RYAD - The Soviet attempt to clone the IBM S/360

In the late 1960s, the Soviet Union and a number of allied countries embarked on a bold attempt to significantly increase their computer technology and catch up to the west, via an ambitious effort to produce a clone of the popular IBM S/360 line of mainframes.
The result of this program was the RYAD line of Soviet mainframes, a whole family of computers that were a significant leap forward for Soviet computing, and a program whose story is a fascinating one both for the ways in which it succeeded as well as the ways in which it fell short.
The script can also be read over on our Substack account
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#soviet #sovietcomputer #ryad #documentary
Update: It has been brought to my attention that I badly mispronounced "peripheral" every single time I said it. I have corrected my pronunciation going forward and future videos will have...well they may have other inadvertently mispronounced words, but "peripheral" will not be one of them ;)
Credits:
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www.buymeacoff...

[@andraskovacs517]

I was a mainframe operator on an R-35 in 1984; yes, I was typing in // ASSGN SYSIN,SYSRES on a Cyrillic main console keyboard.

[@nneeerrrd]

Soviets were thieves. Just like ЯUSSІА now.

[@AureliusR]

Say it with me now -- PER-IF-ER-AL ... Peripheral... PER-IF-ER-AL ... four syllables

[@CanuckGod]

Agreed, the second R is not silent. I've heard this a few times from people, and I always wonder whether or not it's just a weird accent or they just can't read correctly.

[@timrprobocom]

That's not the issue here. He's pronouncing the second R, but in the wrong place: per-IF-re-al.

[@nneeerrrd]

Soviets were thieves. Just like ЯUSSІА now.

[@gerrymcdonald6194]

We had an IBM S/360 where I worked in the 1970's.When it came time to upgrade to a much more powerful mainframe the company tried to sell it back to IBM. IBM refused. So the company put it up for sale on the open market. No bites (no pun intended). A company in Manitoba, Canada bought it .. but not to use. Rather that company foresaw the coming likelihood that companies worldwide who depended on S/360's would become desperate for parts. So that company in Manitoba bought all the S/360's they could, for pennies on the dollar, and made a fortune. Their biggest customers were insurance companies. When the demand for S/360 parts dropped to the point that it was no longer profitable to stockpile the parts that company folded and the owners lived happily ever-after.

[@kensmith5694]

In the later era of the 360 systems, you could buy a better computer with just two months of the power bill for a 360.

[@xmlthegreat]

​@@kensmith5694yeah but they weren't software compatible and they weren't going to emulate the S/360, that's for sure.

[@kensmith5694]

@@xmlthegreat Consider en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC-based_IBM_mainframe-compatible_systems

[@spoonikle]

@@kensmith5694 - a lot of companies the old farts in charge of the tech where gizmo wizards stuck in their old ways - and electricity was so cheap nobody cared.

[@kensmith5694]

@@spoonikle They still have accountants. BTW: Last I checked, I qualify as "old". I don't use a sliderule much these days. I have met people who were stuck in ways that are older than they are.

[@ivan_pozdeev_u]

I was very surprised seeing "RYAD" as the name. In the USSR, they were exclusively known as "ЕС ЭВМ" (Unified System [of] Electronic Computing Machines). "Ryad" (lit. "row"; also means "series", "lineup") was but a bureaucratic designation for each stage of the official plan to design and produce different sets of models (Ryad 1, Ryad 2 etc). It was likely largely unknown outside of the circles directly involved in the planning.

[@MuradBeybalaev]

"Row", "series", but not "stage". The intended meaning here is "series" or "lineup".

[@rdspam]

As seen at 0:21 ?

[@nneeerrrd]

Soviets were thieves. Just like ЯUSSІА now.

[@philipgrice1026]

I was in the IBM compatible peripherals group Control Data Corporation bought the RYAD 1040. I was an experienced IBM 360 operator and systems programmer so became involved in the setup and testing prior to and after the purchase. The CDC systems engineer discovered that the RYAD had no FDD in the processor chassis to install firmware. The Selector Channels all were completely compatible with the CDC disk and tape drives but the Byte Multiplexor Channel timing needed adjustment causing the card reader and printer to time out. Unable to install firmware without a FDD the CDC engineer asked the "Finnish" engineers for help. Using the CDC engineer's portable Tektronix oscilloscope (which they coveted highly) a 'Finnish' engineer tweaked the byte-mux timing by adjusting some pots in the back of the mainframe with a screwdriver. It might not have been 'high tech' but it worked perfectly. Then everything worked great. The system was imported into the USA and setup at the CDC HQ in Bloomington, Minnesota. Once setup and running in the CDC data center Governor Rudy Perpich was invited to attend a demonstration before it was reshipped to Washington to demonstrate just how compatible it was. During the early setup and testing I was able to install OS/DOS and OS/MFT and compile and run several suites of Assembler, Cobol and PL/1 programs successfully. CDC bought the system to demonstrate the current level of Soviet computing technology. CDC had been blocked by Washington from selling a CDC 3300 first generation computer to the Soviets because of Pentagon objections that it was too powerful and could be used for nuclear physics research. The sale was important as a node in a worldwide weather reporting system that already partially existed around the world using multiple CDC 3300 systems all running the same complex software. The system proposed was one that had returned from a long lease and was effectively a museum piece but such was CDC's justified reputation for high performance computers they never were able to complete the Central Asian node. As an amusing aside, CDC had an internal product brokerage group. These people found market for products made in the eastern Bloc and elsewhere used to purchased CDC products when the buyers did not have suitable negotiable hard currency, i.e. dollars. I am aware of one sale that was paid with 20,000 Polish rubber Wellington boots and another from Czechoslovakia paid for with 600 beautiful competition shotguns. BTW, the Soviets bought several IBM 360 series computers from a French leasing company, who resold machines as they came beck from lease, via an Austrian computer broker. They were interesting times in mainframe computing.

[@PaulSobon1]

You should make your win video - what fascinating stories! By chance, did you ever have any Soviet computer come through to CDC during this time period? I was at the U of Minnesota at this time in the Computer Science program. I recall a visit one day of Soviet engineers to the student computer lab where I was asked a bunch of questions about how the program worked, and what I thought about the CDC 6600 we used as students.

[@editingsecrets]

That's fascinating! Thank you! I'd love to learn more of this history.

[@Hectico2257]

Please don’t stop making cool videos like these! These are amazingly researched work, thank you for sharing this!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

So glad you enjoyed it! I have a list of dozens more topics in computing history alone that I want to explore so I’m definitely not going anywhere ;)

[@filthyE]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Awesome channel. Love this kind of content. Subscribed and looking forward to your future videos!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you are enjoying the videos and thanks for the sub!

[@jaminova_1969]

@@AnotherBoringTopic I find your research interesting. How about a video on the introduction and development of Personal Computing in the Soviet Union? My all-time favorite PC game is Tetris and it was designed by a Russian, Alexey Pajitnov . Thanks and keep up the good work!

[@beardsntools]

Yeah these are a cure for insomnia, lmao. Someone should make a shorter version of the commies cloning computers. This "RYAD" topic could be interesting if it was made into 10 minute video, possibly much shorter, by leaving the small details and overexpaining out.

[@ejomatic7480]

The quota issues remind me of a factory job I had for a bit; we were assembling small parts for heart and lung machines and I was repeatedly told by my immediate supervisor to put any production over the day's quota into a bin for tomorrow so our quota wouldn't go up. A lack of flexibility from management (no understanding that there are good and bad days and things even out over time) created production bottlenecks because we wanted to keep our jobs. Turns out that punishing your workers for exceeding expectations creates problems in any system lol.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

Classic planned economy stuff - never underperform, never underdemand, never overperform (at least not by much)

[@vylbird8014]

Make fun of it if you want, but in a tightly-integrated production line over-production can be a real problem - it means you can cheer for your productivity, while the next stage on the line scrambles to find more shelves to store the build-up of parts heading their way.

