9 ms·

Soviet computer has been forgotten for 30 years [video]

185 points by admp 3y ago

robotnikman 3y ago
Slightly related, the soviets operated mechanical computers which used water instead of gears and levers to compute things. Apparently they were used well into the 80's https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/12/vladimir-lukyanovs-water-computer.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/12/vladimir-lukyanovs-wat...
- flir 3y ago
  https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-does-economy-work https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-doe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
- eps 3y ago
  Tangentialy related - Legend has it that there was once a water-cooled Soviet mainframe model. At some point one of the machines was overheating and it was tracked down to the algae growth in coolant tubes. So the joke was that this made Soviets the pioneers of bionic computing.
- xorbax 3y ago
  Important point - it was doing integrations! Which seems both intuitive and incredibly impressive for the 1930's
maximinus_thrax 3y ago
Slightly related but a fascinating read if you're interested in vintage Soviet computing stuff: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27310479 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27310479
- cptnapalm 3y ago
  I need to find the two reports I got from the US Government about the Ural computers.
tigen 3y ago
The video is talking about a Soviet ES-1841 computer from the Chernobyl zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_PEVM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_PEVM
- varjag 3y ago
  The video is indeed talking about ES-1841, one of the most common Soviet PC clones released a couple years after the catastrophe. The channel tends to really stretch its exhibits connection to Chornobyl.
sergiotapia 3y ago
This would make a great piece of a videogame. There's an extraterrestrial enemy that's completely impenetrable to our weapons and systems. They based all their defenses around our devices and current tech. One day we discover this old russian tech that was a fork-in-road tech-wise 70 years ago and is ultimately the key to beating the enemy!
- HideousKojima 3y ago
  That's kind of sort of the premise of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from the 00's
  - pests 3y ago
    I have tried to finish that show multiple times. I always lose interest in the third season. I was very into the earlier seasons to the point of building some pretty custom fan sites and cylon-trackers :>.
lxe 3y ago
Growing up in Belarus in the 90s, the ES-1841 was my first computer. I accidentally formatted a games diskette on it for the first time, after accidentally fumbling something in Norton Commander. I think I was around 6. I was one of the few kids in my elementary school with a computer and a printer, so I was able to score some clout with the classmates, until a few of the richer kids starter to have access to more modern computers. We had 256 KB of RAM until my dad upgraded it to 512. I learned to program using QuickBasic on it when I was around 8, I think. I have many memories of this machine, and I would be so thrilled if I could gain access to it in the US somehow.
- lxe 3y ago
  Some of the games I remember playing were: - Chessmaster 2000 - nz.exe which took me decades to find to be "Saboteur 2", - digger, a game similar to digdug, as you can see in the video - moon patrol - kicks.exe -- I still can't find what the actual title was. It was a game where balls bounce around an area and your job is to slice sections of the area closing off the balls, once you capture the balls in a small enough area, you move to the next level.
  - akersten 3y ago
    > - kicks.exe -- I still can't find what the actual title was. It was a game where balls bounce around an area and your job is to slice sections of the area closing off the balls, once you capture the balls in a small enough area, you move to the next level. JezzBall - https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jezzball-fkh https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jezzball-fkh
    - lxe 3y ago
      Thanks! Yeah it was something similar to it, except probably from the 80s and for IBM DOS.
      - bennysaurus 3y ago
        Given the name, it'll be Qix, I had a copy as well! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix
Obscurity4340 3y ago
[comment eliminated]
qaq 3y ago
Кибернетика (Cybernetics) was considered a pseudoscience in USSR for a long time. That set USSR back so much that it would never catch up. I think thats an important lesson to remember re: politicians influencing scientific research to match their narrative.
- cyberax 3y ago
  That's really exaggerated. The first institute tasked with creating computers was set up in 1948, the same year the word "cybernetics" appeared. The USSR had nothing against computer science, and the initial progress in that area was not that bad (given the post-war scarcity). The USSR mainly had issues with some of the more philosophical parts of Norbert Wiener's books. The USSR failed in its usual manner: the progress was great only while it required just individual brilliance, or something that could be constructed by small teams. So the USSR had pretty decent discrete-logic computers, including truly innovative stuff like Setun' that was based on ternary logic. And then the USSR predictably started losing ground, once the world moved to integrated circuits.
  - bmc7505 3y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union#Official_criticism:_1950%E2%80%931954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
    - vGPU 3y ago
      > Stalin himself never engaged in this rabid criticism of cybernetics, with the head of the Soviet Department of Sciences, Iurii Zhdanov, recalling that "he never opposed cybernetics" and made every effort "to advance computer technology" in order to give the USSR the technological advantage. You just proved the point.
  - ok123456 3y ago
    It was complicated [1]. Stalin didn't care for the idea. After he died, some took interest in it. Some of those people stepped on the toes of the military. It came back in fits and spurts. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534666/how-not-to-network-a-nation/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534666/how-not-to-network-a-...
hn8305823 3y ago
This is amazing. The card cage/connectors on the back looks like something from another planet. Are those some kind of Molex clone connectors and each one requires an adapter dongle/cable to interface to standard connectors? Wild. The best part though is that even a long time ago in a galaxy far far away they used ST-225 drives!
- masswerk 3y ago
  Just have a look at that cassette tape drive for a PDP-11-style computer [1] (same channel)! — I was actually quite impressed by the production quality. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7PQIRKF8wI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7PQIRKF8wI
baybal2 3y ago
[dead]
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Will people be able to run an iPhone in 50 years? Or is it too locked down?
- LispSporks22 3y ago
  I’m sure people will be able to run it on their optical toe implants or whatever. I grew up hacking assembler as a kid in the 8086 dos era and am still amazed to see it run in a browser window like it’s nothing. Entire Linux systems run in the browser now.
- bullen 3y ago
  It's too locked down and unproductive. C64 was seminal, not only because it was widespread but because it was relatively open. SBC are picking up that trend and JH7110 is a good contender to the final hardware. The only thing left is to make sure the GPU saturates with one CPU core. The driver is still too broken to judge.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  It's really hard to get old iPads and iPhones to do anything at all, which is a shame, because iPad hardware is actually fantastic and would still work great with a replacement OS. At least in 50 years we should be easily able to crack all the signing keys etc so we can boot old software and write new software the passes auth checks on old hardware.
Anya200 3y ago
[dead]
29athrowaway 3y ago
Digger is a great game. You can download it from http://digger.org/ http://digger.org/ The Linux source is included, which can be a good way to understand how you can implement such a game.
zeristor 3y ago
Asianometry : Soviet computers https://youtu.be/dnHdqPBrtH8 https://youtu.be/dnHdqPBrtH8
ellis0n 3y ago
My father worked in Chernobyl in the 90s, there was Win95
type0 3y ago
Sadly, Russians destroyed Retro Computing Museum and much of the city of Mariupol last year, Club 8-bit https://kotaku.com/ukraine-russia-war-bomb-retro-pc-gaming-museum-history-1848708389 https://kotaku.com/ukraine-russia-war-bomb-retro-pc-gaming-m...

