3 ms·
Interesting to see that many are PDP-8 and -11 clones. "CVAX... When you care enough to steal the very best."
by loph 6y ago
Interesting to see that many are PDP-8 and -11 clones.
"CVAX... When you care enough to steal the very best."
- mechagodzilla 6y agoI've read a fair amount about soviet computing history, and this always struck me as odd - they poured so much effort into trying to copy/clone/reverse-engineer western computing equipment, pretty much ensuring that they were always a few generations behind. I read an incredibly depressing account of the Elektronika SSBIS - an effort that started in 1980 to clone the (then ~3-year old) Cray-1, and which managed to eventually produce a handful of prototypes by ~1991 or so (at which point the Cray C90 had just come out - a computer capable of hitting 16 GFLOPS).
- bollu 6y agoCan you tell me where you read this? I'd love to read the sources on this!
- zokier 6y agoI've long time wondered how big of a factor silicon valley was in US pulling ahead in many areas in cold war. Computers seem such an economic and technological amplifier, and of course also other (e.g. analog) electronics advances were also important and they all happened pretty much in US or at least in West.