The video is talking about a Soviet ES-1841 computer from the Chernobyl zone.
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.
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.
This comment just recites the popular myth which makes zero sense, especially in the context of the video in OP, which is about a soviet computer.
Cybernetics has nothing to do with computing or computers at all; it was a very opinionated attempt at explaining natural and social phenomena in terms of some narrow snippets of control theory. Nothing from that media panic "set USSR back" in computing; the control theory was being used in engineering (case in point: R-7 with a SOTA control system), computers were being developed (BESM-6 was introduced long after the moral panic caused by Wiener's book ended), etc.
The real cause was the engineering tradition (and planned economy which led to twisted economic incentives). Soviet engineering school has been influenced by the German one for half a century, and was really slow at picking up computer science and software engineering as separate disciplines; both were mostly seen as some unimportant subset of applied math. It wasn't some ideological bullshit, just genuine inertia. By the time US programmers had a strong software development culture, Soviet programming culture was stuck at the pure math level. Just read any Soviet textbook or programming manual from that era and you will see the difference immediately. Hardware development has been following suit, struggling not just from the lack of the expertise in high purity chemistry (traditionally weak point of Soviet physics and engineering) and semiconductors, but also from the lack of direction set by the software development and economic incentives. That's why the Soviets decided to copy IBM - and the computer in OP is an IBM PC clone. Not because of the cybernetics (the panic was unrelated and died long before that decision) or any other reason.
>that it would never catch up
Hardware, sure. The software development eventually started to catch up around mid-80s, when the Soviet computing craze has started with first personal computers that were more or less accessible to the population.
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.
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-...
I was interested in the early USSR computing some time ago (well, almost 20 years ago, I'm feeling old). Back then, I tried to find the original sources for the supposed Stalin's disdain for computers.
I could not find much in favor or against it. I would say that Stalin really did not care much, in the sense that he was not concerned about computers either way. He had way too much stuff on his plate anyway: executing medical doctors, trying to claw back power from WWII military leaders, that sort of stuff.
The USSR also started serious computation research in 1948, including construction of a fully programmable computer ("MESM - Small Electronic Calculating Device") that was finished in 1950. It actually fit the USSR ideology quite well, the economy was supposed to be centrally planned and computing devices obviously are helpful in creating plans.
Some early computing history of the USSR is fascinating, with real spies and drama. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sarant
So my opinion: there was no real persecution of the early computer science in the USSR. And it's not the reason the USSR eventually fell behind.
The _networking_ was an entirely different story. The USSR government instinctively was against making communication across hierarchical structures easier.
That's strange, because from what I've read, "cybernetics" as a scientific discipline was much more influential in the USSR than it ever was in western countries. The term is now almost exclusively associated with (digital) computers, but originally it was more about feedback loops in analog systems, and its theories were applied to centralised economic planning. But maybe it wasn't taken seriously by the leadership, is that what you mean?
Cybernetics did eventually become a hot fashion in the USSR. There is a good history of this, Slava Gerovitch's From Newspeak to Cyberspeak: A History of Soviet Cybernetics (2002).
https://youtu.be/yS_-NArgjik?si=31fFU7O2WbUFcTTz
https://www.kino-teatr.ru/movie/kadr/4780/65656.jpg
Just a funny reminder of how it was promoted at some point.
My father, born 1955, an ex-bulgarian air-defence, have been telling me the same for a while now... That for long time the communist regime spoke against cybernetics, as supposedly it would've take over people's jobs, and that was against the ideology.
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!
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.
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-wat...
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.
Important point - it was doing integrations! Which seems both intuitive and incredibly impressive for the 1930's
Slightly related but a fascinating read if you're interested in vintage Soviet computing stuff: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/27310479
Digger is a great game. You can download it from http://digger.org/
The Linux source is included, which can be a good way to understand how you can implement such a game.
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!
That's kind of sort of the premise of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from the 00's
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 :>.
Will people be able to run an iPhone in 50 years? Or is it too locked down?
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.
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.
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.
I grew up in Russia, and ES-1841 was my first computer, too. Also with a printer, yet no HD. That was 1990 and I was 10 y.o... Once printed a caricature of one of school bullies using (a Soviet clone of) Turbo Pascal and its turtle graphics facility, resulting in a fight. My favorite pastime was writing DOS viruses in asm, though... I didn't spread them, just wrote some for fun. Found some of my virus code written down a couple of years ago https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-jP39nXEAAve0O?format=jpg&name=...
