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What Were Soviet Computers Like?
kwertii asks: "Does anyone have any information on computing in the former Soviet Union? A Google search turned up this virtual museum, which has some good historical background on the development of early Soviet computer technology (a lot only in Russian, unfortunately) but not much on later systems. What sorts of architectures did Soviet computers use? Were there any radically different computing concepts in use, like a standard 9-bit byte or something? What kind of operating systems were common? How has the end of the Cold War and the large scale introduction of Western computer technology affected the course of Russian computer development?"
The reality is that the KGB was stealing American computer designs from the beginning. As Glastnost was coming into being, and the "west" was getting a look into how things worked inside the Soviet system, they discovered that they were running clones of the IBM 360's.
I've seen an interview recently with an ex-KGB big-wig who said he realized how bankrupt the Soviet system was as he learned how little they developed "in house" rather than copied from the west. The Soviets were always one or two generations of technology behind simply because they weren't inventing it.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
An an slightly different node, I found this link a while ago that discusses, in great depth, Sinclair Clones from teh late 1970's to the early 1990's.
Another thing I remember reading a long while ago was an article in "A+/Incider" magazine (and Apple II magazine) where the cover story was the giant headline "Red Apples"; in it they talked about a close of the Apple IIe that looked like a negative of the Apple IIe we know (black case, white keys), but otherwise was more or less the same -- compatible logic, just made somewhere else. I may even throw that coppy in my flatbed if there is enoguh interest.
If I had to guess, all but either very high-end or very early machine will be of the same designs as western counterparts, probably for engineering reasons because an engineer doesn't want to reinvent the wheel (or bitwise logic in this case) just to make machine to do word processing.
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
http://rickman.com/brett/russian_computing/ -- also has bibliography to printed materials
Now, don't get me wrong. I love the Web in general and Slashdot in particular. Both are invaluable resources for obscure little questions like the one you're asking. I know I used to write technical documentation without having the net as a reference source -- but I'm damned if I remember how.
Still, information you can get through this kind of informal research is limited in scope. There's a lot of stuff online -- but a lot more that's not. A lot of texts exist only in proprietary databases, not on the web. Not to mention the the much larger document base that simply doesn't exist in eletronic form.
You need to find a good library, probably one at a university or in a major city. They all have web sites (librarians love the web) and usually have their catalogs online. But searching a library catalog is not as simple as typing a few content words into Google. You probably need to interface with one of those old-fashioned access nodes that are only available onsite -- the ones with comprehensive heuristic and associative search features. I refer, of course, to reference librarians.
The basic premise was that he was using punch cards, and the actual computer on which he was compiling and testing his programs was in a relatively distant city.
He would punch up a set of cards and mail them to where the computer was, which would take a week or two. When they got around to it, they would compile his program and print out a test run using input he gave them. This would take another week. The week or two return trip made the average round trip take a month.
Now if you had to wait one month to find out that you had missed a semicolon, wouldn't you be more careful?
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
In the late 70s or early 80s ACM's "Computing Surverys" ran an article on Soviet computing. Here's what I remember:
The Soviets said that military computers were generally original designs.
Most of the commercial computers were either IBM 360/370 models diverted through 3rd countries (direct exports were prohibited) or the Soviet "Ryad" line. Ryads were 360/370 copies. Not having to worry about copyright andd patent issues, the East copied IBM mainframes directly. IBM engineers recognized an I/O problem with one Soviet model, since the IBM original had the same problem. Just as the 360 model development was split among groups in Poughkeepsie and Endicott, different Soviet Bloc countries were assigned development/manufacturiing responsibility for the copies.
Software was, of course, pirated OS/360. (Back in those days, software came with source.)
- "Computing in the Former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe"
- "Where did Soviet scientists go?"
- "Creator of the first stored program computer in continental Europe"
Not much, but you might find more for yourself by refining your search a little.--
Evil Attraction
You also may want to do a google search on the comp.arch newsgroup. I think the topic has been discussed there.
The Soviets reverse engineered a number of American designs (IBM 360, PDP-11). They also did some original designs for special applications.
Some of the work was farmed out to other Warsaw Pact countries, such as the GDR.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The PDP-11 series were extensively copied in the USSR, as were the IBM 360 mainframes
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This quote is from page 15 of the OpenVMS at 20 publication that Digital Published in 1997. The PDF is available from Compaq.
During the cold war, VAX systems could not be sold behind the Iron Curtain. Recognizing superior technology, technical people cloned VAX systems in Russia, Hungary, and China. After learning that VAX systems were being cloned, DIGITAL had the following words etched on the CVAX chip, "VAX...when you care enough to steal the very best."
"All I ever wanted was to see Larry Wall give Bill Gates a Perl necklace."
http://www.eisenschmidt.org/jweisen
[Adopt cod Russian accent:]
/
Glorious new Soviet People's Dual Potato 3000! With advanced UVR (Ultra Root Vegetable(tm)) technology and many obedient clock cycles working for common good. Running Mikkelzoft Window KGB. Own the means of production and experience many kilohertz of glorious revolution in the People's progress today, comrade!
Adski_
NB. Before you complain, I must point out that as a Linux user myself, I am of course a fervent communist.
Big Bubbles (no troubles) - what sucks, who sucks and you suck
I believe that the coolest invention the Russians ever made (concerning computers) was the ternary computer. More appropriately, the balanced ternary computer.
