We've got a Soviet MODEM!
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ม.ค. 2023
- We got one of the rarest pieces of USSR computer hardware - a 600/19200 BI-01 modem. It could be used to build networks with different Soviet computers, such as ES-1841 we had a few episodes about.
This device is itself pretty interesting. Especially given that what we found inside was a bit surprising :)
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What you will find in this episode:
00:00: Introduction
01:09: A word about ES mainframes
02:12: Posters as you requested
03:15: A first look
03:44: Modifications and specs
04:37: My lonely red phone
05:21: Connectors and controls
07:34: Let's look inside
07:54: Oh my god...
08:40: A closer look at the logic board
09:30: Looks like a military stuff
10:00: A crate
10:21: A restoration will be extreme
11:03: Powering on and trying to test it
13:20: Future plans and outro - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Re: red phones - in the US, the red phone was supposedly a direct line of communication from the president's desk to the premier of the USSR, to ensure the possibility of dialog no matter how tense relations got. Don't know if that was reality, but that was the pop culture understanding.
Yes, red phones were used for a direct communication lines, here as well. That thing you talk about did exist, but it was not a phone at all in fact, more like a teletype.
Yeah the whole red phone hotline thing was a Hollywood deal. They supposedly used text to prevent confusion in a high stress situation. I guess they were more literate than most are today on the Internet. :)
@@camelid i remember i got a book, called "A Billion Dollar Spy" about Adolph Tolkachev, a russian engineer who have been working in a secret "postbox" institute and had enough of Soviets; he passed thousands of secret documents to CIA. And parallel to his story there was explanation of cold war kitchen in the white house and kremlin. There was described this system, it involved translators and a chain of equipment that provided communication. This was one of a few times when I read 800 pages in one evening.
Teletype first, then fax machine, and since 2008 a direct computer network
Thank you for such details!
If V.24 then:
104 = RD/Receiving data
106 = SD/Sending data
107 = DSR/Data set ready
109 = CD/Carrier detect
Each represent a pin in the connector.
Superb, thank you!
almost unix way of error messaging. Do not know what it mean? read manual.
I worked for Burroughs Corp in the very early '80s, in data comm, and we had a 9600 modem, which was the fastest thing around at the time, so that 19.2 device is pretty impressive for the era!
Wow, thank you for the insight! Hope to try it in action soon.
he mentions this modem was intended for dedicated lines. A dedicated line can have more bandwidth than an ordinary switched telephone line: phone lines are limited by the multiplexers they use for long-distance phone calls.
@@zounds010 exactly. For general-purpose lines a 1200KN modem had to be used - it looked a similar way, appears shortly in the Ep.2 of the series.
100% agree and I've actually seen that modem variant in use in the Eastern block back in the late '90s in my early career
That's really fast. The modem on the Burroughs that I used (B6600/6700) around '75 was 110 baud. :) But we also had Plato....
Hi! Tose switches you call P2K were also used in Polish radios, TVs and science equipment. We call them 'isostat'. They are real pain in the ass. Apart from tendency to break, even small amount of dust or grime can cause the loss of electrical connection. However, the tendency to fail can be useful. You can buy solid equipment for the price of a damaged one. Of course, if you have the patience to repair these switches :). Anyways, thanks for interesting video and stay safe out there!
Haha that is an interesting story! Thank you!
ISOSTAT was a French licence. I wonder what did the Soviets use, or whether was it mechanically compatible.
@@k4be. Well, considering many Soviet stuff was "inspired" by western designs, those switches may be a direct copy of the isostats. Or at least they look very similar.
I have a unitra turntable from 1976 with these switches and they work absolutely great :) 47 years already
@@eugenegrebionkin So you are lucky I think. But to be fair, much depends on the conditions of use. I have a Unitra MOT 701 radio that was lying in the basement for many years and all the switches fell apart due to corrosion. On the other hand, many isostats fail due to mechanical wear of the contact surfaces resulting from frequent switching. Therefore, power switches are most often damaged. I once had an oscilloscope (from KABiD Radiotechnika) where the contact was so worn that it broke into two separate parts. Sometimes they also like to get stuck in one position due to the locking mechanism being very sensitive to dust.
Just 30 seconds in, and I'm compelled to comment - "this tiny modem"... holds up modem very roughly the size of an IBM 5150 PC. Literally busted out laughing. You're awesome. And hilarious. Now, back to watching.
There's so much obsolete proprietary stuff in western retro computing... you have that, multiplied by 'former regime standards' - a big challenge.
You did not see our cat's basket. It is inside the mainframe rack...)
@@jasonhaman4670 that makes it more interesting..)
Oh, I very much want to see that now.
re: more interesting - oh definitely.
I love electronic markets like that, you always find some interesting gems there.