I guess I'm not the only kid who was into assembly! Impressive stuff. In 7th grade in 2001 I moved to the US, and got really into the whole TI-83 ecosystem. Got a sprite editor published to ticalc.org, and memorized the z80 opcodes in hex so I can write simple asm programs directly on the calculator.
In 8th grade I started socializing and lost the gift. Still can't believe I did all that.
My English is worse than yours, but still, if anybody is curious. I'm really impressed with your documentation. I started at around 94 with Turbo Pascal and really struggled with absence of good books/reference materials and lack of English language knowledge, as I studied German in school.
Let me guess. Питер Абель, Язык Ассемблера для IBM PC и программирования. ?Impressive handwriting for 10.
It's also an interesting anecdote for that thread about paper that popped up the other day
I'd guess he doesn't have the disk or files (although I wouldn't be surprised if they did - I was not so neat or organized at 10)
> Deletor Latronem
Young Harry Potter fan?
It seems it was much earlier than Harry Potter
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.
> - 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
Thanks! Yeah it was something similar to it, except probably from the 80s and for IBM DOS.
You're thinking of Xonix. I just tried it on DosBox, and it works:
https://archive.org/details/Xonix1984IlanRavAction
Given the name, it'll be Qix, I had a copy as well!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qix
Bingo. This is it. One of the variants for sure! Thank you so much!
As soon as I read the description, that was my guess too. It was such a simple game and I spent a lot of time playing it.
If you wanted to be patient, it was almost impossible to lose. But if you hurried, it was anlmost impossible to win.
Completely forgot about this one, yet I spent so much time playing it! Absolutely true that pacing is key.
The version I had had cycle-based speed so it became unplayable when I changed computers for a faster clocked one, which prompted me to attempt coding a clone.
Thanks! I used to play it as a kid and have been trying to remember the name of the game for years.
Anyone knows what “fly.com” game was properly called? It featured a side-scroller airplane that was controlled with 2 buttons - pitch up and pitch down, making it loop de loop if the button was held. It could fire at air targets and drop bombs and ground targets. Always wanted it for my arcade console.
Another one I was wondering about was an Infogrames (i remember the name and logo of the publisher for some reason featuring an ant eater i think) police? game featuring a sniper element where you have to scan windows in telescopic sight and shoot before you are shot at.
And lastly there was a Prince of Persia / Another World like game that featured similar control mechanics, but also had guns.
That first one sounds like Sopwith. Definitely has the looping, air and ground targets, and bombs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith_(video_game)
Actually, makes me wonder - is there a place on internet to ask such questions? To locate old games one barely remember a few details of?
Someone already mentioned TipOfMyTongue but there is a similar subreddit specifically for games called r/TipOfMyJoyStick.
ChatGPT (specifically GPT4) is also very good at these kinds of tasks. I pasted your original comment verbatim to GPT4 and these were the suggestions it gave:
1. Sopwith
2. Hostage: Rescue Mission (Originally titled "Hostages")
3. Flashback: The Quest for Identity
ChatGPT is pretty decent at it.
I believe there is a reddit called TipOfMyTongue.
https://www.mobygames.com/search/?q=infogrames&page=0&type=c...
https://www.old-games.ru/search/ change to English in the top right corner and select Inforgrames in Developer or Publisher
https://www.old-games.ru/forum/forums/international-zone.54/
Could the second one be https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostages_(video_game)
That last could be Xonix, which was a clone of Qix for DOS.
The Wikipedia article for Xonix mentions a Soviet clone of it called Antix, which seems likely for a Soviet computer, although that seems to be too generic a name to find anything related by searching.
one border to the west, there haven't been any local computers as The Party forbade such excess. Instead we had smuggled / imported Ataris, Commodores, ZX Spectrums, etc.
Uh, your pops was rich then, and that means you were likely a kid of the communist elite?
Mine's lived in a wooden hut by 1991.
Communist elite didn't care about having personal computers at home. My parents and extended family weren't "elite" by any stretch (ordinary engineers and scientists), but we all had various personal/home computers at some point. For a ES-1840/1841 you had to walk an extra mile and have an occasion, but it was possible if you were interested in this. The main issue was that a 8086 PC wasn't especially interesting to have at home at that time, as other home/personal computers were far cheaper, had better software support and culture surrounding them.
Far from it. University professor.