I FINALLY FOUND IT! Behold Elektronika MS 1504, the ONLY SOVIET LAPTOP EVER.
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- čas přidán 8. 06. 2024
- Today, we present one of the rarest pieces of vintage computer hardware you can find in 2023: the Electronika MS1504, also known as PC300 - the first and only laptop computer made in the USSR. They produced so few of them that perhaps only around one hundred have survived to the present day. Join us for a comprehensive exploration of its design, hardware, software, and, of course, the history of its creation... ... and its eventual lack of success.
In this episode, you will find:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Overview
04:18 - The prototype - Toshiba T1100 Plus and the history of the creation of PC300.
07:46 - Let's take a look inside.
10:30 - Power supply
12:30 - Motherboard, experimental chips, and more.
16:32 - Display
18:30 - A small attempt to power the laptop on.
19:42 - Our cat discovered the demo floppy disk!
24:09 - Test instruments for PC300
26:54 - Outro
A great thanks to DrPass for providing us with the device for this review!
Support our research work and projects:
Patreon: / thechernobylfamily
Donate: www.buymeacoffee.com/chernoby... - Věda a technologie
More of the cat using computers please :-)
Just wait for it..)
It seems easier to reverse engineer some of the experimental chips than to figure out how the power supply was made. The motherboard on the other hand looks beautiful!
We believe Toshiba prototype will help with this. The PSU is very much destroyed, but there is a hope.
@@ChernobylFamily Honestly looks like they stole the motherboards out of something else, compared to the PSU. Incredible to see these two levels of production in the same device
What is interesting, a prototype of the PSU was way better than a final product. No one knows why.
@@ChernobylFamily probably because nobody really cared. Product wasn't selling well, so they felt no-one would notice anyway. Maybe someone stole the money that was supposed to be for the PSU pcbs and did some crap like this by hand, haha. It does look like some soviet homebrew stuff which also looked very terrifying
@@160rpm USSR never seemed to throw away manufacturing equipment, only add modern ones alongside. If you look at 1980s Soviet TVs there was old vacuum tube models as well as ones built fully with chips and remote controls. Sometimes old equipment would be used to produce entirely new designs, or even categories of product that didn't exist when that equipment was made.
The idea was that one old factory and one new factory will together produce more than just a new factory alone. Of course, better would be two new factories...
The use of three screws to secure the case was quite innovative. All modern devices nowadays have dozens of one-way clips and indestructible glue. 🙂
I'd call it 'reverse innovative' as screws were introduced first :)
@@ChernobylFamily They were way ahead of their time with "right to repair"! 🙂
All old computers used normal screws and were easy to take apart.
@@ChernobylFamilyIt goes way beyond mere screws. Ruso-soviet manufacturing hadn't discovered the magic of phillips screw heads - unlike the developed world, they used flat head across the board. Glory to kremlinite dear leaders and the red army for this 💪🚀
And screws was MUCH easier for repairs. Nowadays anything is made for planned obsolescence and waste production.
In Soviet Union you didn't enable the turbo mode, the turbo mode enabled itself.
I am afraid in that collective regime of peace and love it was enabled by default.((
In Soviet Union, you didn't enable turbo mode, you just slowed down so the computer was faster in comparison.
@@michaelallen1432 That could be a solution too.
don't y'all think this same joke over every single video relating to 20th century eastern european history gets a bit old
@@amihartz it is not an ordinary capitalist joke,it is "our joke".
This reminds me of Asianometry's videos on Soviet computing history plus videos about weird 80s and 90s laptops. It's definitely something I'd love to see more of, hence why this channel is one of my favorites. It's rare we westerners get to have a real look at what you guys had. Schools here hardly talk about early computing history and definitely completely gloss over Soviet computers, which is a shame because it's equally as impressive despite the Soviet computers having completely different standardization to western and east Asian ones and ultimately having to be abandoned due to that. I have to wonder if schools in former Soviet states even talk about Soviet computers or do they also only talk about western ones?