Used to be cooler in mid-2000s, but now is also amazing.
Looking forward to a Soviet Lan party between your devices
We are seriously thinking about this. Technically it is possible.
@@ChernobylFamily wow incredible
@@dukenukem8381 as a very basic variant: they have com ports. So it is possible to have a null-modem connection even with a relatively modern machine.
Soviet LAN party... wow... that's a concept ripe for socio-political commentary, and comedy. "In soviet russia", squared.
@@jasonhaman4670 If we take curiously in soviet era-technology that does not mean we like soviet genocidal maniacs or russia. So take your tired american Yakov smirnoff jokes somewhere else.
Love your videos! The workmanship of this modem looks absolutely first class!
In the 1980s I worked for Tymnet, a packet-switched data network, one of the first in the US. The network primarily provided low-speed (300bps to 1200bps) asynchronous dialup access via 32-bit nodal computers (clone of an Interdata 832) front ended by racks of low speed modems, located in closets (for real) around the U.S.
These nodes were inter-connected with high speed (whoo hoo!) trunks via 9.6 kbps synchronous modems, across which user packets were multiplexed via a proprietary protocol. Host computers were typically directly connected either via a synchronous line (9.6kb again) or a custom channel adapter developed for IBM mainframes.
Keep up the great work!
Thank you for sharing!
This is niche subject, but indeed very interesting one, thanks for sharing
And I am truly glad to see that life goes on.
Wish you the very best and hope to see more of your projects.
Never liked to be in the mainstream :) Thank you! There will be much more,, be sure :)
Mainstream is boring. You're where the interesting stuff's at.
WOW. a modem actually built for surviving a nuclear war.
You should wait for our next episodes, there will be more 'brutal' stuff...)
Awesome video, as always. Looking at that "tiny" modem, I cannot help but think just how far we've come when it comes to computer technology. Stay safe, and keep those awesome videos coming!
PS: I'm working on the Patreon thing.
Thank you! This weekend get ready for a new one!
@@ChernobylFamily
Excellent! Am curious to see what you guys have cooked up for us this time.
The Kiev market looks amazing! Have you got any more footage of your visit?
Footage no, but made some pictures, there was a post on Patreon a couple of months ago.
8:21 I thought for a moment you would show a western modem from the era mounted inside the box.
I missed such an opportunity!
In 1985, I worked for Hayes Smartmodem charged to develop PCB layout.
At that time it was 300 to 1200bits/s (V21 & V22), so this Russian modem with his 19200 was clearly advanced military equipment.
Anyway, this PC was designed very well without VLSI IC inside but only standard logic gate.
The fun it is not military, just enterprise level. Have serious doubts this could be purchased by a private person...
Don't forget spectrum use. I imagine there are plenty of people viewing this clip and thinking wow, 19200 at that time was miraculous! Odds on they are thinking in the frame of the modern PSTN's typical 300Hz to 3kHz band that requires pretty advanced modulation to get that sort of speed. While it was true that the typical electro-mech PSTN at that time would carry DC to 15kHz it could only typically do that on local circuits and it was hideously non-linear response over approx 3kHz. Once the PSTN went digital the bandwidth was severely curtailed. This device seems to have been intended for use over private non-switched pairs. Sure voice pairs are still going to be terribly lossy at higher frequencies but avoiding the general PSTN would massively improve the rate at which basic modulations could get data through. Still, always interesting to see stuff from the defunct Soviet Union from those days.
@@retrozmachine1189 Yeah, PSTN network was limited bandwidth but it was also possible to rent a leased line, like European TRANSPAC (X.25 protocol) since 1978.
This X.25 protocol were used in France as early as 1980 for Internet-like network called MINITEL.
It was 15 years before standard WWW Internet as we know him now.
ISDN network, much faster existed too.
I've just found your channel, and I'm loving the videos on Soviet computing equipment. I've read a little about the computers of the Soviet block, but unsurprisingly, there isn't much information available in English. I would like to share some English terminology with you, not to be negative or mean, but to be helpful: The "crate" that the card slides into is called a "card cage", and rather than "varnish", I think the card was dipped in "epoxy resin" (most people call it just "epoxy" for short).
Thank you for these tips!
The 100 series numbers on the front panel are CCIT V24 standards defining ground, RX date TX data etc. Amusing that the USSR directly copied them.
Yes, long time figured that out, thanks...)
12:08 Super cool to see your version of Akihabara. :)
Karacayevy Dachi market is a legendary place...)
If loop mode is like loopback mode on western modems, that will send the same data back to the computer that it receives from the computer. It's used to test your serial port settings to make sure you're sending and receiving the correct data.