[@ejomatic7480]

@@vylbird8014 Upper management constantly told us to make as many as we could as fast as we could, then they'd raise the quota if we had a good day, and then they'd punish us for not meeting the new higher quota every day. So yes, I'll make fun of them and call them snakes.

[@kiesha86]

​@@ejomatic7480 i have red somewhere thta that's how they did with the slaves in North and South Americas.

[@barbaranostrand4214]

I used to have a co-worker who worked on the IBM-360 clone project. He said that the Soviet Union indirectly bought an IBM-360 via Siemens.

[@bogorad]

...and stole the source codes (ON TAPES) via Armenian diaspora in the US.

[@MoultrieGeek]

I love how random the KZbin algorithm is and I'm very glad it is. I'm a nut for mainframe computer history (my dad was a Honeywell systems engineer from 1971 through the early 2000s) so your video is right up my alley. I can't imagine how much research went into this but I'm sure it took ages. Excellent presentation and you've got a new sub.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the sub, glad you enjoyed the video!

[@0xR0b0tt]

Thanks for the trip to the past. I used to work part time as a student on Minsk-32 you mention. As I recall, we used IBM 360 manuals for everything. I always thought it was a direct clone. And as you say, the only options you had in languages were machine or assembler, for the most part, with a bit of Fortran thrown in.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Very interesting, I wonder why they used 360 manuals? There obviously had to be a reason, but I haven’t seen anything anywhere that said that the Minsk-32s were S/360 compatible in any way, apart from being able to use some S/360 peripherals (tape drives/card readers/etc). Although given how prevalent the Minsk-32 was through the late 60s and early 70s, and with the RYAD example to follow, maybe there was an effort to get one of the RYAD’s 360 compatible operating systems ported to it(DOS/ES would have probably been the best choice, since it required less RAM than OS/ES). That would at least explain why your Minsk-32 installation used 360 manuals. Thanks for the comment!

[@vvdvlas8397]

@@AnotherBoringTopic В СССР широко использовались американские языки программирования на компьютерах собственной разработки (например Минск-32). Такие как COBOL, Fortran. Очень вероятно, что они хорошо были описаны в мануалах IBM360. In the USSR, American programming languages were widely used on computers of their own design (for example, Minsk-32). such as COBOL, Fortran. It is very likely that they were well described in the IBM360 manuals.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

That makes a lot of sense, thanks for taking the time to leave a comment!

[@velonabludatel6879]

@AnotherBoringTopic I never worked with Minsk-32 but i know some friend who did. I will ask in what degree they used IBM 360 manuals. I think just for COBOL language. My first computer was Minsk-22M. Company aquared it used from user who replaced it to Minsk-32. That user very regret about this update. Minsk 22M was slow, but reliable. Buttleneck was in tape recorders. It use 35 mm free falling tape, and tape sometimes broke in half, but it was not often. We use it 24/7, with 1 hour maitenance brake every 24 hours. Some tasks took few hours to complete. We use ALGAMS and FORTRAN. It was 1973-1978. Next was ES-1022. First year or two we used DOS-ES, as I remember it was some problems to use OS-ES with 7.25M disks, but later we got 29G disks and switch to OS. We used Fortran and PL/1 languages, and home made Sirius database. Next computer was ES-1045, but I think it was copied from 370. ES-1045 was bad. Sometimes we reboot it up to 10 times per day. 20 programmers spent all day at display and acomplish nothing. Day after day. Semthere in video you said about graphical displays made in Hungary? I was lead programer responsible for graphical tasks. I can say - where was no workable graphical displays in ES family. ES -7061, if i remember correctly.... was made in USSR, probably 2 copies. It was so poor in memory, that it was not possible to make anythinc practical.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

@@velonabludatel6879 This is fascinating, thanks so much for sharing your experiences! From my understanding, the 1045 line are first gen Ryad systems, based off the 360 line, but the 7060 series does not fit any of the first gen naming that I am aware of, so I assume that's from the second gen Ryads, based off the 370 line? Regarding the Hungarian graphics terminals, my sources claim that they were supposed to be the primary/main source of graphics terminals for Ryad. However they do not say how reliable they were, and it definitely doesn't surprise me to hear that they weren't very good. Where else did your terminals come from? I've definitely heard that East Germany made terminals, but I've never heard of them being associated with Ryad. I also appreciate you mentioning your experiences with the Minsk line, I do plan to cover both them in a future video, subject to my finding enough research in English (I sadly do not read or speak Russian) to get a better picture of it. Lot of neat Soviet mainframe systems out there that deserve to be better known. Thanks again for watching and leaving such an interesting comment!

[@mr_noobx3009]

this is the kind of video i'd expect from a channel with at least a million subs, you having 5k actually surprised me. Hope to see you reaching those numbers soon 💪

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Thanks you for the compliment, its been great to see so many people enjoying the videos :) Man a million subs...that would be amazing. I might actually be able to do this full time and produce a full video every month...

[@pyhead9916]

The numbers are low only because millennials don't care about real history.

[@wovenvideo]

My father worked on this project. I was born in 1972 and we left Russia in 1979. He told me stories about getting the manuals to the mainframes to start reverse engineering under the guise of the ministry of health. He said he had the manuals as soon as they came out in the west. Do you know what they were doing with that processing horsepower? Crypto for the in flight guidance of their ICBMs. We got out of Russia because of those programs. My father passed away a few years ago.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

I'm sorry to hear of your father's passing, I would have loved to interview him about Ryad and hear what he had to say and what his memories of the program were. Thanks for commenting!

[@wovenvideo]

@@AnotherBoringTopic he was working on using the programs hardware and software to implement the cryptography he designed at Moscow University, where he was also a professor.

[@vxrdrummer]

That is incredible. I am so sorry to hear that your Dad passed. He sounds like an amazing man. To have heard him tell his story would have been awesome. At least you can share some of his legacy.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

People like he always have hilarious stories, and people from USSR have the most hilarious stories of all. Planned economy+sanctions+KGB=explosive mix, getting stuff done can turn into a most demanding quest

[@markrix]

Welcome comrade 😀

[@critical_analysis]

Your stories are amazing and so well researched and find it very objectively made. Well done! You deserve millions of subscribers for this tremendous work. All the very best.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

I appreciate the kind words, glad you enjoyed the video!

[@vladimirrodionov5391]

The decision to clone the S/360 was controversial back then and oh boy it's controversial in Russia now. In the alternative history the ingenious Soviet BESM-6 system would have been selected as the basis for the future computer lines. It was actually a well designed and performance competitive computer often compared to the CDC- 6600 and it ran a variety of advanced operating systems and had the full range of compilers developed for it. It was actually continued to be manufactured alongside the Ryad.

[@ufukpolat3480]

For a government that is supposed to be built on scientific principles, a lot of Soviet bureaucrats and officials (much like most Murican ones these days) didn't trust the opinions of experts with a scientific understanding of the issues. Funny enough, there used to be a time in US history when a good deal of politicians didn't consider themselves to be more informed on such matters than actual scientists and trusted their opinions. Listening to some harp on about climate change, vaccines or the effectiveness of nation building in Afghanistan or Iraq with little to no understanding of the complexities goes to show how ideological the whole system has become and how bought out politicians find the confidence in themselves to challenge anything but their own ignorance and stupidity.

[@РусланЗаурбеков-з6е]

But BESM-6 was based on transistors, and was 2nd generation system. ES was third gen.