'Reaaally carefully, reaaally slowly'
Picture of demon core in the background 🤣
Actually, it was an example of the internal Chernobyl Zone humor:)
Needs more cat, thanks for the video/effort, it's appreciated.
Meow! He will appear in next puuurrrrfect episodes!
That part where the cat insert the disk is gold!
In the Soviet Union they knew how they built computers and strove to keep up with the West. They even proposed to create their own OGAS network that would be the Soviet internet. Unfortunately the political leadership in Moscow did not see the potential of this technology.
When we had talks with actual developers of a few notable computer systems, they were far less optimistic in their opinions about those times. I'd warn against calling OGAS as 'Internet' in any way; it was more a decision system with very narrow purpose. Viktor Glushkov very well explained it in his books.
Still, very interesting. @@ChernobylFamily
Most soviet computers in the late 80s were still mainframes without a screen
@belstar1128 i certainly agree about mainframes, but all them had terminals, so technically, screens were present, and looking on some software (SVM, PRIMUS, etc) - cannot say it was any different experience than working with e.g. DOS. Console is a console, after all...
@@ChernobylFamily I noticed most of them were like printers and had no screen. and even with cga you could do a lot more than with a terminal
I had not seen this combination of VLSI and DIP chips before, and was baffled by the components (especially the chip-like-with-holes) on the motherboard. Thanks for taking the time to take this machine apart and show the inner workings. Really enjoyed this video.
Thank you!
Those with holes are usual, that is just a side effect of the technological process of production - that is where a manipulator has been holding a metal part for proper alignment.
I remember such machines, Compaq for example, and always liked them. It's such a shame the power supply is junk but I know you can sort it out. Thanks for showing us Alex, I really enjoyed this one.
Thank you!
Compaq made great computers. One of the best computers ever made in my opinion is the Compaq Mini 110c netbook. It was perfect, and so pretty, and functional.
This thing looks like a nearly exact copy of a Toshiba T1200 (or similar model). They definitely started with one of those and cloned it
@@anarchy_79 until HP bought them out then the quality went down the drain, before that they were a big respectable player in the market, and HP just absolutely wrecked their business.
I like that you're using Norton Commander, that was my favorite in the early 90's.
Yeeeesss my too!. Though this is not a Norton Commander, it is Volkov Commander. It is a functional clone which was written in Ukraine on assembler. NC was availalble, but the idea was to make NC work on much, much more limited resources than NC normally requires. As far as I remember, VC consists of a single file of 64 kb or so.
Nothing beats the intuitive 2 panels of NC, in many so much easier to do file operations in those days than in today's GUIs.
Volkov Commander - I saw this widely used in Poland in the 90s.
@@pwalk4160Much less mousing around and clicking, I'm sure. :D
I seen these. The problem with computers at end of USSR was in people heads. Not many knew about them nor imagined how to use them for productivity. Also huge prices and lack of software slowed adoption. It changed though and fast.
Exactly.
USSR was investing in another countries to develop computers and software such as Bulgaria then exported to USSR .We produced a lot computers for the military .
Also Soviet authorities distrusted computers because they (correctly) feared people using them to share politically incorrect information.
A 7805, 7812, and 7912 with some caps on a solder proto board and you're set. Awesome Soviet copy!
Might be, might be...
I have an old soviet computer named "Byte" in English or "Bait" when converted straight from cyrillic. I also have the book that came with it and it's quite funny.
For starters in page 64 of the book they have instructions how to code in BASIC a program that draws the flag of the soviet union.
The motherboard inside is a 10 layer PCB, which is crazy.
you see Russia used to have smart people before they killed them all off with war
would love to see that program or manual
Amazing!
Look at the use of screws. At the time everything in the West was put together using Phillips head screws.
Ca 1984 I took a day trip to East Berlin. There was a trade show going on. They were so proud of a controller for a machine that used EPROMS...