It's interesting that you got an alternating signal in loop mode, that suggests it could have a different function. Or perhaps it sends an alternating signal when it's not receiving a valid signal from the computer? Usually on western modems an RS-232 signal will be around -13V when idle, and any signal from -3V to 3V is considered invalid, so if this worked like a western modem and it's receiving a signal around 0V (gnd), it could be transmitting the alternating signal to indicate the error.
I'm not sure what kind of signalling soviet computers used for serial communication, but presumably that alternating signal will go away once you wire it up correctly and it's receiving a valid signal from the computer.
The loop mode here connects output of modem's transmitter directly to inputs of its receiver using attenuator. So it is different, as it will test whether the receiver is functional. To test the transmitter you use these TOCH, 0 and so.
Apart for some specific case, Soviet computers used the same or nearly the same interfaces. Styk S2 is RS-232, we also had Centronics, which was called ISFF-M, there was ISFF, which was inverted Centronics, and many others...
In Soviet Union, modem dials you!
:)
Interesting to see the red phone. I am in the UK and my father was a senior civil servant here. I visited his office when I was 11 or 12, which would have been about 1982 or thereabouts. He had two telephones on his desk, both of standard GPO design as would be found in people's homes. There was a normal grey one and also a red one, and he told me to never touch the red one. I later learned. not from him but from sources on the web, that this was the nuclear warning phone, which was not to be used except for receiving calls about incoming attacks, or perhaps reporting a nearby explosion. The site has long since been sold by the government and is now a housing estate.
Thank you so much for sharing this story!
@@ChernobylFamily No problem, it was a very dangerous period in European history which I hope will not be revisited.
People are still zipping around in soviet era Ladas because they're simple and easy to repair. They didn't get everything wrong. Simple, easy to repair modem, fuse plug on the outside. Look at those massive heatsinks, and it has no fan. It's like an old Western or Japanese stereo receiver from the 70's, almost empty inside because the case needed to have room for convective cooling. lol
A controversial comparison. Many people who own Ladas and whom I know personally, just cannot afford anything better:) but you surely true about simple and effective design!
@@ChernobylFamily The same was true for K-cars in the west. Affordable and easily sourced parts, easy to fix yourself. Low wage families like mine a K-car was the only car we could afford. My brother still uses it to do farm chores.
If it wasn't for Lada's and K-cars, many families would have been far worse off.
This is in no way supportive of the USSR system. Just to say this was one of few good things to come out of that regime.
Thank you
The red wine phone, without entry dial, is for point to point communication i guess.
Exactly. There were such phones connecting certain objects in Pripyat with Chernobyl NPP. According to witnesses, on 26-27 April 1986 they suddenly stopped working. KGB just cut them.
Nice video again, I'm looking forward to see it working. And my suggestion: If You know someone with 3D printer You can make the new switch buttons.
Thank you! Surely will try to run it. There is no need for a 3D printing, P2K switches are available for sale for a few cents from old remains, need just to go for shopping.
@@ChernobylFamily These types of switches are quite well treated with liquids such as WD-40 or contact Cleaner.
Yes, unless they are broken to half;)
A lot of the computer (and electronics) magazines from the 70s and 80 are now online , scanned and OCRed, at World Radio History, plus the popular archive sites.
The number of companies that were busy making computers is amazing.
And that's cool. We are also scanning this kind of stuff and sometimes translate it.
Commissioner Gordon? What?! The Jokers Loose Again!
:))
nice artifacts . im learning a lot from u computer sience and technology . i rly wanted to explore the zone it was planned but as a foregiener i have to keep this idea in the resorts. Oh and the red phone in my company (still state owned) they never removed the phones :D
Well, as a foreigner you can use our help - as just by the accident I have a state license for guiding in the Zone and did it for a decade :) however, the war must be over first.
The card and the backplane connectors are a giveaway that the card was used in other larger equipment and then repurposed for this box.
This card has a standard form-factor of SM EVM mainframes, and the modem can be embedded as well. So you are right.
Red phone, obviously a direct link to the KGB for reporting dissidents.
well, you are surely right that it was for a direct link. Not always to KGB, but could be.
I see those switches in old radio and amps here in europe , you know, am/fm/ukw etc. press one , and the current selected pops out.
This is so true
12:28 hmmm, somewhere I have seen such connectors already))
In the ROOM OF WONDERS, my friend, in the ROOM OF WONDERS.
It is built like a TANK !!!!. the wiring, the coating on the board. Nice.
Gave the same feeling for me!
I would love to watch a video on that electronic market. That pic you showed had strong cyberpunk vibes :D
Yesterday, I have been there again to buy chips. So in one of the next episodes there will be a good look to it - stay tuned!
Ребят ,спасибо за видео! Интересно.
Будь ласка:)
Nice Modem. Thanks.
Happy that you liked!
