Re: metric DIL packages

Hi!,


On 2014-05-31 22:26, Michał Pleban wrote:
> 
> I would imagine that home computers did not fit particularly well into
> the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Computers are means of work, therefore
> they belong in factories and research institutes. The State and the
> Party would not gain anything if members of the working class wasted
> their time and energy on hacking computers at home instead of striving
> to serve the glory of Communism. That would be perceived as decadent and
> frivolous, and therefore was probably frowned upon by the Party
> officials in a similar way to production of sport cars and other such stuff.

I don't know. Probably. At least, I'll be sure to ask a Russian
demoscener if I ever have the opportunity to do so :-).

> In Hungary and Poland, harsh as it was, the communist regime was peanuts
> compared to the Soviet Union. The Party had much more control over
> people's lives there and so I guess that's why of the reasons they got
> home computers so late.

Even though I have no personal experience (at least the Jaruzelski era
didn't look convincing in this respect), I'd say it's probably correct.
Some of my colleagues studied in Moscow back in the 70s. They told me
stories ;-). Hungary clearly had one of the less openly totalitarian
political systems, at least from the 1960s and on (progressively
becoming less and less strict until the fall of the iron curtain). I've
found an article about the Russian demoscene,
http://zine.bitfellas.org/article.php?zine=14&id=6  :-). According to
the author, the guys could hardly obtain electronic components in the
early 80s, or if they wanted them that bad, they had to obtain them from
the black market. People _here_ definitely had difficulties obtaining
chips (both availability and high price level), but in no way to that
extent. At the very least, nobody cared if some young techies hacked
micros in the kitchen or the basement. Computer technology had clearly
been a "symbol" in the contemporary common speech, that is, it was
associated with generally good symbols like "the future" and sci-fi in
everydays sense :-) . It was definitely not something the comrades
intended to be banned or disallowed, that is, they even did the opposite
(which was then hindered by general lack of ability of the officials and
lack of options, due to financial and technical difficulties).

> So, we have Soviet CPUs and peripherals, Soviet SRAMs and EPROMs, but
> how about glue logic? Did they also make 74xx parts?

You can bet :-). For example, this page gives a good overview about TTLs:

http://ganswijk.home.xs4all.nl/chipdir/soviet/ttl.htm

but you can also similarly find sources for other chip families.

(I had the opportunity to (finally) play around with an OREL BK-08 last
weekend, that is, an Ukrainian Spectrum clone from the '90s. That
machine has been built solely from Russian chips, except for the single
Z80 from GoldStar. Also, interestingly, most TTLs were 74ALS*
equivalents. Honestly, I don't remember many gadgets that sported ALS TTLs.)

Note that at least the older (K155* ) TTLs didn't have a good
reputation, they reportedly weren't "that" stable and didn't always
follow all electrical parameters of the 74xx series.

And I'm definitely curious about progress ;-).



Levente


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