185 points by admp 3y ago

Slightly related, the soviets operated mechanical computers which used water instead of gears and levers to compute things. Apparently they were used well into the 80's https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/12/vladimir-lukyanovs-water-computer.html https://www.amusingplanet.com/2019/12/vladimir-lukyanovs-wat...

flir 3y ago
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-does-economy-work https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/how-doe... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MONIAC
eps 3y ago
Tangentialy related - Legend has it that there was once a water-cooled Soviet mainframe model. At some point one of the machines was overheating and it was tracked down to the algae growth in coolant tubes. So the joke was that this made Soviets the pioneers of bionic computing.
xorbax 3y ago
Important point - it was doing integrations! Which seems both intuitive and incredibly impressive for the 1930's

maximinus_thrax 3y ago

Slightly related but a fascinating read if you're interested in vintage Soviet computing stuff: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27310479 https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27310479

cptnapalm 3y ago
I need to find the two reports I got from the US Government about the Ural computers.

tigen 3y ago

The video is talking about a Soviet ES-1841 computer from the Chernobyl zone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_PEVM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ES_PEVM

varjag 3y ago
The video is indeed talking about ES-1841, one of the most common Soviet PC clones released a couple years after the catastrophe. The channel tends to really stretch its exhibits connection to Chornobyl.

sergiotapia 3y ago

This would make a great piece of a videogame. There's an extraterrestrial enemy that's completely impenetrable to our weapons and systems. They based all their defenses around our devices and current tech. One day we discover this old russian tech that was a fork-in-road tech-wise 70 years ago and is ultimately the key to beating the enemy!

HideousKojima 3y ago
That's kind of sort of the premise of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from the 00's
- pests 3y ago
  I have tried to finish that show multiple times. I always lose interest in the third season. I was very into the earlier seasons to the point of building some pretty custom fan sites and cylon-trackers :>.

lxe 3y ago

Growing up in Belarus in the 90s, the ES-1841 was my first computer. I accidentally formatted a games diskette on it for the first time, after accidentally fumbling something in Norton Commander. I think I was around 6. I was one of the few kids in my elementary school with a computer and a printer, so I was able to score some clout with the classmates, until a few of the richer kids starter to have access to more modern computers. We had 256 KB of RAM until my dad upgraded it to 512. I learned to program using QuickBasic on it when I was around 8, I think. I have many memories of this machine, and I would be so thrilled if I could gain access to it in the US somehow.

