The Soviet Union traveled a very difficult path from the creation of the first bulky and slow tube computers to supercomputers - high-speed, based on integrated circuits. Still, Soviet computers took place, and specialists from various fields of industry and science, and not just programmers, could work on them. The need for convenient, inexpensive and compact computers arose by the mid-seventies of the last century. Both the military industry and many other spheres of the country's economy needed them.
Micro-computer "Electronics"
Soviet computers had their predecessors. These are computers created back in the sixties, easy to use and quite compact machines from the Mir series. They were used mainly for engineering calculations. By the mid-seventies, microprocessors appeared, and this made it possible to begin production of "Electronics NTs" and "Electronics C5" - universal micro-computers. In many respects they were close to personal computers, but the first Soviet computers were used only in production - they controlled technological processes, equipment, and so on.
At the end of the seventies on an industrial scale began the production of desktop sixteen-bit computers - quite powerful and compact. These are models such as Electronics T3-29 and Iskra 1256, designed for the military, as well as simpler models - Iskra 226, Electronics DZ-28, and others. In the early eighties, on the basis of single-board sixteen-bit microcomputers and standard terminals, analogs of interactive computing complexes - DVK - were produced.
Mid eighties
Serial production of such universal computers as the EU-1840, Electronics-85, DVK-3, BK-0010, Agat, Mikrosha begins in the USSR. The computer is undergoing rapid development in our country, and this process continues until the collapse of the Soviet Union. By the early nineties, many dozens of models were produced.
Soviet computers were of various classes and architectures, including IBM-compatible ones, and without analogues among any Soviet or foreign personal computers. For example, Corvette is a completely unique computer, as well as Lviv PK-01, Vector-06C and some others. Since then, for a short time in the history of domestic computer engineering, many important events have occurred, which are better discussed in order.
Kiev
Let's look into the past. The year 1948, the town of Feofania, near the capital of the Ukrainian SSR, is a secret laboratory where Sergey Aleksandrovich Lebedev, director of the Institute of Electrical Engineering and the head of this laboratory of the Institute of Computing Engineering and Precision Mechanics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, leads. It is there that a small electronic computer is currently being created (MESM). It was Lebedev who put forward, substantiated, and implemented, regardless of Neumann, the basic principles of the operation of a computer with a program stored in memory.
The first machine he created had memory, arithmetic devices, as well as input, output, and control devices. She knew how to code and store programs in memory, like numbers. She used the binary system to encode commands and numbers, and automatically performed the calculations. It was attended by arithmetic and logic programs. She had a hierarchical construction of memory. It was easy to use numerical methods on it to implement calculations. The project, installation and debugging were done in two years by a team of seventeen people - five technicians and twelve researchers. Samples were taken in November 1950, and regular operation began in 1951. That is how Soviet computers began.
More Kiev
1965 - the year of the creation of the machine for engineering calculations of the MIR computer, the developers of which were scientists from the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics - Glushkov, Blagoveshchensky, Losev, Letinsky, Pogrebinsky, Molchanov, Rabinovich, Stogniy. Then, for this machine, a programming language - ALMIR-65 - was implemented at the microcommand level. The computer was able to perform about a thousand operations per second, enter and output data using an electric typewriter, store RAM on ferrite cores, and external memory on punched tapes.
In 1969, the personal computer MIR-2, which was created there in Kiev, began to be produced. This turned out to be an improved model, it acted more than ten times faster than the previous ones. Both permanent and random access memory were increased. Now, in addition to the punched tape and typewriter, a vector graphic display with a light pen and magnetic cards were connected to the computer. The programming language has become an analyst - one might say, the "grandson" of ALMIRA-65.
Microprocessors
In 1974, the first Soviet microprocessors were released - sectional models with microprogram control and four- or eight-bit section capacity. For example, the K532 series was characterized by low power consumption, a wide range of supply voltages, and a speed of up to two hundred and fifty thousand operations per second.
And the K536 series was notable for its low-cost technology, as well as not too high power consumption, but it was not so fast either. On the basis of the K532 kit, sixteen-bit micro-computers ("Electronics NTs") were immediately released, and the K536 became the basis for serial production of the first Soviet universal micro-computers "Electronics C5", also sixteen-bit.
Section Officer
It was the first Soviet computer! Sectional microprocessors were considered promising, since they allowed them to create computers of any capacity from eight to thirty-two. At the same time, any command system was implemented through firmware control.
But later, by the end of the eighties, microelectronics rapidly developed its capabilities, and the Soviet computer industry reoriented itself to analogs of foreign computers. Universal sectional processors were superseded by single-chip models. However, sectionalists have been used for a long time, especially in the military industry.
Soviet computers
In 1977, the eight-bit single-chip microprocessor K580BM80A was released, which was a complete analogue of the very well-known Intel 8080 model. Such a processor was not supposed to be used for universal computers, it was used in control micro-computers, microcontrollers, peripherals and measuring equipment - there are many places of application. However, it was cheap and simple, and therefore not one Soviet reader of Radio magazine designed a home computer on its basis.
His productivity was high, the command system was universal, therefore this microprocessor became one of the most common in the USSR. In addition to a personal computer, many other microprocessor devices were suitable for him, therefore, in the second half of the eighties of the last century, this processor was used in almost hundreds of models of Soviet machines - this is a home computer, a training one, and not one professional model.
