
Soviet PCs - mouzogu
http://rbth.com/multimedia/pictures/2014/04/07/before_the_internet_top_11_soviet_pcs_35711
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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10402150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10402150)

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huhtenberg
Why not keep this entry and migrate the comments from the older one here?

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dang
HN's rule is that if a story has had major attention in the last year or so,
and no new information has come up, then we treat it as a dupe and keep it off
the front page. Mainly because front page space is so limited, and also
because if we didn't do that, HN would be flooded with complaints about
reposts.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

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huhtenberg
A year for threshold seems to be an overkill. A repost from the last week is
indeed a waste of a FP space, but from 6 months ago? Especially for a static
article where HN comments are as a good read as the article itself.

I'd say the rule may need a revision. Besides, HN rules have always been "more
what you call guidelines, than actual rules" :)

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jacquesm
One of them even has a lightpen, nothing like a 'stylus for your smartphone'.
A lightpen noticed the brightening of the video signal _just_ as the x/y
deflection made the electron beam hit the phosphor under the tip of the pen
(which contained a photo-diode), so it was a pretty clever device. A stylus
for a smartphone, by comparison is simply a piece of passive plastic. That's
also why the lightpen is connected to the computer with an umbilical.

I recently came upon a very old 8 bit machine of Russian manufacture that
isn't in this line-up, I'll try to get a picture next time I'm close to it.

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mouzogu
I was actually led to this article after reading about the origin of Tetris
and being first written on the Electronika 60 - a soviet era computer.

Video of Tetris running on an E60:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gAgQQHFcQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0gAgQQHFcQ)

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phkahler
I'm more interested in their chip technology over time. What 8bit processors
did they use? What do they have today? I am under the impression they are
several nodes behind the state of the art today.

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skiril
Your impression is correct. I don't think Russia continue the race anymore.
Back Soviet time they were even ahead of the World in some breakthrough -
ternary computing instead of binary and so on....

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PerfectDlite
> Back Soviet time they were even ahead of the World

Not even sure where you'd get that notion.

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eps
Elbrus series are generally recognized to have been ahead of their time.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_(computer)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_\(computer\))

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PerfectDlite
Recognized by?

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skiril
UNAS/UNIX should be translated as "in here/out there" not "ours/theirs". Home
Computer in Russian will never be BK, it will be DK. Other than that I have
some deja vu....

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pandaman
How do you translate "бытовой компьютер" to English?

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nikital
Household computer / home computer