lxe 3y ago
Some of the games I remember playing were: - Chessmaster 2000 - nz.exe which took me decades to find to be "Saboteur 2", - digger, a game similar to digdug, as you can see in the video - moon patrol - kicks.exe -- I still can't find what the actual title was. It was a game where balls bounce around an area and your job is to slice sections of the area closing off the balls, once you capture the balls in a small enough area, you move to the next level.
- akersten 3y ago
  > - kicks.exe -- I still can't find what the actual title was. It was a game where balls bounce around an area and your job is to slice sections of the area closing off the balls, once you capture the balls in a small enough area, you move to the next level. JezzBall - https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jezzball-fkh https://www.myabandonware.com/game/jezzball-fkh
  - lxe 3y ago
    Thanks! Yeah it was something similar to it, except probably from the 80s and for IBM DOS.
    - bennysaurus 3y ago
      Given the name, it'll be Qix, I had a copy as well! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix

Obscurity4340 3y ago

[comment eliminated]

qaq 3y ago

Кибернетика (Cybernetics) was considered a pseudoscience in USSR for a long time. That set USSR back so much that it would never catch up. I think thats an important lesson to remember re: politicians influencing scientific research to match their narrative.

cyberax 3y ago
That's really exaggerated. The first institute tasked with creating computers was set up in 1948, the same year the word "cybernetics" appeared. The USSR had nothing against computer science, and the initial progress in that area was not that bad (given the post-war scarcity). The USSR mainly had issues with some of the more philosophical parts of Norbert Wiener's books. The USSR failed in its usual manner: the progress was great only while it required just individual brilliance, or something that could be constructed by small teams. So the USSR had pretty decent discrete-logic computers, including truly innovative stuff like Setun' that was based on ternary logic. And then the USSR predictably started losing ground, once the world moved to integrated circuits.
- bmc7505 3y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Union#Official_criticism:_1950%E2%80%931954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetics_in_the_Soviet_Unio...
  - vGPU 3y ago
    > Stalin himself never engaged in this rabid criticism of cybernetics, with the head of the Soviet Department of Sciences, Iurii Zhdanov, recalling that "he never opposed cybernetics" and made every effort "to advance computer technology" in order to give the USSR the technological advantage. You just proved the point.
- ok123456 3y ago
  It was complicated [1]. Stalin didn't care for the idea. After he died, some took interest in it. Some of those people stepped on the toes of the military. It came back in fits and spurts. [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534666/how-not-to-network-a-nation/ https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262534666/how-not-to-network-a-...

hn8305823 3y ago

This is amazing. The card cage/connectors on the back looks like something from another planet. Are those some kind of Molex clone connectors and each one requires an adapter dongle/cable to interface to standard connectors? Wild. The best part though is that even a long time ago in a galaxy far far away they used ST-225 drives!

masswerk 3y ago
Just have a look at that cassette tape drive for a PDP-11-style computer [1] (same channel)! — I was actually quite impressed by the production quality. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7PQIRKF8wI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7PQIRKF8wI

baybal2 3y ago

[dead]

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Will people be able to run an iPhone in 50 years? Or is it too locked down?

LispSporks22 3y ago
I’m sure people will be able to run it on their optical toe implants or whatever. I grew up hacking assembler as a kid in the 8086 dos era and am still amazed to see it run in a browser window like it’s nothing. Entire Linux systems run in the browser now.
bullen 3y ago
It's too locked down and unproductive. C64 was seminal, not only because it was widespread but because it was relatively open. SBC are picking up that trend and JH7110 is a good contender to the final hardware. The only thing left is to make sure the GPU saturates with one CPU core. The driver is still too broken to judge.
qingcharles 3y ago
It's really hard to get old iPads and iPhones to do anything at all, which is a shame, because iPad hardware is actually fantastic and would still work great with a replacement OS. At least in 50 years we should be easily able to crack all the signing keys etc so we can boot old software and write new software the passes auth checks on old hardware.

Anya200 3y ago

[dead]

29athrowaway 3y ago

Digger is a great game. You can download it from http://digger.org/ http://digger.org/ The Linux source is included, which can be a good way to understand how you can implement such a game.

zeristor 3y ago

Asianometry : Soviet computers https://youtu.be/dnHdqPBrtH8 https://youtu.be/dnHdqPBrtH8

ellis0n 3y ago

My father worked in Chernobyl in the 90s, there was Win95

type0 3y ago

Sadly, Russians destroyed Retro Computing Museum and much of the city of Mariupol last year, Club 8-bit https://kotaku.com/ukraine-russia-war-bomb-retro-pc-gaming-museum-history-1848708389 https://kotaku.com/ukraine-russia-war-bomb-retro-pc-gaming-m...