At least things were made to last
Yes, except P2K switches :)
I actually have the documentation on all the versions of the modem we use them in my early career in intelligence and yes I was in the Soviet block that was my section back then and these things we even used them now mind you they weren't the fastest but they were mission critical robust
That's excellent, could you be so kind to share it with me?)
Yeah they're in Russian obviously and their photographs of the original documents I got to get to my other cloud storage account and I can send them they're not classified so yeah
I would guess the "HC" button on the front would have something to do with the "Hayes Comand" set. If this were a western design then it would be communicating with the computer via a standard serial port maybe that's a direction to look.
Thank you! This is very much possible!
Uploading a TH-cam video through one of these is gonna take some time...
Conformal coated, so the bits don't fall out if you put it upside-down?
The power supply is also way overkill.
19.2k is pretty fast, most the old huge 80s modems only go up to 1.2k.
Well, true. I believe, this look comes from the fact it is a standard form-factor of Soviet SM EVM (PDP-11 line) peripherals. I guess the power supply is also a part of this story and is not device-specific.
I have severe doubts it is possible to connect to internet from ES, but if this can work with a modern computer, I see an interesting experiment coming. Need to figure that out.
@@ChernobylFamily I have an AOL installer on two 720k Floppy Disks, that might help :-D
haha that's true. It looks like dial-up in Ukraine is down for years (did not use it since 2003, and then we had a period kinda 5-6 years ago when it was still available and for free), but i just discovered there is one ISP that provides dial-up for nostalgic purposes (seriously, this is how it is advertised).
Oh wow, those are hard-core retro computing fans.
уважаемый автор, а слышал ли ты про советский вокодер АТ3001 упаковывающий голос в цифровой поток 1200 бит/с ? вот это я считаю вещь обогнавшая время! видел ее вживую в составе станции засекреченной связи в 1989 разработана кажется в 1985
Coool! No, but thank you, will check on that. I've seen a soviet voice scrambler once, though.
Nun, da gab es viele Typen. Die "лиане" hatte noch Röhren und war so gross wie ein Besenschrank. Die Nachfolger waren transistorisiert.
I can't guess what the red phone is for (unless it's for sending out for pizza in time of emergency) but it looks terrifically cool! Thanks for this Alex, most enjoyable and I'm hoping Mrs. Alex is very well.
The red phone with no dial normally intended for a direct dedicated line of the highest importance. Back in 1986 and before such phones connected some facilities of Pripyat and the head office of the power plant. Too bad that on April 26, 1986 KGB disabled even these phone lines to enforce an ingormation blockade around the disaster site.
Yes, she is good, thank you :)
The general style of construction is not surprising. It was one of 4 available housings that can be used for almost anything. Standardisation made it very cheap and available in large quantities. Even though the parts themselves are high quality.
Thank you for these details!
@Chernobyl Family greetings from Germany. I'm your average soviet electronics enthusiast, so if you have any further questions for other videos, don't hesitate to ask me for contact details.
Especially the older technologies should be preserved and looked at. It's the foundation of our modern world.
Do like the poster, on my bedroom wall I have a small ship Soviet ensign likely stolen when the collapse happened and it now adorns my wall. I have some other funky posters from Soviet times around the flat and have the largest Soviet watch collection here in the UK, just added a kinda Soviet one to the collection today a CCCP Time which has the awesome Slava 2427 automatic movement inside, "Golden Soviet Submarine 1970" in a slate grey dial, that is going on one of my Slava tank T bar displays.
Cool! Thank you!
When i saw that mil spec was my first thought.
When it has to work thats what it takes.
Good point!
Hello! Interesting video! When I saw a big box - I hope that there is a "channel level" like in dial-up home modems.I mean establishing connection with an another modem, correction errors. But I didn`t see any CPU or MCU inside - so, it means that there isn`t any channel level.
This modem looks to be "dumb" one. There is another modification in the same casing, 1200KN seems to me, that one has inside more electronics.
I’m guessing the red phone was to call the sysops of the data centre? I remember that used to be a much more hands on job in the past
Also with the empty case, Maybe the modems could have multiple boards/connections, for use with multiple machines? Just a guess
Close to truth! Red phones like this were normally used as a dedicated voice link of high importance - below in other comments I gave some iser cases. As for case, right. This is a standard casi g of SM EVM peripherals, so other modems, such a 1200KN had more boards. This one is "dumb" software-controlled device, so it needs only one.
@@ChernobylFamily ah cool! Yeah so I wasn’t too far off then.
I meant more along the lines of having multiple “modems” housed within one chassis, so that they didn’t have to power several separately, each potentially with their own ports, but maybe sharing a backplane or common components to minimise cost.
Nice PCB. discrete devices, of an era when a team designed PCBs. and designs lasted a few years.
