Computer Advances in the Old USSR
Computer Advances in the Old USSR - IBM technicians where able to bring the message "IBM-360 system software. All rights reserved" on the screen of soviet's "original mainframe ES row-2" with soviet's "original" OS ES. That happened in late seventies, after 10 or 12 years after original IBM OS was stolen - After USSR announces the first ES mainframe in late sixties, which was a detailed copy of IBM 360, IBM sent to Moscow several boxes with tech IBM-360 system documentation... It is really funny when you hear such a stories, but the approach was absolutely the same in everything: steel, rename, use in most unnatural way. The only widely available in Eastern block mainframe ES [ "edeny sistemy" - the United System] was IBM-360. It was stolen with the help of third-party countries. Soviets gave money to some African/Middle East dictators who bought the systems. ES's "row 2" is, obviously, IBM-370. ES was installed in every school, university department, plant, farm, etc. 98% of computers were unable to work more then 1-2 hours without crash. Thousands of technicians provided permanent repairs and so on. There are NO [!!!] original chip in Eastern block. There are no technology officially imported. Every chip was stolen. Every Soviet chip had his own name, and it was totally prohibited to use Western original names in books and documentation. But everybody knew the original names. Several dozens Intel and IBM books were translated to Russian to "help to learn technology". To study, say, Soviet's K580 chip university professors recommended i8080 books... Isn't it a fun? Every clone-chip use to appear 3 -5 years after original Intel chip, and corresponding hardware was available with 5 - 7 years of delay, which means, when the original Western hardware platform was already replaced. For example, Soviet K580-based [ Intel 8080 ] hardware has been developed 1979up to 1989! Who remembered i8080 in eighties in US ? K586-based [i8086] PC were produced in USSR only in 1985 and mass production never was organized because extremely low reliability of hardware! Copying of Digital line was much more successful, and can be considered Soviet's crown achievement. SM-1, SM-2 and SM-3 machines [copies of PDP-11 ] were the only popular and reasonable reliable computers in USSR for 10 -15 years! In middle-eighties Zelenograd [Soviet's Silicon valley] came up with a bunch of Digital's PDP-11 chips, and everybody got chance to work on small desktop with 64K and RSX-11 or RT-11 OS in ROM! It was great, but too late. So, this is a story of a Free Software And Hardware foundation in Communist edition and millions of people involved that was created at the time when R. Stallman use to listen "Sergeant Pepper" and make love not war. Living in free country with unfree software, he maybe already began to think about GNU-ization of everything, not knowing about unfree countries with free software and plenty of GNU-IBM, GNU-Intel, GNU-Microsoft and GNU-Digital. What about Soviet's Apples? They thought that Apple is a small garage in California... ------- End of Forwarded Message ------- End of Forwarded Message