[@pyhead9916]

As in America, when the Russians cloned the DEC series of computers it put the IBM clones out of business. I know of one Russian who admitted 10,000 DEC 750 clones were made and distributed to businesses.

[@VladimirPutin-p3t]

​@@РусланЗаурбеков-з6е Moscow always has a "better system of our own that we could have used" whenever something that they copied from us is discussed. E everything they design is far superior to our designs... But they mysteriously always went with bad copies of our stuff.

[@EduardoEscarez]

@@ufukpolat3480 It was not only distrust but how the whole system confronted new technologies. Another channel, Asianometry, has series of videos of Soviet technology and one of them is about an attempt to build an network to connect all factories to improve production and reduce problems. The problem is that system would shift all the power balances of all the stakeholders involved, from factory managers to local leaders to the people on Gosplan (the central planning agency) so everybody had a reason to stop that project to become reality, something they succeded. But also BESM-6 wouldn't be a silver bullet, because the Soviet Union as a whole had too many inflexibility problems in its leadership, and COMECOM nations (and most notably East Germany) didn't have a fraction of the resources to compete with Western nations + Japan. I mean with RYAD they were tried to compete with only one company, IBM, and with a delay that would prove problematic when then transition from Mainframes to PCs started in the 80s. It was as we say in Spanish, "he that too much embrace, holds little" (quien mucho abarca aprieta poco): Competing in many areas with nations with more resources, and with a leadership too inflexible to adapt until near its end.

[@IronFist.]

I was on the fence about subscribing to this channel but once I saw all the love for *‘peripheels’* I knew I had hit that sub button with both hands 🙌 ❤

[@IronFist.]

Also loved every instance of _‘Syrilick!’_ I love these two pronunciations so much that I'm literally using them in my head as I read the words now 😂

[@Moppup]

Thank you for the obscure (actually not boring) story.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it, thanks so much for watching and commenting!

[@unklekal7571]

I visited Honeywell on a school field trip in the mid seventies, and I was surprised to see they were still building circuit boards by hand for their mainframe computers.

[@LandNfan]

It is a matter of volume. They don’t sell enough units of mainframes to justify the investment in automation. Ironic! I worked for Honeywell from 1978-1981 doing pre and post sale software support on the Italian-built Level-62.

[@peoplethesedaysberetarded]

@@LandNfaninteresting. Did you work with Kamyr racks/hardware? (I know, I know, Honeywell is/was MASSIVE, and this is like asking someone from Puerto Rico, “Do know my friend Juan?”)

[@qzorn4440]

Big companies are so to change. I work for one. 🤣

[@lahma69]

Awesome video! It is pretty clear that this video took a lot of time and effort to research but ultimately, I think it paid off with the production of an extremely informative video providing lots of little-known information. Thanks for all the hard work expended to provide this video to all of us for free. Definitely earned my subscription!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@gavinstirling7088]

Spot on, my thought exactly! Wonderful content, so glad I found this channel. Nice to know there is so many boring people like myself out there too 😉

[@JeBubbieSpubbies]

I do appreciate your research and analysis on the issues that hampered Soviet computer development, and also appreciate that you do not engage in the red bashing that is commonplace in many historical videos on the USSR. But I think it is incredibly important to factor in a critical aspect of Soviet computer development; the historical and material realities of the USSR, especially the *post-WWII* USSR that lost over *26 million people* and where *80% of all casualties on the Western Front occurred* . The USA did not suffer from nearly the same degree of damage as did Europe, Asia, and especially China and the USSR. In fact, in many ways the USA directly benefited from WWII as we were the "last nation standing" since the fighting was largely on the other side of the planet from us. The USSR, by contrast, was largely leveled by the war, and their population, industrial development, and technological progress were all set back by years, if not a decade. Not to mention that immediately after WWII the USSR was immediately pushed into a simmering conflict with the massively-powerful USA (a Cold War that *we* instigated, NATO predates the Warsaw Pact and the USSR even tried joining NATO *before* forming the Warsaw Pact). So they had to divert huge sums of their developmental forces to their war economy instead of the civil sector. The USA could weather this massive military expenditure because we were largely untouched by WWII, whereas the USSR never really got a chance to recover as a society. The USSR was also never a true equal to the USA, a more fair nation to historically compare to the USSR would be Nigeria. The fact that we are even comparing the USSR to the USA is a testament to the successes of their system of central planning. Yes, there were failures, there was corruption and neglect, but that is an inevitability in any system, an ever-present problem that the USSR could never properly address due to the circumstances the Soviet Union found itself in (hostilities with the most powerful nation in human history). The USSR was also largely isolated from the Western world (not by their choice either, they traded and did business whenever they could, as you even showcased in your video), and was forced to usually go it alone. I think it's a tragedy that the USA and USSR never properly collaborated on computer development, or most scientific development at that. I imagine both nations could've bolstered the strengths of the other and improved on their weaknesses in peace and prosperity, instead of the frightening 40 years of near-death experiences humanity had. Imagine how much further along in development humanity could be if the USA never instigated the Cold War, not to mention all the people that would be alive today.

[@yurao718]

All memoirs of contemporary sources state that the reason Soviet electronics manufacturing sucked was the Soviet political/administrative system. That's what you get when there is no free market competition and everyone's equal despite quality of work: lack of incentive to improve and innovate.

[@JeBubbieSpubbies]

@@yurao718 And yet we face the same problems now under monopoly financialized capitalism, because right now we're getting outcompeted by Taiwanese, Korean, and now even Chinese tech firms. And none of those rely solely on the "free market" to do that. In fact, even the USA injects billions of dollars into our chip industry. There are still regulations protecting our technology sectors and billions of dollars in subsidies to support it, even in the "free market" USA. It's almost as if what you said is not at all an accurate assessment of what's actually going on, and that is not the reason why the Soviet model failed. The Soviet economic model actually began to *de-collectivize* in the early 1960s, and become a regional system of local managers, it actually began to *de-centralize* in order to allow for more local autonomy and even some *competition* , contrary to what you believe they lacked. Regional farms, factories and institutes were told if they could produce a surplus then they could keep and even sell the excess, so the lying and corruption and even the infamous Soviet black market all began when the Politburo de-collectivized the economy. That was also when the stagnation began. It is when the Soviets began to *move away* from the system of collectivization and ever closer towards the *free market* system with each passing decade that their system weakened, stagnated and ultimately collapsed. The fully liberalized Russian Federation of the 1990s was an international joke, their economy a shell of itself, and it took the Russians until the 2010s to recover from the embarrassing shock of neoliberalism and a "free market".

[@yurao718]

@@JeBubbieSpubbies the part about decollectivization & competition just makes me laugh. History from alternative reality. The truth is that Kosygyn's 1966 reforms were rolled back in the 1970s and high oil prices stopped any further appetite of Politburo for change. Please don't bother to prove otherwise, I very well remember empty shelves and queues for everything including toilet paper.

[@JeBubbieSpubbies]

@@yurao718 I will gladly bother to reply thank you very much. I couldn't care less about empty claims that the 1968 reforms were somehow "rolled back", because they weren't. They were revised and expanded and by the end of the 1980s the de-collectivization was enhanced to full economic liberalization, hence the empty shelves you remember. You are the one describing an alternate history with your patently false claims that the reforms were rolled back wholesale. Many of the reforms were rolled back in 1969, but the core program of regionalization and the introduction of a profit motive remained, and in fact those reforms themselves were revised and expanded upon in the 1980s under Gorbachev. And all the reforms were extremely unpopular, in fact massive backlash to the reforms were one of the main causes of the uprisings in Czechoslovakia, the same uprisings that led to the invasion in 1968.