1973 $250 for the 8080 6800 etc, 1975 the $25 6502 1MHz CPU, 1980 the $5 4MHz CPU , today the 10c 38MHz RISC-V MCU. plust all the bigger faster MCU CPUs.
Yeah
And I thought 23-pin d-type sockets were uncommon. Thats the first time I have seen a 23-pin hd socket!
In that heap we have even a larger one..)
I'm a big fan of you guys...
Greetings from Sri Lanka.
Thank you...)
those units exist within 'the west' too. ericsson t65 units (also the wall mount version thereof) with no dial and just a green and red light or a field telephone dynamo on them. for use where the dialing is done somewhere else, there is an operator (yep them old manual telephone exchanges with the plugs still got installed brand new up until the 1990s ;) or just for closed circuits or to connect them to actual field telephones. obviously. also it's not like that stuff is only available in gray (or for ze germans in boring ral green ;) and then there are networks that use different signalling alltogether. such as the railroad telephone networks with all kinds of weird blips and blops that are clearly neither dtmf nor pulse nor voltage dialing. whereas the military stuff still uses a normal siemens city exchange :P nowadays that's mostly ss7... but if you nuke that it no longer works so the other stuff is always still there too. brand new. as if it's 1850. :P (lets just say that if you keep it all operational there is never a shortage of telephone connections ;)... intercom (combined with atc radio for some reason for the helipads), pstn in both mechaanical drum central exchange variety as hand switched, isdn/ss7 :P and voip. lol.
Thank you for the story!
I doubt the phone companies todsy have kept the old mechanical phone systems, batterys or even the newer pre switched stuff, it's all ISP packets, power goes out ISPs vanish phones vsystem vanishes.
Govt uses secure radio for their entitled selfs, they don't care about civilians anymore.. They care about taxes pronouns gender and control.
@@joefish6091 pretty sure it all just keeps working, at least for a while, if the power goes out. even if the neighborhood switchbox nowadays indeed is a dslam and nrp in a single box :P how you power your cpe is up to you. as for other services to non normie clients... that copper is still copper :P
radio is the last fallback. as obviously it can be jammed and intercepted. and obviously encryption of any type that is not one time pad, is only a temporary working workaround. some stuff you simply don't want to get decrypted even if it takes them 100 years so then you just make sure they can't intercept it in the first place. by not broadcasting it over radio for everyone to hear :P
That phone is gorgeous
We have in our shed an autonomous phone station, such a tabletop thing. Will need to try together.
This thing has the feel of "we're making these things for the military anyway, so why re invent the wheel" kind of product. The only part it seems like they skimped on was the control buttons, and that could just as easily be 30 plus year old plastics decaying. Was that DB-9 connector (C1) used to connect to the phone line a standard thing in the USSR for civilian telephone systems or would the modem have needed an adaptor cable to hook up to the network?
Well, this in particular is not really a military thing, it is just a standard case of civilian SM EVM mainframe peripherals, and all that was metal. However, you have a point, because the finishing is a bit unusual. A very possible scenario is that a task on production for a specific batch or for a line of equipment was given to military-purpose workshop of some electronics factory (as usually there was a military and civilian production under the same roof). And they just made it with their practices - all this varnish, wires grouped together with a thick oiled thread with little knots on equal steps, and so on.
No, DB-9-like (RP-15 here) was a solely computer thing. Normally it would be a pretty huge 4-pin connector, typical for the socialistic bloc. I believe a simple adaptor would be needed for this modem. 1200KN and 19200 NU have the same RP-15.
@@ChernobylFamily I wonder if the modem board was used as a component in some military product, and someone decided to make a stand-alone civilian version? Maybe the military purpose was no longer there, and they had a big pile of redundant boards...
@@ickipoo i guess no, the reason is the abscence of military chips on it. They would be technically the same, but differently marked and likely would have a different (e.g. metal-ceramic) casing.
However, your idea could work a bit different. At the same time it was an epoch of conversion of military factories (modem is from 1990) to civilian production. So maybe some factory was repurposed. But the practices remained.
The connectors on the front were a typical end of a Soviet era phone line or it has to be adapted? Back in the day in the US the phone lines were connected without a detachable plug.
no, these connectors on modem belong to RP-15 computer connectors family, so supposedly an adaptor had to be used. Because a normal wall socket for a land line would be a large 4-pin.
uhhh what a giant Size....Same size as the 2400 kb/s modems in the ICBM Launch Control Centers from the 60's
great job at making the modem bigger than the computer itself :P oh wait. :P
))))))))))
The red phone is to call the red district and order a comrade lady worker of the night?