At that time my desktop computer was a 3270 terminal on a mainframe with thousands of users.
And I used Altera EPLDs at the time.
Wat a failed system it was...
Thank you for sharing! About screws... yes, all of them were like pictured. Everywhere.
Thanks a lot to the tabby cat for its crucial contributions to this great video.
Thank you for diz purrfekt komment! *actively pawing*
Great video ! Thanks a lot !
Keep up the excellent work and may God bless you always !
Thanks, you too!
I hate the gold "recyclers" that destroy rare and invaluable electronic components for a few dollars.
However, I have to say that I managed to re-educate a few of them, in the meaning they now google first, then do something.
Yes but invaluable is more like unvaluable 99 percent of the time in these cases
Excellent video. Quite glad I found this channel.
Welcome aboard! Check our previous episodes as well!
Beautiful video! Thanks a lot for presenting us this jewel! :)
Our pleasure! And more to come - check our newer episodes!
I'm here for the cat.
Mñau. In fakt i write oll scenarioz for dis videoz. Sorry for mistakes hard tu type wiz paws.
CUTE!!! lol @@ChernobylFamily
love this channel, very informative :) excellent work
Thank you!
Great video as always, I wish my cat was so excited about retro computing :)
You can do it! You just need to do proper food management:)))
Looks exactly like my old Bondwell.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing a detailed video about this rare machine!
Happy to see you here! Thank you!
@@ChernobylFamily you are like my drug dealer, but for vintage Soviet computers ... always providing the good stuff! ;)
{Note: I don't actually have a drug dealer ... I spend all my money on old computers!}
Wow that’s pretty cool the stacked 3.5” floppy disk drives
A couple of those print ads for the thing have a pretty cool aesthetic.
I’m not surprised many people didn’t decide to shell-out for a laptop though, even in the west almost no one had a laptop until the mid-to-late 00s, unless you were a businessman. Pretty neat that there were probably only ~1500 of these.
I liked your little rant about how metal scavengers should’ve just resold them for their intended purpose. The same comes up for people who broke into railways for electrical cable over here, they’d melt it and sell it for scrap copper even though a highly-engineered high-purity high-current power cable sold for WAYYYY more.
Thank you!
Actually, I located a few of those magazines in sale; so will get them and make high-quality scans later.
@@ChernobylFamily ooh, looking forward to that! I definitely have a bunch of friends who’d love to see those, or use them for inspiration for retro-futuristic ads in their own art
@kaitlyn__L i've made a bonus content with software on Patreon, at least will update there. Those magazines normally sold in book-like annual collections, so will try to find not for all money in the qirld.
$550 sounds "cheap" to "western" eyes, until you factor in the average wage of the day and the incredibly long waitlists (if you even manage to get in!). 14 year old overpriced foreign cloned technology, sounds about right for socialism. Just think what people had in 1994 elsewhere in the world... The demos seem designed to exhibit the product in some fair for the great leader to praise.
I just sat down for a cuppa' tea after finishing work for the day - perfect timing!
Haha! Enjoy!
I knew it was a Toshiba clone I had similar one and I loved ur cute cat being curious about the laptop
Mñau!
Fascinating! Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it! Check other episodes!
Such a great video, great content and great channel!
Superthanks! Wait for more soon!
Thank you for an excellent review and retrospective.
I own a descendant of the Toshiba T1100 - the slightly later T3200, but it is less useful as a laptop due being designed without a battery.
You've given us great overview of this very unique machine, while also delving into its history and how it came into existence. That context makes the video far more interesting than just a tour of the computer on its own.
With the rarity of this machine and how many computers are pillaged for gold, I'm surprised that you were able to find one to review, let alone a copy of the manual. Well done.
If you don't mind my asking, was this part of a personal collection belonging to DrPass, or does he have a museum?
Fuzik inserting the floppy disk got a chuckle out of me!
The last time I had this kind of machine in my hands in ~2009, for a few days. It was dead completely. Never could imagine I'd have one again.
