[HN Gopher] Minsk Family of Computers (2001)
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Minsk Family of Computers (2001)
Author : tosh
Score : 39 points
Date : 2021-05-07 12:02 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.computer-museum.ru)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.computer-museum.ru)
| proxysna wrote:
| Dad used to work at Ordzhonikidze factory in Minsk while these
| things were still in production. Giant monsters, by todays
| standarts, that would gobble up kW's and spit out enormous amount
| of heat. I saw remains of one of these machines while i was
| working at the, now defunct, airport Minsk-1. Great stuff. Sadly
| most of the ones that i saw were stripped for radio components
| and precious metals during the 90s.
| hansor wrote:
| It would be amazing to have some of those systems implemented as
| emulators or as FPGA clones.
|
| It's very sad that nearly all computer science and history is
| biased towards western systems with common myth that Soviet Block
| did not invent/made their own hardware and software. Same goes to
| digitization of manuals...
|
| Fun facts:
|
| - It is common western myth that Soviet Block citizens were in
| any way forbidden from owning personal computers in 80".
|
| - Life was good: free healthcare, education, guaranteed
| retirement pension, almost free apartments from government, 1 bit
| computing, RISC, parallelism, decimal computers, fast floating
| point accelerators, vector computers - we had it all in late 70".
|
| For some reason no one brags about it, and no one cares about
| preservation of such historical artifacts or knowledge alone.
| Many Wikipedians also reject such claims as there are no western
| sources available to quote...
| brokenkebab wrote:
| Unlike 99.999% of posters who praise free Soviet perks, I
| really lived in USSR in 80s, and can say life was quite hard.
| Things like healthcare were indeed free. They were also close
| to useless due to crumbling equipment, impossibility to get
| sufficient up-to-date information from outside of SU for
| continuous education of MDs (did anyone mention free
| education?), constant "defitsit" of medicines (actually it was
| almost total, everything was hard to buy starting from toilet
| paper).
|
| If to speak specifically about computers we weren't forbidden
| from having PCs indeed, but it was almost impossible to buy one
| for many reasons, already mentioned defitsit being probably the
| most important, but also let's not forget the SU was lagging
| behind the West technologically, and had troubles fulfilling
| much more basic demands than computers. Most privately-owned
| computer hardware were self-made in 80s in USSR, and - I'm not
| kidding - you had at times to deal with very shadowy guys to
| buy necessary electronic parts. It's definitely easier to buy
| cocaine in today's US.
|
| As for original research in the USSR it was buried by central-
| planned socialist system which never sufficiently rewards risk-
| taking (and there's no riskless innovations) so no matter how
| cool is your idea in theory it was always easier for everyone -
| from engineers to gov't ministers - to just copy Western
| examples (USSR didn't pay royalties anyway). Exceptions were
| only in military field, and in situations when USSR's industry
| was simply unable to copy.
| hakfoo wrote:
| I wonder if part of the disconnect is that we're comparing
| the wrong countries. Even at their peak, the USSR was a much
| poorer country than the US or Germany.
|
| Many of the differences we blame on a command economy may be
| either caused by, or exaggerated by, the wealth gap. The US
| could afford to make both bombs and toilet paper, but the
| USSR couldn't. It would be interesting to compare Soviet
| quality-of-life and achievements to a free-market country of
| similar per-capita GDP.
|
| The "clone the West" decision process at least did build some
| knowledge, infrastructure and manufacturing base. In
| contrast, there are plenty of wealthy Western countries with
| no meaningful semiconductor or electronics industry, because
| they could just buy American/Japanese/Korean gear.
| dimes wrote:
| Almost free apartment... I think you mean almost free room for
| a family of four, inside a three bedroom apartment with two
| other families.
|
| It's easy to look back now and say: "They had free health care,
| everything was great!" But that doesn't explain why they had to
| build a wall and use exit visas to keep people in.
| hansor wrote:
| >I think you mean almost free room for a family of four,
| inside a three bedroom apartment with two other families.
|
| You must be ironic and for sure NOT from post soviet block.
|
| I meant normal 2 bedroom apartment in newly build, modern
| building for family of 2+2 for free(you revived one after
| working for around 10 years[including studies!], at age of
| around 28.
|
| It was not really "free" as you had to pay around ~4% of your
| income for those 10 years. (Another perk: in communism you
| did NOT pay any from of income tax as ordinary worker).
|
| In my country government made and gave away few few
| millions(!) of such apartments. In matter of fact - I'm still
| living in one of it, and apart from asthetics, they are
| warmer, strudier and quiter(!) than modern apartments.
|
| >But that doesn't explain why they had to build a wall and
| use exit visas to keep people in.
|
| There is simple explanation: GREED and wish for political
| freedom.
|
| Greed: As soon as all population had jobs, healthcare, free
| apartments, free education and insane levels disposable
| income (no taxes, no mortages): they got greedier, and wanted
| to have all stuff from socialist state but lifestyle seen
| western movies. Millions belived that west is like in
| Hollywood.
|
| Political freedom - during the communist era people did not
| have any political freedom, as in modern China. Many could
| not stand it so they wanted to escape.
| avmich wrote:
| Very skewed picture.
| minipci1321 wrote:
| > Another perk: in communism you did NOT pay any from of
| income tax as ordinary worker
|
| Income tax was of course collected: https://aif.ru/money/my
| money/kakoy_podohodnyy_nalog_byl_v_ss...
|
| of which workers might have been not fully aware (as it was
| deduced before wiring/handing-out the cash).
|
| But there was also such a thing as "childlessness" tax on
| income, and concerned workers were well aware of it.
|
| I feel and sympathize your nostalgia of the past, but it
| doesn't seem proper to extrapolate your personal experience
| to the "millions" of other USSR inhabitants. Western
| republics of the USSR were the proverbial land of milk and
| honey, out of reach for the vast majority of them.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-05-08 23:03 UTC)