Bhah
Remind's me of my first modem, it was made by GE, (DM200?) for use on a phone line. It was originally designed for 200 bps, but later modified for 300 baud. It had a rack case, an early version of a 19 inch, but with the mounting ears half way down the side, rather than on the front like a normal 19" rack. It had several vertical boards, transmit, receive, filters, control, power supply etc. This rack was then mounted inside a desktop enclosure kind of the size of an IBM PC AT (the original IBM vers) but not so deep. In use these usually ended up on the floor next to, or behind one's desk, as there was a much much smaller control box that sited on your desk with the telephone.
In use, you'd dial a number on the phone (originally a time share mainframe etc) then when you heard the appropriate tones come back, you'd flick a switch on the control box, and the modem would take control of the line (rendering the phone dead) You then turned to your terminal and started typing etc.
Wow! Thank you for such a story. The technical description I mentioned in the video says that there existed an embedded variant, which was also 19" rackmount for SM racks, and in this case it'd use the shared power supply.
You are cool
Nice content!!!
Thank you! More to come!
The modem card itself reminds me a bit of and old Octocom card. But they might differ.
Do not know much about them, unfortunately, but thank you for sharing!
Заземление - protective earth
Thanks!
Joke: Chernobyl Computers "lights up and works" even when it is turned off..
))))) you cant imagine how many times we heard jokes about light in Chernobyl. Probably, it is a local profession-related thing :))
the slowest thing I ever used was a 14.4 baud and ICQ didn't work well on that slow thing.
ICQ... so much memories..)
Isn't it interesting how 'Chernobyl' became a word for a certain kind of time capsule?
From my first-hand experience, I'd say things are more interesting out there. A dynamic life developing on a scenery of The Eternal Static 1986, which you can't alter, change or modify. You just deal it like with the landscape, making leaps between the epochs.
modular design for dedicated modem is strange. it it possible to insert it in a computer with q-bus?
Not really possible. The reason of this modularity likely comes from the case which is standard for many devices; so probably they wanted to fit into a particular form factor.
@@ChernobylFamily it is really strange way of thinking. soviet egineers can steal industrial design, but don't understand how to use it.
I'd dig deeper. They understood well much; the question grounds in limitations imposed by the planned economy - you have what you have and build from that.
USSR had the best computers during that era!
A very questionable statemenent; moreover the same was an opinion of the actual developers from the soviet industry. Have read numerous publications on this, e.g. in the soviet "Microprocessor means and systems" magazine, claiming "ok, good, but quality is far from good, and the performance is outdated".
@@ChernobylFamily They had excellent It systems! Better than IBM stuff of that era. Not sure about the supercomputers like Cray compared to the soviet ones.
@@ChernobylFamily Soviets even develeoped a Trinary instead of a Binary system could you please investigate more about it?
@@Schlipperschlopper you mean Setun' system? Yes, there was such thing... well, it is very old stuff, therr are books written about it, though I have doubts I will discover anything new.
@@Schlipperschlopper my friend, I am really not sure if you are actually from here, or you are foreigner. If the second, please understand: I do not try to change you vision, but objectively I had a chance to deal direcly with the things you are talking about, and it is not that good. Unfortunately. Yes, there were thibgs like Glushkov's MIR, or Setun', or BESM-6, even Elektronika SS BIS (this one which probably what you mean by Cray-comparable machines). It is true. There were such gems as KRONOS wuth its gorgeous Excelsior OS. True. But that all was a drop into the ocean, suffocated by the management practices and that time approach. Ministry of electronic industry made a stake on ES and SM mainframe, which were just clones of IBM/360 and PDP-11. That was the base, and exceptions, unfortunately, just underscore the truth. Jeez, in my childhood I still have seen that stuff in every institute my parents brough me to so a boy can see tech. Aha, I remember with which relief all these enterprises were getting rid of that. Because it was laggy as a nightmare.
Shine varnish =conformal coating at a guess
Yeah, but try to find that on a civilian soviet board...)
in 'the west' ofcourse you simply either kick a normal modem into 'leased line/bare copper' mode with AT &L1 and then save that configuration to nvram so they just work back to back, no pabx battery power needed or order a few westermo line extenders (which are technically not even modems. just glorified opamps cranking the power of the signal up so it can pass a few dozens of kilometers of copper) closed circuit or not... 19k2 wasn't bad for the days when this thing clearly was first made :P not even in the 'west' :P
Thanks! Used modems in the beginning of 2000s, as got a DSL very soon, so that's interesting!
check if it makes actual modem noises on the line (and isn't an 'increased power' based line extender ;) and just hook it back to back with a us-robotics courier with v-everything and see if they nicely play along. (probably. if it actually is a modem ;).... if they stuck to ccitt baud rates and ccitt line descriptor numbers they probably also stuck to everything else the ccitt mandated :P or just dialup some isp. portmaster 4's and later also handle quite the range of weird old shit. lol. (that is after all what you pay them for. to make equipent that doesn't nag if your customer bought his modem from bell in the 1970s or from stalin or from best buy in the early 2000s :P if it does make actual modem noises the 'closed circuit only' stuff is just some 'approval' thing from 'back then'. think it'll be fine. it has all the line fork transformers and analog amplifier stuff right there at the end of it. looks like an actual modem. this thing is probably not gonna take out half the telephones in moscow if you do just run it over a public line :P
Man, your comment is like a music, i totally enjoyed reading it. Tell me, where to find a dial-up in Ukraine?)) The last shut down a decade ago...)