DrPass has a collection, so he provided us with this for a review.
Yeah I was going to say it's a copy of the Toshiba T1100.
Thank you very much for the review of this old laptop, and for the historical details of its manufacture. Very cute cat and very professional. Many greetings.
Dis is Fuzik, kat. Senk u for your purrrrfekt koment! I wil apiir in next episodes. Meow. Sorry for typoz, it iz hard tu typ with paws.
😹👍@@ChernobylFamily
I am sitting in ze boks. How did you knou dat?
nice video as always. the demo program and construction of the power supply is very interesting
Thank you very much! Well, I wonder if that demo is actually a copy of a toshiba one. Among files there is egavga.bgi, so it is obviously written on Turbo Pascal, but did they copy ot or not, is thevopen question.
*Дякую* for this video sir, and especially for the finely detailed teardown! One thing I've always had trouble finding is the Soviet Cyrillic keyboard layout, and thanks to this vid (And a couple of screenshots) I _finally_ have what I was looking for in this regard! ⌨🇷🇺😀
Rare as this is, I sadly doubt very much that original replacement parts for the power supply still exist anywhere (Especially if they were laid on gold, because $$$s) but many years ago I ran into a similar problem with a laptop of a roughly similar vintage, and for testing purposes I used various series/parallel combinations of alkaline batteries to produce the correct voltages. It was an absolute pig fitting it all on the bench, but it was enough to test out the laptop and prove that it worked! 😇
Assuming the service manual gives the voltages for each of the rails coming off the PSU (And let's face it: One of the reasons why I love tech from the USSR is because it was _designed_ to be user serviceable! 🛠) a battery array might work for testing, but for continued use some of the off-the-shelf PSUs now available in the market should be able to provide the correct voltages to keep this beauty running safely! 🙂
And OK, it might not be the _best_ computer of its time...But unlike any of the British made computers of that era I wouldn't be surprised if this - Once fixed - Would continue to work for a good 200-300 years afterwards! 🤘
You are more than welcome! As for the keyboard, many machines had a Cyrillic-first layout where Latin letters were transliterated, so it is JCUKEN, not QWERTY. Check the video about DVK-3 to see that. P.S.: In Ukraine we say дякую
Love your cat!
Purrr!
Wow, great video! Thanks! I had one of these S/N 1372 july 1993
Wow!
The color scheme, and general appearance, resemble a Toshiba laptop, of which I would tend to think this is an imitation. Ah, you got around to mentioning that.
I really wonder how would look a laptop if they would design it from scratch.
It’s a thing of beauty
...despite it is a desperate clone of a Japanese laptop, it is possible to feel a touch of love in it.
Oh, I forgot to ask: Are the demonstration floppy disk images backed up somewhere?
It might be fun to try running it on other computers. I'd certainly give it a go.
I'll put them on Patreon
Ahaha, that demon core :D
And send my regards to the kitty assistant, he's doing a great job. I wonder what else he can fix!
A screwdriver is a very untrustworthy tool, you know...)
such a cute kitten! computer kitty!
Mnau!
Thank you so much for showing this piece of history. The technical info is super interesting. Those Soviet engineers were very smart, even the reverse engineering has it's own challenges, and i have to admire that the Soviet Union and the post Soviet countries had electronics manufacturing capabilities, unfortunately generations behind the west, but still had some industry unlike the "third world" were I'm from.
This particular device is a good example of high end engineering of their industry. In many cases it looks very untypical compared to what they were normally producing.
That's a very interesting laptop! Some of the Soviet assembly techniques are the same as in the Lell PSR drum machine I restored; it's all pretty elegant though. I would never expect a Japanese display in a Soviet device though.
Oh, and I saw a screenshot of Block Out! i liked this game when I was a kid in the early '90s with a PC XT/AT at home.
As later things were produced, as more often there appeared foreign parts; we have that old video about ES1849, there is intel 80286 and a foreign chipset...