[@yurao718]

@@JeBubbieSpubbies ahaha. You don't even know that Czechoslovakia wasn't part of USSR and had its own separate law system.

[@0utc4st1985]

Very informative as always, thank you so much

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@LandNfan]

Excellent video. Just imagining implementing the Cyrillic character set and its collating sequence makes my head hurt, not to mention translating all the COBOL reserved words and internal compiler literals.

[@editingsecrets]

I wonder if the handful of software porting issues were mostly related to software assuming the EBCDIC character set.

[@РусланЗаурбеков-з6е]

​@@editingsecretsDKOI -- Cyrillic version of EBCDIC -- was working perfectly.

[@jenslowe7910]

Thank you - very interesting - I´m from the GDR, and I was proud to hear that our EC 1040 was the best (copy) ;-)

[@Lupinicus1664]

This is an excellent review of the topic. Congratulations. Very well researched and presented clearly and instructively. Great trove of old films and images too. Subscribed and look forward to more excellent material.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the compliment and sub, glad you enjoyed the video!

[@justmoritz]

Super interesting, well researched. Thank you! Love this kind if content.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@vorgeschichte713]

Great video. This deserves a lot more views, but even if not, I am sure that at least the video is going to be one of those hidden gems that people will find at 2am in 15 years.

[@Stache987]

My mother learned COBOL, FORTRAN and RPG in the USA where the school used punched cards on a 360, part of each printout was a estimate of how much the job run cost, it wasn't cheap, I myself learned RPG about 7 years later, I was frustrated trying to get my first programming job and took off for the Navy, my mother worked until retirement age in RPG, and was finding out afterwards how much in demand her programming skills were, funny thing, I had things I'd try and bring up to her because they were puzzling to me, and I actually was teaching her things she didn't know.

[@franciscorompana2985]

I didn't know there was so much appreciation for RPG (edit: in demand). I was the best (said by IBM) at programming RPGII here in Portugal. Never had a mistake and would repair others programs, to run. System 32 and System 34. In the 80's, here in Portugal. At IBM, they said "Use only two digits for year (date)," I never did, because of the Y2K bug that I preview 15 years in advance. I used full date (4 digits/year). They said @IBM they would be payed to change original said programs.😢🇺🇸 Congratulations. 🇵🇹

[@Stache987]

@@franciscorompana2985 I think when the 1440 came out IBM was saying that you could learn RPG in 3 days, I disagree, I took a 1080 hour course on a couple of S/34 in the late 70s, primarily in RPG and you wouldn't believe the "overqualified" line came out in interviews.. jeez, I could wrap those systems around my finger easily, I even did a SYSGEN (iirc) on a weekend with the instructor, my only challenge was understanding why ISAM was a thing, and using the CHAIN operation, having no concept at the time, it eliminated redundant data storage, as the system capacity was inefficient. Eventually my mother did a volunteer job helping a charity upgrade from the S/34 to a bigger system, and as a reward she got the old system which is in her basement to this day, expending only moving cost. My mother retired a little early, having headhunters still calling her explaining she is in high regards, in a metro area ranking in the high 20s of population of the USA.. In the 2007 era I saw a local hardware/lumber chain advertising a need for a RPG programmer, I should have jumped on it, however my grandmother had a stroke and needed constant help and observation. Now you got me interested to go fire it up at Christmas when I visit, it's probably got its fair share of a dust collection by now.. Sorry for being a little redundant having failed to check my previous "chapter" (comment)

[@jrshaul]

I like how well you cite sources.

[@johnfox2483]

In Poland it was called RIAD - phonetic equivalent of russian Ряду, Ряд. I wouldn't say "attempt" - it really worked, wiki says about 15000 systems were built. What ended this was microprocessor revolution and PC concurrency.

[@encodersofia]

He means Ряд, he just pronounces it wrong. Every time he says "raiad" my ears bleed

[@gctechs]

Mam książkę pt. "1000 Słów o komputerach i informatyce" z 1979 roku autorstwa B. Buśko i J. Śliwińskiego wydaną przez Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej. Na stronie 89 jest definicja - "jednolity system elektronicznych maszyn cyfrowych": "(...) W niektórych krajach zamiast liter EC używa się ES, a w Polsce - JS. W okresie prowadzenia prac naukowo-badawczych używano nazwy roboczej RIAD (...). W skrócie j.s.e.m.c. oznacza się JS EMC".

[@MicrophonicFool]

You mentioned the lack of decent communication hardware and poor quality of Soviet wire line options for distance communication between nodes. In Summer 1989, I was a young supervisor of a PC build/service department within a small computer chain of stores in Toronto but in this case I was in Ottawa store. I was not the store manager, unless they were out, and one day this came to pass. A recently hired cashier came to the service desk asking for assistance with some people she had at the front of the store. There were two very stereotypical G-Men of old, but of the semi-polite Canadian variety. Both flashed CSIS badges, which I wouldn't recognize from real if my life depended. What they wanted were printouts of the invoices and receipts from the gentleman customer that was last in the store. (Cashier later told me this guy walked out about 5 minutes before). I assumed legitimacy of their credentials and authorized the re-prints. CSIS clan didn't want to say much, but the vague gist was that customer was perhaps from a country where certain communication devices might be forbidden by export embargo or other international concerns. The invoice showed quantity 3 of the VERY newly released US Robotics HST 14.4 kb/s modems. They were a lot like $1200 each at that time. It would easily have been all we had of those in stock. Original customer made no attempt at all to hide the fact that the address specified was the Embassy of the U.S.S.R, Ottawa. MANY Embassies had accounts with us, I can only surmise the Authority had to actually see someone purchase these items, or else they would have asked for ALL the purchases from that account. (I actually would not know if they had make that request on someone else's watch)

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Very, very interesting story, thanks for sharing! It's funny to think that there is at least a slight chance that those modems may have wound up helping network three Ryad systems

[@TorMazila]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Doubtful. 1989 was a time when USSR was falling into pieces - we already had (illegal) customs between the republics for a couple of years, there was shortage of everything, queues for everything - from sugar to color TV's, the "best" professions were speculation, racketeering, prostitution and "cooperative" production (typically a prey for racketeers), mass fraud schemes were getting increasingly popular. While it may sound "$1200 is a lot for a modem" (even Canadian$) - if you take into account the cost of the data lines - things will sound not that bad, and if that was about international calling rates - they are still high if not done via VoIP. In USSR we had fixed monthly rates for "intra-city" communication and rather high rates for calling the other cities. "ES" computers were popular with enterprise customers and some of them had survived into 2000's (e.g. Ukrainian Railways had a ticket system on that hardware, my first job interview was with them :) ). At the university we had some assembly programming for DEC PDP clone (SM-1420?) in 1990s till it was finally disassembled and scrapped. Local IBM PC clones (Iskra-1030, ES-1841) have started making it to our market at the end of 1980's, the pricing was terrific, comparable to the most expensive cars, like GAZ-24 Volga.

[@Applecompuser]

@MicrophonicFool That was something I had always wondered. Could the Soviet government have made use of the over the counter tech I had used as a kid such as my 8 bit equipment. Your experience suggests maybe.

[@VasiliyLomovoy]

@@TorMazila boolean sheet)) everything you talked about here appeared after 1991, along with "democracy"

[@TorMazila]

@@VasiliyLomovoy Nope. Unfortunately - I had personal experience at that time - shortage of everything, especially vodka - which became currency. Transporting a bag full of *** brandy and vodka from Russia to Kiev was a hell of adventure. Bags were checked at the railway stations before you boarded the train - it was just a bit of luck and good packaging. Those 20+ bottles (combined with more purchased locally) were used during the following decade to pay for everything - from various workers to doctor services. After all - the only really convincing reason to vote for independence was a set of figures that was promising nothing less than building local Switzerland in a couple of years.