I dont get the complaining. The russian / USSR stuff is quite sophisticated to see and to watch. I think it is a beauty of electronics but in a different way then what we are used to. Serves the same purpose > connecting you with up to 19.2k bits a second to the former internet we know as of today.
Yeah, it is very sophisticated until you have years of using it spending a substantial amount of that time for repairs. There are exceptions, but when it comes to computers, having something with no issues raising regularly is a miracle.
They made a nice clone, but most of the time they did cut corners where they could.
Not sure if this very device is actually a clone, but conceptually you are right
Regular modem can do 56.000 bps or more I imagined that applying radioactive isotopes to chips and transistors can make them run 100 times faster.
But only once.
@@ChernobylFamily ohh. I see system clock would send signal so powerfull all data ( including hardware storage) will be send in one instant around the world... Jokes asides. My sympathy to all affected by this tragedy. Cheers Guys !
@@marcsmithsonian9773 to be honest, there is a similar joke inside the Chernobyl Zone: "Chernobyl NPP achieved a 5-year production plan in 15 milliseconds". We all have a twisted dark sense of humor here (it is a normal thing when you deal with a constant danger), just what makes us tired are specifically other's jokes about glowing in the dark (they are simply not any kind of new). Cheers!
Parallel to serial Serial to Parallel
What would be cool is to hook it up to an rs-232 USB and hook it up between two Linux machines. Linux was born the year the USSR died.
I suggest a bit different. What about to try to install ELKS linux core, which can work on 8086 and try this in action?
@@ChernobylFamily OMG Yes! You know I've been using Linux since 1992 so I have it drilled in my head that you need at least a '386 at the minimum. I have to admit, Linux ran parallel with communist principles I'd have loved to have seen what the USSR would have done with it. On the one side, the 'from every individual according to their capabilities and to every individual according to their need' would appeal to a ideological communist, but empowering individuals with such capabilities is antithetical to a 'applied Soviet'. Too bad Linux never got to challenge the USSR. It would have been an interesting gift from Finland.
@@AndrewTubbiolo well, they had derivatives of UNIX...)
Fascinating... that timing never occurred to me.
I hadn't heard of ELKS... my go-to for UNIX on 286 or earlier would be minix.
Wasn't the phone dedicated to call the secret police?
No, that very application would not be that directly marked. These phones were for direct lines, e.g. Pripyat-Chernobyl NPP
mmmm. 80's Soviet modem.
Stay safe out there guys. Your home has had a really bad year, but. Contrary to the wishes of some parties. You are still there.
Thank you for continuing on.
Gonna buy a pipyat poster when funds free up, because city planning and layouts interest me.
As for the red phone. Typically I associate those with 'things have gone very bad.' Considering the location I suspect the red phone had gotten used on that day.
Thank you my friend. As for the red phone, yes, right. In Pripyat there were a few red phones like this. They were all connected to the power plant head office. By memories of our friends who witnessed that, suddenly, on that day, none of them worked anymore.
@@ChernobylFamily There are two schools of thought to me on that.
1. The power plant head office were ordered to cut the lines.
2. The lines themselves were an early casualty of the meltdown so when it was something that was needed, it didn't work.
To me, as someone who lives nowhere near the place, or culture, both feel plausible.
You've been prety awesome.
@@singletona082 sounds logical, but it was well, different. That was done by KGB as a part of a communication blockade they quickly established in the region; special communication was exclusively their realm. In reality not only these phones were down, literall all phones were. The lines damaged were only some innternal within Unit IV, while the most of them come to ABK-1 and ABK-2 administrative complexes which are 700 and 300 m afar respectively - as the NPP is very huge and long. So, that was a deliberate shutdown, not a damage.
Even more, during the active stage of elimination of the consequences and kind of up to 1990 to make a phone call in the Zone was pretty a quest with calling a set of internal routing points using their callsigns... it was very paranoid and cryptic while soviets were in power.
I love the piss yellow board speaks to the bleakness of the Soviet union.
I like the existential vibe of your comment. Immediately in my imagination raise the endless lines of greyish apartment blocks, useless job in some factory, and a slow voice from a radio: "A message from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Presidium of the Supreme Soviet..." ahahhh jeez no.