Oh my goodness...I _might_ still have a copy of BlockOut for the x86 somewhere in my old software library! 🎮💾😀
A glimpse into an alternate past.
Fascinating.
Genius.
асио дру.
Thank you..)
Cool video :) and cool kitty :)
Mñau!
@@ChernobylFamily :)
Fantasic machine hope you will be able to run it!
BTW Belarusians have one more interesting peace of hardware in the early 90's
It is a spectrum ZX clone called Alf (Ельф) it is made to be lice console with cartrages and all the games are western games translated in Russian. The funniest thing is that the controllers are clone of famicom ones, but mirrored 😅(D-pad is on the right side and the buttons are on the left, yes there are 2 buttons but doing the same)
It is interesting, I did not know about that machine; will check on it - thank you!
Question is.... does it also eat cats?
@@RTheren AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. You won the internets today.
@@RTheren only capitalist cats 😂😁 LOL
That's unexpected! I have found 2 units of Soviet elektronika pong
Congrats!
1992 I had a 486 DX 33 MHz computer. Weird that in Russia a 8086 compatible was still state of the art
In entire USSR. From this point another machine (ES1842) also made in Belarus is interesting, as it was based on 8086 but it had a chip set that actually allowed to execute 80286 instructions.
I had toshiba T1000 and this one is Very similar in ports arrangement (external and internal), and even component’s arrangement. The power supply looks here like a pure madness and my main board has a lot less chips and more of them were smd ( im not surprised). My toshiba had rare citizen floppy with different ribbon cable, but this looks like normal FDD
Actually upon further inspection, in this very laptop the drives are from 2008. I mean, original were not any much different (normally there would be TEAC as far as i remember), but I'm surprised that someone took them out at some point. There could not be soviet drives - they did not exist as a mass product.
Крутая штука.Держать в руках не приходилось.Видел первый раз на обложке журнала ТМ,в одном из номеров начала 90-х.
Думаю, як раз ту обкладинку (1992 #4) ви можете побачити у відео.
This looks very similar to Tandy 1400LT. Same specs as well. I still have mine from the late 80s.
The windowing demo program (showing the graphic capabilities in various windows) reminds me of a Turbo Pascal demo of the same era.
Hm, right!
Cool video!!👏👏👏🔝💯
Thank you! Please check our previous episodes - there is much interesting!
@@ChernobylFamily 👍👍😊👋
Thank you
You are warmly welcome!
I love the cat. :)
I think he will appear regularly:)
I love the detailed video, Спасибо!
Glad that you liked!
P.S.: Im Ukraine we say "дякую".
Awsome🏆 would be super nice to se some older equipment from space race, computer and software 🤗
Well, we are more on Chernobyl-related tech (this laptop is an exception), but there are pretty much interesting as well.
Soldering on the closeups seems to need work. At 13:15 there are a few suspicious joints visible.
This is great!
Thank you!
From my experience with twisted nematic displays like this, the solid blue screen is likely just the contrast cranked all the way up. The artifacts on the LCD look to be scratches in the polarizer film from somebody drawing on it with a pen or something. If you can find a junked donor LCD, even a modern one, you could probably trim to fit and get that fixed. As for the backlight, you'll likely need to get the -15v rail working on the power supply, or connect an external supply long enough to find out if the CC tube is still good. The 60-pin internal expansion connector is likely an ISA bus if this is a true XT-compatible clone, so you could probably design a CF-IDE card for it if you can find a pinout.
As for the power supply... Eh. I don't even know where to start with repairing that, especially without schematics or even knowing what those missing components are. Personally, I'd just build a new one from scratch, as DC buck converters and voltage inverters are inexpensive, and easy to use. That might not be a "proper" restoration, but it would at least be functional. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do.
Thank you very much for this.
Now: that was pretty interesting. I worked with early Toshiba Laptops quite a bit back then and still own a T-3200 and T-1600 (of which I don't know if they are still in working order to be true). But comparing the inards with a Toshiba there are quite some similarities. In the Soviet Union it was quite common to reverse engineer western products. This one came quite near. But for what expense ... Thanks for sharing !