It was a bit like our binary computers, but it had real potential with the trigits having the values of up, down and neutral. The computer was called SETUN, although it was experimental and never truly realized since the 60's.
If anyone has a link concerning SETUN, I'd be interested, so far my only source has been the meager note on 'An introdunction to cryptography', Mollin.
(I once heard Night of the Living Dead condemned as "Politically Correct" because the main character was black. Too typical.)
Look, I never said the Soviets never ripped off American technology. The US leads the planet in this area. People imitate us. Well, duh. Go to the Sony web site sometime and read that company's history. Their early attempts to reverse-engineer and manufacture magnetic recording devices are quite amusing.
I'm no expert on the history of Soviet technology. But I do know enough to know that saying "They never did anything with computers except rip off American designs" is simplistic and stupid. In point of fact, Soviet engineers in all areas were not able to imitate Western technology as much as they would have liked. There were many reasons for this, some obvious, some not. If you're really interested in the subject, go do some actual reading. In any case, spare us the Clancy cliches.
I seem to remember that the only computer system ever built on trinary (base-3) logic was produced in the Soviet Union. The name escapes me, but I think something like that is enought to dispell the idea of them not doing any original research (good research, OTOH...).
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I had a FORTRAN textbook that said this was Very Bad, and not just because of lost sleep. It urged students to think through their code before trying it. Do hand simulation. Read it through with a friend. Later on I read books by people who insisted all software should be "provably correct."
Now I work with Delphi and Kylix, which thoroughly encourages the cut-and-try approach. Oh well.
i have a good friend who is from bulgaria, and there they mass-produced an apple IIe knockoff called the Pravetz. they reverse engineered the apple and started making their own version. He said that they ended up being more powerful than any of the apple II line. People like the Dark Avenger (ever had a real computer virus? he probably wrote it) grew up hacking these things. anyway, they are mentioned in a really good wired article about the Dark Avenger and the Soviet Bloc's more recent computing history, and Woz even has a picture of one on his website.
Those words were in Cyrillic (of course)... see them on the chip here!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Before IBM introduced the byte concept back in the 60s, all computers used "word-level" addressing. That meant that data path width and the addressable unit of data had to be the same thing. Made it hard to write portable software. By divorcing the addressing scheme from the data path width, IBM was able to design computers where differences in word size were a matter of efficiency, not compatibility.
There was nothing to force manufacturers to use 8-bit bytes. (Unless, of course, they were trying to rip off IBMs instruction set. A few did, but competing head-to-head with Big Blue that way usually didn't work out.) On the one hand, the standard data terminal of the time used a 7-bit character set. On the other hand, you can make a case for a 12-bit byte. But IBM used an 8-bit byte, and in those days, what IBM did tended to become a standard.
Well, I can't sneer. Here I am arguing with a guy who enters the discussion with the premise that nothing I say can make sense. Pretty futile, no?
But I love the way you put "fair" in quotes. In this context "fair" simply means admitting that you don't know what you don't know. It means being skeptical about your own prejudices and assumptions.
It might help if you separate out the issue of whether the Soviet system was morally bankrupt and profoundly inefficient. Actually, that's not even an issue any more -- almost everybody agrees that it was. But it doesn't follow from this fact that Soviet technology consisted entirely of pathetic American rip offs. However screwed up the state was, it had some brilliant citizens, and only a bigot would dismiss their accomplishments out of hand.
Are we in nostalgia mode? Elsewhere on /., somebody is asking for help porting his RPG code to Linux. I seem to recall that RPG was little more than a software emulator for an IBM accounting machine, which used plugboard programming to process data on punched cards. Perhaps I misremember. Silly to invent a language for something like that!
It's not the opinion that makes you a bigot. Bigotry can happen to anybody, of any stripe. God knows I've caught myself in that mode often enough.
The difference between disagreement and bigotry is the same as the difference between having an honest difference of opinion and being prejudiced. If you disagree with me because you find my arguments uncompelling, then you're just someone with a different POV. That's fair enough. It's even useful -- even if neither of us can admit he's wrong, at least we can keep each other honest.
But if you start out assuming that whole groups of people are incapable of saying or doing anything worth your notice, and sneer at anybody who suggests otherwise, then you're a bigot.
Well, I don't know anything about the history of Russian/Soviet computing. However, I was over there last summer, and found a computer store which had state-of-the-art peripherals for sale, right alongside a bootleg copy of Windows 2000. In a bookstore, I found (and bought) a Russian translation of Olaf Kirch's Linux Network Administrator's Guide (aka, The NAG). The text was Russian but the examples were all in the default language of Linux, English.
The products in the computer store were selling for about the same as in America given the exchange rate at the time (except for the Win2K which was ~USD13). When you consider that the average Russian salary is USD2000-3000/yr, you aren't going to find many Russians online, at least not at home. Businesses seem to be fairly up-to-date as far as technology goes, aside from the mom-and-pop shops. Broadband internet access seems to be more myth than reality there.
Some of posts here said that they were a couple generations behind because they were just copying American technology. Appears they're catching up.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Check out the Robotron site, created in memory of the East German line of computers. Pictures, manuals, and screenshots. (A PacMan clone!) Z80 clones, 8086 clones, CP/M clones, etc.
...and then explore the rest of this incredibly cool site.
Thanks for the link, morcheeba.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
There were some others, however I have mentioned the most popular ones.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.