[@ronjon7942]

Wow, data transmission over TELEGRAPH infrastructure! Factoids like this instantly remind me of a photograph with two MiG-25s passing overhead a farmer ploughing a field behind an oxen-driven tiller. This video essay was outstanding! The amount of research put forth is beyond impressive, you and your team should be very proud of this report into a little known chapter of the history of computing. Nice work. It's incredible interesting to me how the engineers and technicians were able to accomplish so much given all disadvantages they had to work with that were a result of a totalitarian regime and a socialist economy. To have to work within a system that seems anathema to innovation and still create a computing infrastructure good enough to wage the Cold War is a major accomplishment, especially given the lack of direction and proper management. I get the feeling these engineers were continuously reinventing the wheel, where, within each discrete project, they had to learn electronics, integrated circuit design, manufacturing techniques, operating systems, compilers and software essentially from scratch. It almost seems like there wasn't much opportunity to share innovations across projects both within and without the various ministries, which must have seriously hampered overall progress. It's hard to imagine how these individuals maintained the motivation to move Soviet computing forward - what was their inspiration? Dedication to the State, belief in Communism, fear of the West, fear of punishment for failure? Imagine if these motivated and talented people were brought to the West and were able to work in an environment that awards innovation with profit and advancement, and provides the freedom and opportunities to use their abilities and ideas. I'm not saying the West doesn't have its flaws, but an emphasis on individuality and opportunity versus and emphasis solely on the state seems a lot more advantageous to moving a society forward.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Thank you so much for the kind words! I had a blast researching this video and the research also turned up a bunch of stuff for future videos on Soviet computing that I am looking forward to exploring. The BESM-6 line in particular is well worth a full video, as that was a seriously impressive computer for its day and in many respects initially compared favorably with western computers so far as raw performance went. One of the paradoxes of the Soviet economy is the fact that certain areas of it were capable of producing quite high quality stuff, in spite of the limitations on both information and technology. Although of course they had to run really hard just to stay only one generation behind the West in computing technology, the fact that they managed it under the handicaps the Soviet economic system imposed on them is truly remarkable. It's also true that Soviet computer systems tended to be, for lack of a better word, "unbalanced", with advances in one area frequently mitigated or nullified by poor quality/poor implementation in others. At some point I plan to do a video on the theoretical flow of the Soviet production economy, from GOSPLAN down to the individual factory and back up, tracing each step. I actually wrote the rough draft of it years ago, but its currently...about as exciting as watching paint dry. So for now, its one of a number of scripts on the back burner.

[@ronjon7942]

@@AnotherBoringTopic I'm looking forward to it! Growing up during the Cold War, and intensely interested in aviation, I formed a typical American mental picture of the USSR, partly from propaganda, to be sure, but also from the scant resources available from a closed society, interpreted by Western analysts. It was a little fearful because at that time in the mid 80s, we believed we were behind in bombers, nuclear delivery, tanks for an invasion into NATO, and troop strength; also, the unknowns related to submarines, naval strength, rocket and satellite capabilities, and, of course, computing. With your channel and others, like Anna from Ukraine, The Cold War, and so forth, whom are combing through mounds of declassified Western documents and information released from the USSR, quite a different picture is appearing - one not as glamorous as my 80s one. But given the current situation, it's important your work and others' is available to provide the historical context of what we're confronted with today.

[@yashexebook]

@@ronjon7942 As some guy who grew up in USSR and remembers late 70-ies and 80-ies and whose whole family was in computer industry, my dad was printer/disk/punch card serviceman, mom was once one of those pretty white collar girls at the drawing board in computer center you can see in this video, uncle was a worker in the circuit making room etc, I can tell you that nobody I knew had an idea they are working for a totalitarian regime and need some extra inspiration to work. It's as irrelevant to their live as like me asking you loudly how are you finding inspiration enriching all those IBM private owners that exploit you to wage war in Taiwan or something, my parents just wanted to get an exciting modern profession farther from boring farm or waitress kind jobs, my mom at least was always super excited about computers even though her work was more like copying blueprints at once, when she was a student she had an internship in Leningrad circa 1968 at the org that was building the automated city traffic control system and learned algol, that sounds exciting even now. I do not remember any of those dull people in dull clothes doing some dull work in dull factories and someone in uniform yelling at them all the time as they portray in american or british movies, what I remember green streets full of people cheering and colorful, they just leave me at kindergarten and go working, I visited dad's work many times, evil lady in uniform was never there, they had 99% male gang smoking non stop, laughing most of the time and all super busy with wires and circuit boards. At 4PM mom would leave her work go shopping and then partying outdoor or on someones kitchen, on weekend every city would rush out to do beaching, cycling skiing etc, my both parents had 30 day paid vacation every year and free tickets to the beach in Crimea even though in Riga we had better beaches just 30 minutes ride. The only totalitarian regime presence was felt in victory day parade but that was a national holiday anyway and eveyone willing would go to parade at 9AM would forget about it hour later and go partying the rest of the day, also Lenin portraits and WORK AND PEACE kind of posters in places currently occupied by fast food neons, that's all the opression I can remember right now ask if you're interested may be I can recall more.

[@DankNoodles420]

@@yashexebook I'm sure they felt it every moment of everyday, especially when you get that measly paycheck at the end of the week that equates to something like $10 US for doing a job that here in the USA people got paid literally 700+ times more for weekly and totaled to $30,000, $50,000 etc. probably more each year for. The fact they knew they better watch what they say about the state or else they will go "missing" was probably enough a reminder as it was

[@alexfraser2214]

​@@yashexebook Great comment i am intrested. Life wasint slavery in USSR but it still seems so unique compared to my life but perhaps I am fantasizing to much. If there was time travel i would visit USSR keenly, i often fantasize what it would be like to show a soviet an iPhone and to tell them that thier country will collapse. Would also love to see an alternate reality where the soviet union continued on, i eat up all sci-fi on that.

[@johnpenner5182]

very interesting. soviet electronics has always been a fascination - a whole (for the most part) independent electronics components manufacturing and computing systems. i grew up with TRS-80, unix, and macintosh machines - we had soviet tube valve guitar pedals which were highly prized. its not like one was able to know a lot about what was going on behind that iron curtain in terms of what the geeks were doing. im sure we would meet on BBS's with modems if we could - but even that was too exotic for what a canadian kid picking cherries and working at a gas station could afford. you went to the library on your bike, and looked stuff up in card catalogues using the original google - the dewey decimal system. 🤣 there was no internet to look stuff up on - which you have now with the facility of which, have been able to synthesize an excellent, and fascinating synopsis - thxu. 🙏

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@MarvinHartmann452]

These valves accessories are probably electro-harmonix and made in saratov/reflector in Russia. Which is now a major annoyance since the replacement parts aren't available since the war. We only have the inferior Chinese parts. I have some older electronic and stereo system which uses valves, but I use them sparingly because I don't want to have to buy replacement valves. (7591) soviet electronic is a very fascinating topic. The transistors stuff is similar and very different to what is made in Japan or USA.

[@MarvinHartmann452]

​@@AnotherBoringTopic It's very interesting for the point of view of someone who works in the electronic domain. You should do one that covers the domestic electronic like TV and transistors radio. There's alot to say on the topic.

[@johnnyzippo7109]

Great video , I have been looking for this very type of micro documentary , great work , thank you !