Thanks for sharing!
My Sega Genesis Nomad was made in 1996 and just 2 years before this was the best Russia had to offer. Crazy.
Yes.
Technically, the laptop in question is not russian, it is from Belarus (it does not make it any better, just we, who lived in other republics under FORCED umbrella of the ussr, find calling all with words "russia" pretty... not good)
I never saw a DIP IC with two holes on it (except for mouse optical sensors). I imagine the reason for that, like for them to be attached to heat sinks for instance.
There is a so big contrast between the quality of the motherboard and the quality of the power supply that I question if the it was sourced from already existing projects.
Those are for positioning during production, it is manufacturer-specific thing. They do not serve any other purpose.
What a fantastic piece of history. Impressive to see all of the chips made especially for it. I wonder what is the one with holes in the packaging?! It's more than unusual!
I'm really sad to see the power supply butchered... it's so beautiful, all made in with bodge wires. Very time consuming process to build things... Maybe later ones had a more cleanly made power supply that you can retro engineer to save this one?
Thanks for sharing this comprehensive explanation about this time capsule!
Holes are windows for erasing memory using UV light
@@torkalovolodymyr5097 Are you sure about that or are you making an educated guess? It seems like a bizarre way to make a erase window - surely the Soviets had seem western UVPROMs with quartz windows before.
@@sootikins i am sure. It's common also for older western chips. Google "UV EEPROM eraser"
Eeprom used to store firmware and erased on factory or during repair
No, those are not. I will explain below.
For EEPROM they had windowed chips, the same like in the west. Those oval openings are a side-effect of the technology of production - in the middle of them it is possible to notice a few holes that are for the manipulator which positions the metal parts during forming/shaping. The crystal itself is sealed in the center.
your cat likes it
do you have any archived images of the demo programs? I would like to see them for myself, translate a few things etc
Продавался такой недавно на аукционе
The outer design looks similar to old Toshiba Laptops of the late 1980s or very early 1990s.
Yes, it is a clone of T1100Plus.
I'm curious about the keyboard, as are some people I know in the keyboard community. The switch mount on the pcb resembles Mitsumi miniature mechanical, but it's soviet, so it can't be that. Any way to show?
04:57 obligatory Norton Commander!
Well, It is Volkov Commander, ASM-written functional clone.
I have a feeling whoever stripped those chips from the PSU didn't own the whole device to sell intact. If it was someone working in the warehouse where the laptop has already sit unopened for months or years, they must've thought it will never be sold. So there is no harm stripping out some interesting components and putting the rest back into the box. Nobody will ever notice because it will rot here the warehouse until clear-out straight into a landfill. Still, they wouldn't dare to just steal the whle laptop and leave behind an empty box because that would be too obvious during inventory.
Actually, it is a very good point.
И этот ноутбук- наивысшая точка развития советской микроэлектроники.
that fuckin' demon core overlay made me laugh harder than anything else I've seen this year. There's dark humor, but that was vantablack
...))
Интересно, МС 1504 это функциональный аналог Тошиба Т1100. Видел ролик на Ютьюб, как умелец сумел запустить на Тошибе windows 1.0.
По идее и на МС 1504 это тоже должно пойти, но почему-то никто не пробовал до сих пор
You know, if the expansion port is basically an extension of the ISA bus, there might be a noninvasive way to attach a modern fixed disc solution like the XT-IDE. Tex-elec has a very tiny card that would fit nicely in that unused battery compartment. Figure out the pinout, have the right sized card edge made (maybe PCBWay), and then solder a ribbon cable on and route it into the battery compartment. As far as the PSU is concerned, I know the Amiga community swears on the Mean Well PSUs. I'd put it in an external enclosure, make a new expansion plate and solder in the multipin connector of your choice and build a matching cable to the external PSU. Basically adapt the Amiga solution to the computer. This assumes the scrappers trashed the orignal PSU beyond repair. Regardless, I bet you could fit a battery holder (say, 3 triple As) in that battery compartment to power the clock chip and get it on a more modern DOS variant. All in all kind of a slick computer.
