harder to quantify. Overall the software was rather decent in those rare cases when it was original.
- Zelphyr 11y agoI'm not sure I know how to feel about the fact that the author had to explain what a Light Pen was. Why am I so old?!
- rpupkin 11y agoNever touch the red keys.
- RomanPushkin 11y agoI worked with the second one for ~3 years
- RomanPushkin 11y agoOne popular is missing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKNC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKNC
- x4m 11y agoUNIX-UNAS realy reads as a very funny joke for russian speakers
- kemitchell 11y agoROFL. Thanks for pointing that out.
- venomsnake 11y agoAhhh the memories. Pravetz 8d (with a cassete tape storage), Pravetz 16. The black green monitors. I still keep some around here for sentimental value.
- fit2rule 11y agoFellow Oric/Atmos user checking in.. those Pravetz machines are cool!
- ommunist 11y agoБК family is missing, the bestselling Soviet computers. CISC architecture. https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/БК_(семейство_компьютеров) https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/БК_(семейство_компьютеров). I wrote my first programmes on that Bulgarian made ISKRA 1030, that was nice but very poor performing comparing to ЕС mainframe with PRIMUS OS. Also ЕС desktops family is missing in this article. The latter sibling of that had a cast iron mouse, I kid you not.
- varjag 11y agoBK0010-01 is there. ES series was a line of IBM clones (from System/360 to XTs) and were really meant for enterprise use. Some original developments, like Vector-06c are missing though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector-06C https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector-06C
- jaxb 11y agoZX Spectrum clones (the big hit at the time) aren't on the list as well.
- Zardoz84 11y agoAnd Russians develop a lot the ZX Spectrum architecture (and keep doing)
- jaxb 11y agothere days it's mostly demos, though. see f.e. http://media.assembly.org/vod/2011/Seminars/1203_arttech_seminars_digital_resistance_east_european_demo_art_h264_1024kbit.mp4 http://media.assembly.org/vod/2011/Seminars/1203_arttech_sem...
- V-2 11y agoOne thinq for sure, God were they dirty!
- cmiller1 11y agoI believe I heard that the soviets experimented in the early days with ternary computers, and took it further than anyone else did. Does anyone have more information on that?
- Overtonwindow 11y agoThese are actually pretty cool. Need to add this to my list for when I visit Europe next. Maybe find some in a junk/antique/thrift shop?
- poelzi 11y agoI just sitting @ the c3d2 hackerspace in dresden germany which is located in the old robotron building ^^ - but never saw one of those machines in person. No idea if here are still some in the building, guess not.
- navbaker 11y agoThe professor that taught my compilers course used to tell us crazy stories about working in the Soviet Union before he immigrated as a reverse engineer, essentially copying western operating systems. He gave us by far the best explanations of real-world applications for the hardcore theory we learned in automata class.