[@leglessinoz]

In 1988 Russia had a pavilion at World Expo '88 in Brisbane in Australia. They had a bunch of PCs on display that looked like they were using an OS that was something like CP/M. They were definitely not as advanced as PCs of the era that were available to users here. The 80286 based PC that I had at the time was leaps and bounds ahead.

[@pseydtonne]

This is a seriously well-done video. You fascinated me so much that I wound up downloading the CDC summary of the RYAD 1040 performance. One wee thing: "per-RIHF-Er-uhlz", not "per-RIHF-Ree-uhlz". Sorry.

[@poonsamurai]

I really hope you keep making these. You really deserve a lot more subscribers, I’ve sent links to your channel to anyone I know that has interest in these topics. Good stuff, thanks.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the compliment, glad you are enjoying the videos! We do have a lot more stuff in various stages of completion coming down the pipeline, including six more tech history videos from me. Should hopefully have at least two of them done and released by end of year.

[@VladimirPutin-p3t]

You make consistently excellent content. Very impressive, i learned a LOT.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Awesome, glad you are enjoying the videos!

[@BeachriderUSA]

I remember interviewing a candidate in early 1983. He claimed experience with Russia’s compatible S360 systems. He wanted to be considered for a System/370 environment that was converting from DOS/VS to OS/VS2 3.8. He claimed sufficient experience to be useful. I was surprised that HR presented him and started vetting him. He insisted that we also hire his Russian-language-only spouse. That stopped further research.

[@johnnyzippo7109]

Very well done , very comprehensive , very concise , enjoyed every second .

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Awesome, thank you!

[@joshflugel]

Ah! Quality content, I love these topics.

[@ugencz8364]

15:00 Škoda Auto bought one 360 for car developing in 1969. They've bought some local tomatoes, sold them abroad, and paid the computer in the foreign currency made from the tomato sale.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

That's hilarious and also very creative! 😄

[@ugencz8364]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Desparate times need desparete measuers. Czechoslovakia had some very interesting computer manufacturing. :D

@@ugencz8364 Yes IQ151 very heavy piece of HW, PMD-85, maybe Ondra (based by MHM8080A), Didaktik Gama, TNS computers HC-xx (U880 alias for Z80) developed by agro firm JZD Slusovice. System based on 8086 SAPI etc. I got a failed module from EC during an excursion in a firm named SVIT... and this event started my interest in computers.

[@ugencz8364]

@ I know them all, it's my passion too.

[@JPLE84]

@ you seams to be the right guys to ask, do you happen to know anything about the systems shown in this video? kzbin.info/www/bejne/baWYc4mCgbKto7s from the skoda plant, possibly 1985-1987

[@andrek4619]

In the late 1980s, I worked on the EC-1022 and EC-1037, the last one related to IBM-370 with the SVS-7 operating system. The programming language PL/1 was mainly used.

[@RyanDanielG]

Your back! Awsome, I'll watch when I get home! thanks

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

As always, I remain terrible at accurately estimating production time…I meant to release this video in September as a bit of change-up before wrapping up OS/2’s story. Hope you enjoy it!

[@bicivelo]

What a well researched and presented video. Wow!!! Liked and subscribed. Thank you!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it and appreciate the sub!

[@858Markus]

I remember my dad talking about Bulgarian processors in the 80's, and his friend that worked at the VUVT (Výskumný ústav výpočtovej techniky-Institute of computer sciences in the CSSR). They literally walked on processors and chips lying on the floor until they found some that worked. There was no quality control what so ever. They just produced them, and let the workers that put the computers together sort them out.

[@fjccommish]

He didn't mention the greatest computer created in the USSR. It was LENIN - Latent Electronic Neural Intelligence Number cruncher. Created in 1973 using technology found in a crashed UFO, this computer was artificially intelligent and self aware. When it realized what the IUSSR was about, it developed a mobile system for itself, then threw itself into the Red Sea.

[@plitshb9338]

More mainframe related episodes, please :)

[@dna9838]

To occupy the time of your best and brightest with efforts to imitate and replicate and catch up is rather sad.

[@snunezcr]

Thank you for the well researched video. As someone interested in understanding the history of Russia in the context of global security, finding an example of soviet science and technology is fascinating.

[@brucewilliams6292]

Enjoyed the video and the history. Subscribed and looking forward to more.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it and appreciate the sub! Fair warning: In spite of my best efforts, I am in the running for slowest content creator on KZbin so it can be quite a while between uploads.

[@brucewilliams6292]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Like fine wine, great content takes time! :) I appreciate the work that goes into your videos.

[@namelesske]

I'm surprised about how good was Hungary in computer tech compared with USSR.

[@EdwardDowllar]

Great content! Really enjoyed watching.

[@bassobalalaikka5005]

great and informative video thanks! at 11:13 I was stunned to see 8 bit MC6800 microprocessor assembly language in a video that was supposed to handle 32bit mainframe computers and their russian copies.

[@editingsecrets]

I also wondered, why not pan across some actual COBOL or FORTRAN code rather than Javascript code with event-driven mouse handling for the Web?

[@canadiguzel]

Great quality, as always.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it!

[@frenchcreekvalley]

You wondered how the Soviet Union might have purchased some IBM 360 stuff. I think the was some sort of business entity in Zug, Switzerland that acted as a go-between between the West and the Soviet Union for these purposes. The Western companies might have even had some sort of branch offices there. I am guessing, to some extent here, but I think the Western company would essentially sell the equipment to the Zug company, then the Zug company would sell it to Russia, so the Western company appeared to not be doing bad things. So, a Western audit trail would probably end in Switzerland.

[@TheGrantourismo]

Major channels of acquiring US computers were Austria and Sweden. Also, some IBM 360, 370, XA systems were directly acquired from IBM. HP and DEC minis (which were also cloned, especially PDP-11) were directly available most of the 80-ies at least. Some domestic families and many specialized computers were not clones but original development. Despite the abundant quantity, ES RYAD series was not popular target for software development due to archaic architecture and complexity. Most popular targets for Soviet systems programming in the 80-ies were PDP-11 and BESM-6/Elbrus.

[@AureliusR]

That's how they managed to export Tetris and sell it despite not being "capitalist"...

[@mattirealm]

This was very fascinating, thank you! What the USSR did is very similar to what China is doing today. One company from China just released a discrete GPU that is roughly akin to something you could have bought over 10 years ago from AMD and Nvidia. The parallels are interesting IMO.

[@rinatozaur]

It s often easier and cheaper just copycat western than made own, so it s natural for non democrat countries witch have intelligence and money to corruption But the more advanced technology the more difficult copycating

[@ruslankazimov622]

Combine it with modern hyper-consumerist mindset and greed... and totally anti-nationalist stance of western leaders... you get morally corrupt lead developers /engineers selling technological secrets for millions of dollars.

[@casioak1683]

Except.. USSR didn't manufacture those IBM supercomputers so they couldn't exacyly figure how to copy it. Meanwhile nVidia & AMD graphic cards are manufactured in China.. yeah all thanks because of Richard "Watergate" Nixon who opened the gate and made China an ally.

[@deathdoor]

I think what is preventing more companies from designing GPUs is patents.

[@damnhatesyou]

What are you taking about? China and the western nations made the deal for china to have access to the technology that is produced in china. Everything china has been doing in this case is above board.

[@giantgeoff]

I'm gonna' add that It was people like my friend's fathers (and some relatives)that did amazing things some of which were done with computers. I can remember in Boy Scouts one of my fellow scouts doing a demonstration of Boolean logic (Kim P, Total Props to You!) I went 2000 miles away to learn how to blow up things (For socially responsible purposes) and still managed to retire from the Blue company..

[@parrotraiser6541]

Thanks for the memories, from someone who watched the drama play out, (from the UK).