@@tripplefives1402 The west is also bleak.
How Does it perform when compared with western equipement from same era
Yet not tested in action, but below in one comment an opinion was given that 19200 bit/sec is a pretty good result for that time.
Yeah, my first PC in 1994, an IBM PS/1 486 DX50, came with a 1200 baud modem. It was seriously outdated when new, but a year or so later I upgraded to a 14.4kbit modem. 28.8 was out at the time, but too expensive for me. So this was impressively fast in the 80s.
@@ChernobylFamily so Soviet weren't that far behind in electronics Industry i constantly Hear they were kinda 10 years behind the west is that true ??
@@ktm8848 depends on what to look to. Here in Ukraine and also in Belarus was a powerful microelectronic industry. There were many interesting projects, BUT at the same time there was a political decision to clone things as easier way. So if we look on mainstream technologies, such as x86 chips - then yes, we were behind for a few years.
@@ChernobylFamily and what about proper soviet design and what about their etching processes were they on par or behind west ?? Thank you for your answers
I'm guessing there's no telephone dial, operator assisted?
Almost that. These phones normally were used for a direct dedicated communication lines. In Pripyat, for instance, they connected certain facilities staright to the Chernobyl NPP head.
@@ChernobylFamily I made the comment before I got that far. Dry loop circuit. So it was essentially a dedicated data link.
Comments on-the-go are warmly welcome! Yes, that's a dedicated link.
TINY modem ....
:D
Будешь ремонтировать то все электролитические конденсаторы сразу под замену!
Вже :)
Aaand that is part of the reason the USSR lost the cold war - too good quality stuff in some sectors.
Great Video.
"Wrong voltage, wrong country" (c)
In Soviet Russia, the modem dials uou
Unfortunately, you are not the first with this ;)
3D print the button
It is not about buttons, but completely destroyed mechanism, unfortunately.
@@ChernobylFamily ohh bad sorry
“Socialistic version of the COM port” 😂
Eastern europeans, must say, got that instantly :)
i have a line and a modem. Let me know if you want to test, and i will put a BBS up for you to dial in to.
Thank you for the offer! If we'll find a line I can use here (which is tricky - all is wireless), I'll come back to you (seriously).
So .... Were the technicians who worked on the ye-s computer system called .... YES MEN? HA!
You know, I already thought about this - what a marketing opportunity did they lose when exported this equipment. Call it YES in English. That would work amazing. No, they called that ELORG (ELectronic ORGanization equipment)
@@ChernobylFamily The alternative 'wrong' name would be the 'Da'. But "Ye - S" would have been awesome!
@@AndrewTubbiolo Exactly.
You coult test it under voip
Do you have a test protocol for this? :)
Ну а что понятно. Не парились взяли готовый корпус и пихнули туда логику.
...But how much fun is to have this thing on a table!
@@ChernobylFamily О Комрад! Это жемчужина коллекции. Многое из Советского прошлого вызывает эмоции. У меня такой же осциллограф есть, помимо DSO4102C, в некоторых ситуациях самое оно.
Tiny? Lol
Yes :)
oh look mum. normal 'western' ccitt v.24 signal line numbers. '104' (rxd) '106' (cts) 107 (dsr) 109 (dcd) etc. how very un-soviet of the soviets :P now we know what it does too. very convenient for western spies :P (where did they even source those leds from. didn't know they had a led factory there ;) tbh they could also have picked some other baudrates not derived of 'western tv standard crystals' 1.8432mhz to make it a bit harder to spy out and hack it :P (only reason baudrates are what they are is because the xtals were cheap and available in masses due to the tv industry ;) obviously something that is a power of 2 or 10 makes more sense. like euro-isdn nicely running at exactly 64000 bps per b-channel and 16000 bps per d-channel. none of those weird speeds there.
Thank you..! I somehow missed that it is standard for v24. About baudrates - don't forget, it is from 1990 and it is a civilian device. Militaries had own stuff and standards... and in 1990 if i am correct in the USSR appeared the very first ISP, joint venture with Sprint, so they used rebranded U.S. modems....)
В дитинстві бачив такі плати на смітнику АТС станції. СРСР не рахував гроші....
Так отож...
секуенс ))) сіквенс !
Ієс! Ієс!
uau
Exactly!
Чому немає україномовного каналу?
1. Тому що два одночасно ми фізично поки що не потягнемо. 2. Тому що один із нас - словак, і укр. мовою володіє не в ідеалі.
Are you still in Ukraine?
Of course.
Staat USA US ARMY Today we kill 20 000 tousend Gypssis in Trizla City Prilep Staat Mazedonien OKEY
A first step of release - it to understand a fact of having a dependency.