"Electronics-60"
In 1978, the sixteen-digit micro-computer high-speed Electronics-60 was born. According to the command system, Electronics-60 was compatible with DEC PDP-11 / LSI-11 - an American computer. Productivity - up to a million operations per second. Such machines were used in production, controlled by technological processes, installed in CNC machines, and, most importantly, they worked for a long time and honestly in science and the military industry.
In 1983, the magazine with a million circulation "Radio" published the circuit of an amateur computer "Micro-80" with a processor K580IK80A, which served as the first step to the mass enthusiasm of radio amateurs with microprocessor and computer technology. At that time, Soviet personal computers were able to work with any tape recorder for storing data and programs and with any TV that served as a monitor.
Interesting fact
It was with the help of "Electronics-60" in 1984 that Alexei Pazhitnov wrote everyone’s favorite game, "Tetris." Engaged in the computational center of the USSR Academy of Sciences, speech recognition and other problems of artificial intelligence, he often used puzzles in his work to break through this or that idea.
Later, this game was rewritten for the IBM PC in the programming language Turbo Pascal, and it was made by sixteen-year-old Soviet schoolchild - Vadim Gerasimov, now living in Australia and working for Google.
The first cabinet of computer science
In the eighties, a batch of simple, that is, affordable universal personal computers for home and school use was developed and released. It was, of course, the sixteen-bit "Electronics BK-0010", where the abbreviation BK was a household computer. At that time, there were no sixteen-bit processors in the world of personal computers.
What is so special about her? Specialized integrated circuits with a large degree of integration are gate arrays that served as controllers for the display, keyboard, memory, and much more. The interpreter of the Fokal language was used. Monochrome graphics with high resolution or four-color were supported. It was such machines that equipped the first computer science cabinet, and their descendants until 1993 served as the main household and educational computers in the Soviet Union.
Akademgorodok
Novosibirsk schoolchildren were involved in the work of the computing center of the Siberian branch of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and with their direct participation a program system for schools appeared, which was called “Schoolgirl” for the personal computer “Agat”. She worked with the Rapira and Robik programming languages, included the epee graphic system and a wide variety of training packages.
"Agate" - the brainchild of 1984, is considered the first serial personal computer compatible with Apple II + and was already a serious PC with RAM one hundred twenty eight kilobytes, with floppy drives and a color monitor that displays sixteen colors. It was in 1984 that a plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopted a resolution, after which the computerization of school education began.
Tipping year
In 1985, the whole country felt either breakdown or restructuring, and this could not but affect the computer sphere. Many iconic models of Soviet computers were developed then. Quite successfully progressive sixteen-bit "Electronics", new DVK models developed, Soviet computers compatible with IBM appeared. The three-processor "Istra-4816" - up to four megabytes of RAM, as well as a pocket-sized sixteen-bit microcalculator "Electronics MK-85" are especially characteristic for this time.
But the work on the PC did not stop, for which the basis was the simplest eight-bit processors. So there were models "Specialist", "Ocean-240", "Irish". Computers were eight-bit. Does this mean they are bad? No. Among the eight-bit models were just wonderful, despite the fact that the processor is slightly outdated. For example, Corvette - the computer is simply excellent.
Mikrosha and others
The computer from the most colorful and vociferous among Soviet home personal computers is the eight-bit Vector-06C. Again, the 1986 Radio magazine published several circuits of the Radio 86RK microcomputer, and this model was so simple that it instantly gained immense popularity. Analogues and options appeared, among which there were several that were awarded industrial production. For example, Mikrosha is a computer with an affectionate name. Radio-86RK combined well with the Micro-80, from where it appeared.
One of the main study PCs is Corvette. The computer was very complex and multifunctional, despite all its eight bits. The RAM is small - only 257 Kb, but for those times it was a gorgeous indicator. In addition, color graphics with a rather high resolution - 512x256 pixels, hardware acceleration, text video controller, sound generator - an analogue of IBM PC, local area network, mouse, joysticks, printer, drives - all this and much more was originally provided. The amateur “Orion-128”, also an eight-bit one, created by the Moscow amateur radio operator Vyacheslav Safronov and his friends, was just as good. In 1990, their development was published by the journal Radio.
Last surge
The mid-eighties was marked by an extraordinary upsurge in the domestic computer industry, there was a huge number of great original ideas. It seemed like a breakthrough! But it was not there. The Gorbachev rapprochement between the USSR and the world economy did not lead the country to prosperity. Paradox - the opposite happened. The domestic computer and electronic industry has lost all its progressive achievements.
There was a massive transition to the release of long-obsolete and simplest models - Spectrum-compatible. However, the simplest models compatible with IBM were also produced. But purely Soviet developments ceased altogether by 1992. All manufacturers have switched to a single world standard - the release of exclusively compatible with IBM personal computers.
findings
In recent decades, it has been customary to speak negatively about domestic computer technology. Only about the vices of socialism and its planned economy, in which we were “forever behind”, and about the fact that in the West, technologies were always better, and the Russians were crooked and computers could not do.
But all, literally all of the above brands of Soviet computers were not at all the best developments. They were just common. In fact, electronics in the USSR developed quite on a world level and was in many ways ahead of the same industry in the West, as our military and space programs can attest.