[@camiemengineer]

FAST SPEECH with few pauses over a complex subject results in a dog's dinner.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

I appreciate you taking the time to leave a constructive comment with two specific (too fast of speech and too few pauses) things that I can work on improving. Negative feedback helps me get better too so thanks for taking the time to watch and comment!

[@mercster]

Thanks for the video. I haven't been through it yet, but I was surprised to hear that by the 1960s IBM had basically sewn everything up... I'm not VERY familiar with the 1960s, but in the -1970s- /1980s there was a lot of fragmentation where it matters, large servers. IBM was big, but so was HP, Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment, SGI, and others. I worked as a UNIX admin in the 90s/2000s and IBM was actually the systems I was least familiar with over several large companies including a government contractor. Of course, probably not as fragmented due to the nature of the C programming language and UNIX... code was portable in a way it wouldn't have been in the 1960s, so hardware vendor wasn't as stark a difference.

[@mercster]

EDIT: I guess most of those came around in the 1980s... I reckon DEC was the first to break out of the pack with VAX.

[@mercster]

Interesting that Soviet Union forced the cooperation of those Eastern bloc nations... Imagine the advancements that were stifled!

[@mercster]

Wikipedia lists some late-era models from the 1980s, the 1130, 1181, and 1220, but I couldn't find any pics of it. Maybe that's what you show at 37:23, not sure. Great video though, I see you make many interesting ones, have a sub!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Thanks for watching and I appreciate the sub!

[@denawiltsie4412]

IBM went after the business market. That was where being able to run the old software was very important. They didn't care so much about power as long as an upgrade wouldn't trigger a massive software porting effort. The other companies did scientific, engineering and education where the market wasn't as great. Over time the PC became powerful enough to push the others out of the market. You ended up with Cray for the high end work, IBM for business and PCs for everything else.

[@tiggy2756]

There are some Soviet copy,s in Technology museum Brno , its really good museum lots of old Soviet technology in there well worth a visit

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

I had never heard of that museum before, I just browsed their website and it really looks cool, especially since they apparently also have a MINSK computer on display. Thanks for pointing me towards it!

[@tiggy2756]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Place is well worth a visit if you're in that area , lots to see and great value , we had a great day out there

[@robinprak4605]

Cool, definitely want to check it out

[@dmacpher]

Well this channel is criminally under appreciated!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the compliment, thanks for watching!

[@buckadillafilms]

this is absolutely fascinating

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@PelDaddy]

Interesting topic. Thanks for sharing.

[@LastofAvari]

Would be cool to see your take on the Soviet attempts of cloning IBM PCs with ЕС1840 and other systems.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

As part of the research I did for RYAD, I started a 3 ring binder for printouts of various old journal articles and intelligence analysis of various aspects of Soviet computer technology, and I have a whole section set aside in it that holds research materials on their microcomputers. It's definitely something I will be exploring in the future :) Thanks for watching!

[@cogoid]

There was only a half-hearted effort to make their own IBM PC compatibles, because by mid-1980s it was already easy to import from the West personal computers which were better made, more reliable, and more up to date technologically. USSR did produce a number of domestically developed personal workstations in 1980s which were not IBM-compatible, but run software for PDP-11. These were not sold to individuals, with the exception of one low-end "home computer", which resembled VIC-20 in design, but had a 16 bit CPU inside. Initially, these home computers came with Basic interpreter and Tetris. That was it. Eventually enthusiasts developed some software for them, including many games. There were no commercial developers of software, because the very idea of IP was completely foreign to Soviet citizens -- if you could sell one copy of the program, and it were any good, then it would spread like a wildfire by people passing a copy along. (Like it happened with Bill Gate's original Altair basic in 1976 in the USA.) Instead of commercial software companies, in the USSR enthusiasts developed software mostly for fun without any commercial benefits. And, of course, pirated Western software was standard on IBM PC compatibles. For home use, the most common computers in the USSR in late 1980s were 8-bit Sinclair Spectrum clones. These were produced by many tiny companies and even by individuals. They became popular because they were very affordable and there were lots of games for them with rather attractive (for the time) color graphics. Being extremely simple, this was a surprisingly capable machine.

[@editingsecrets]

@@cogoid "Initially, these home computers came with Basic interpreter and Tetris." Now we finally know the secret to Russian superiority at ingenious coding and hacking!

[@cazb73]

There was czechoslovak Tesla PP-06, IBM PC XT clone produced approximately from 85th. 8088 (copy,) 640 kB RAM, CGA, 2x360kB drive. It hadn't motherboard, but central bus board, where CPU, memory, controller and graphic board were attached. Bus WASN'T ISA compatible!

[@penzlic]

On absolutely unrelated topic: my friend still have fully working Minsk-15M. One might ask: how did he got that? Well it is easy: it's a fridge.

[@VladimirPutin-p3t]

Is that why Russian soldiers are stealing washing machines from Ukraine? They think they're mainframe computers!

[@giantgeoff]

Not Boring From kid who was moved into Kingston NY in 1968

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it! And it's neat that you have a bit of a personal connection to the S/360 :)

[@kitamuram4389]

dictator's rapid catchup requires vast activities in his teritory and soon confronts fundamental contradiction.

[@vencibushy]

I live just 15 minutes away from the former production plant which used to manufacture most of the magnetic disks. Later on they began producing a full range of magnetic information mediums such as compact cassettes and video cassettes. They even produced parts for hard disk drives in the late 80's. The site is now a mere shell of its former glory. Immediately following the collapse of the communist regime, the plant fell into private hands. Most of the equipment was sold and what could not be sold was scrapped.

[@rsc9520]

I like boring things. Subscribed! This is a GREAT channel.

[@editingsecrets]

"This revolution in computing technology caused the Soviet Union to fall..." Hmm, I always thought there were other causes. "... even further behind." Oh, carry on! Useful Russian phrase book for Another Boring Topic: 1 Show me where is the restroom? 2 Take me to the American Embassy, please. 3 How many nanoseconds do your floating point operations require and where exactly are those circuits manufactured? Interesting that the capitalist West invented the egalitarian time-sharing way to allocate a big computer's resources to the needs of multiple users. Maybe only one Central Planner needs the computer at a time, Comrade! "From day one the program began running behind schedule." That's always the state of the art for any R&D project like this, isn't it! This is a fascinating documentary. Amazing research, writing, editing, and narrating! That last circuit board at 34 minutes sure needs to get pulled out and plugged in a lot to make a RYAD machine work.

[@LMB222]

15:20 the Eastern Bloc not only didn't want to get dependent on the Soviet Union in computing, but also was weary of getting punished for using IP obviously stolen from the West. That's why our traffic lights (Poland) were controlled by a British ICL mainframe. (Of course it ran into the 1990's, because sanctions do work, people!)

[@sunnohh]

Soviet electronics are wild….simultaneously copies, more creative and worse. Always a fascinating dive into comp sci and history

[@michaelmoorrees3585]

Yep, I have a small collection of Soviet components. Their nixie tubes are very popular, since they are relatively less expensive, and have better availability. I use to sell nixie clock kits with Russian nixie drivers, that were pin-to-pin compatible to western 74141 TTL chips.

[@jakekaywell5972]

Soviet-era VEF and Radiotecnika radios are universally prized for their high fidelity even today.

[@bbqgiraffe3766]

there's also a Sinclair Spectrum clone called the Olypmic-1

[@ronjon7942]

I'll also add their your enunciation and rate were pretty spot on, although I did boost the playback rate to 1.25. If others find your rate too quick for their liking, perhaps they're unaware the playback speed can be changed in KZbin's preferences settings. For those of you critical of pronunciations, please just deal with it. If you feel you must comment, at least view previous comments to see if someone as rudely critical as yourself has already made the comment; I tend to read comments to pick up additional info and don't appreciate sifting through your trivial negativity. Also, ask yourself why you feel the need to criticize, and if you would do so in a 1on1 conversation. Also, if you're motivated to show us how smart you are by criticizing someone else - DON'T. It demonstrates horrible manners, annoying control tendencies, and makes you look small.

[@bivergog3856]

Скорее это не клон а вариация на тему,. На самом деле многие ЭВМ были совместимы с ibm system 360 но думаю лучше рассказать и о уникальных советских ЭВМ

[@sassymenses]

Про уникальные советские ЭВМ рассказывать никто не будет.... Не вписывается в "повесточку", лучше рассказать ещё раз про "попытки" сделать "клон" 360 :)

[@c1ph3rpunk]

Russia: we want you to help on RYAD Blocks: we’re happy working on ours Russia: you will help on RYAD Blocks: we can’t afford to buy them Russia: shall we dispatch the tanks? Blocks: ok, ok, we’ll help Russia: was huge success, look how many blocks took. Blocks: it doesn’t work Russia: we sent tanks to help

[@jakekaywell5972]

This is just fear-mongering. More than 15,000 Ryad units were ultimately produced for institutional use, hardly a failure and also not something that relied on violence.

[@VladVonGrigorian]

I remember seeing these (I think?) back in the very early 80s in the USSR. The level of noise in this server room was around 98dB. They were referred to as "ЭВМ". This is very interesting.

[@itpros-z]

I worked with those magnetic tapes and reader devices in SZÜV at Hungary many years about year of 90's. It was amazing times.

[@jurgenbussche]

this channel is jem for me :)

[@leyasep5919]

That topic is NOT boring at all ! 😀

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the compliment, glad you enjoyed the video!

[@andrewdunbar828]

The periffials are very interesting.

[@samgamgee42]

Very enjoyable video!!

[@JelMain]

The distinction being they lacked the discussion background going on in the University network.

[@vazhanatroshvili7523]

I worked in soviet computer factory in 1985

[@AiOinc1]

Pretty cool video, and great story. A better microphone would not go amiss, you have some echo going on. Also, 12:53 just saying, Robotron is probably the coolest name for a computer ever I personally have a big interest in storage devices, I have a large collection of mechanical hard disk drives. Some of the things missing from my collection which I desperately want are Soviet-era fixed disk drives such as those manufactured both in Russia and Bulgaria! I've seen very few show up for sale.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

I bought a new microphone last month (lost my original one when I moved last fall), hopefully it solves any echo issues. Oh man I would love to have some old Soviet hard drives, but even without them that sounds like you have a pretty neat collection!

[@AiOinc1]

@@AnotherBoringTopic Thanks, I'm setting up a small recording studio in a spare closet to document some of them soon. You mention at the end of the video the possibility of RYAD 2, I'd love to hear that story some day. You've earned a subscription from me.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Appreciate the subscription, thank you! I have started gathering research on Ryad 2, but it's probably going to be a year or two before I really have time to tackle it. But I am determined to cover it at some point, along with other Soviet mainframe and microcomputers, there are just too many fascinating Soviet/ComBloc systems from that era whose history deserves to be better known.

[@revsnowfox5798]

@@AnotherBoringTopic As a hobby, I'm lowkey working on collecting info about Comecon computer technology and incorporating it into the English Wikipedia. I'm Hungarian, so my primary interest is the Hungarian computer industry (boy we did a lot of PDP-8 and VAX reverse engineering, done at KFKI), but I'm interested in the ES framework as well. I rather call it a framework, since peripherals and components also had an ES number assigned to them, one of those CIA reports lists all the known ES items at the time. Aside from the ES, each Comecon country had their own domestic computer projects, sometimes quite weird machines. If you need some help with Hungarian computers, while I can't promise anything, feel free to hit me up.

[@plextoob]

Thanks for the interesting and well researched video! "Peripheral" is pronounced per-if-eral,not per-if-real.

[@alexpacura9810]

Not in the midwest.

[@georgegonzalez2476]

I suppose they just pirated the operating systems and microcode.

[@googlehomemini2059]

Correct..

[@maciejjanicki8385]

Fun fact - polish computer manufacturer - ELWRO, has been made to produce RIAD as well. No one has been happy about this because it has taken part of factory capacity from producing ODRA computer (with cooperation with British ICL), so polish engineers decided to make some fun of soviets. They have created clone of RIAD which has been couple times faster than the original. What's more it has been much much smaller. Actually 3 time smaller than the IBM's :D

[@C86-x5r]

These aren't the family of computers you're looking for,, move along

[@gerrymcdonald6194]

I suggest that the root of the problem the USSR experienced and still does, was the culture and politics of the country itself. There lacked an adequate stimulus for exceptional performance, nor a gateway for it to express itself freely. Period.

[@holmesjustholmes9412]

Typical life cycle of designing Soviet mainframe computer software was to buy one licence from IBM (Amdahl, etc) - on tape or punchcard packs, and then get few grad students or PhDs to reverse engineer, translate and distribute around the country as own. Nobody bothered to buy more than one copy. It was also typical to outright steal software during science exchange trips to the US - there was no protection of the source code, of course. This was definitely going on in theoretical physics academia I was in at the time.

[@madistamela5975]

Empire of LARP. Even much simpler products were fully or partially cloned. Cars, cameras, bicycles

[@giantgeoff]

i see at the conclusion of the video that the Soviet computers were sill using the stock palette of IBM production colors which reminded me of their copying of the Boeing corporate branding in it's theft of the B29 as necessary to be functional! GO Ukraine!

[@ShornDunlevy]

I'm interested to know what instruction-set the example of assembly language source code are taken from. From the hex values of the instructions, I'm GUESSING 6800 but it's not a language I know.

[@adamsworld100]

Had a chuckle when I saw "Data General"...I had an encounter with one of those around 1988

[@WyomingGuy876]

great video!

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@Taketimeout3]

Boring? If this topic is boring then life is much more exciting and fulfilling then I have so far noticed!

[@AppliedCryogenics]

This was a fascinating program. Thanks for putting it together. By the way, would you happen to have a brother named Tech Time Traveler? Cousin maybe? :-)

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

Does he sound like me or does he just mispronounce “peripheral”? ;) No relation so far as I’m aware, interesting looking channel though! I added his video on 70s kit computers to my watch later list. Thanks for watching and commenting!

[@AppliedCryogenics]

@@AnotherBoringTopic :) I think you guys must just live in the same region, but to my untrained ear, you could be fraternal twins.

[@alanmeszaros6280]

To Bad Russia still sucks ! Thanks you for all your hard work !

[@editingsecrets]

@@AppliedCryogenics Maybe one is just a Soviet clone of the American original. With upgrade peripheels.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

@@editingsecrets at least one of them is Canadian.

[@NYYR1KK1]

... and the very first footage of software on this video is not from RYAD, but from "КУВТ" (aka MSX here in western world)

[@milandavid-levy3559]

What about the Bulgaria Pravetz computers. They were all asembled by localy produced parts including microprocesors, hard drives and optical drives.

[@AnotherBoringTopic]

The RYAD research pointed in a number of very interesting directions that I’d like to explore further, including the native computer technology of the CEMA countries that were forced into RYAD development. I’m going to be in the research phase for quite a while though, information on it is pretty scattered

[@belstar1128]

Impressive that a small country like Bulgaria could pull it off. but that says a lot about the Warsaw pact it seems like the Warsaw pact countries where more isolated from each other than nato countries as if they where not really allies.