Thank you! I believe that original Toshiba cards will work - after all this is nearly 1:1 clone.
Hmm, so there might be XT-IDE adaptations out there for it. That'd simplify things to be sure!@@ChernobylFamily
You'd need more pins for an ISA bus though, wouldn't you? :(. The Amstrad PPC uses a DB25 and a DC37 connector to present the full 62-pin ISA bus, and the Visual 1083 Commuter I'm working on at the moment uses a DC62. There's probably just enough pins on a DB25 for a floppy interface though. /Brett
@@Brfff Minuszerodegrees has the maintenance manual for the T1100+ for download which includes a pinout of the expansion bus connector. It's a 60 pin connector that seems to carry the full ISA bus. Also there's at least 1 guy on r/retrobattlestations that adapted the XT-CF card to the Toshiba expansion bay connector, complete with 3D printed shield for easy swapping of cards. He was also mooting the idea of building a combo card that added an Adlib card. You could also add a ram expansion, too. Cramming all of that would be challenging but would be worth it if only to play Tetris on a Soviet PC clone at a coffee shop in Kiev or Lviv!!!
Although, watching on ... there is that 60-pin internal interface ... is that the one you're referring to? If you could find the pinout then definitely, you could conceivably design an interface board (XT-CF-Lite) that plugged directly into it ... and it wouldn't matter if it were Soviet 2.5mm or Western 2.54mm pitch as you could design the PCB to fit either. I'm doing similar for the Amstrad PPC at the moment, trying to cram an internal CF board inside the machine. /Brett
Clever cat. Reminds me of my Archie of happy memory.
Glad that you liked me!
Крутий девайс !
Треба відновлювати.
Дякую
Так отож(
Is the СНП111 connector for the keyboard Soviet 2.5mm pitch or Imperialist 2.54mm/0.1" pitch?
2.54
What the hell is that power supply! :O
edit: oh, ok ... I missed the bit about it being stripped of some parts.
There is an interesting detail. A prototype version of this was way more 'industrial', but I GUESS when they realized there won't be really a mass production, they went to a crude handmade variant.
Hm, EXTREMELY similar to my old Toshiba T1100 PLUS, with 2 floppy disk drives! Maybe the Japanese copied this nice design from Russia ;) A great workhorse in the old days. THANK YOU for this great video!
It is a clone of that very model of toshiba laptop, it is true, though schematics was very much reworked. Cannot say that to better, but it is different.
P.S.: it is Belarusian laptop, not russian.
I love the star of the show, the orange cat. Laptops were status symbols, not something to rely upon for work or entertainment, with limited battery life and odd input devices. Would be cool to finally get abundant gold on Earth. People would laugh at crimes commited for a piece of metal. "Collectors' items" are a big scam.
I'd say this cat himself is a status symbol!
@@ChernobylFamilyYes cats just *know* they are royalty! 😹😻
Removing the keyboard ribbon included a reference to the Demon Core? Oh my.
Internal humor...))
@@ChernobylFamily Thank you for your excellent videos. It is good to see this history preserved and shared.
Glad that you like them...! More to come!
12:15 I guess this laptop belonged to a company. An addicted worker noticed that this laptop had not been used for a long time and was obsolete so he decided to salvage some chips so that he could buy something to drink 😀. Most likely he thought that nobody will notice what he did and that the laptop will be thrown away.
Very interesting video, looking forward to the next part.
Sounds as a very possible scenario :)
Weird how the PSU looks like a over-engineered prototype, while the motherboard looks like a consumer grade product, nice PCB layout, not overcrowded.
Would almost thing two different companies worked on it or something
It is strange, right. Even more strange it becomes with the fact that there existed way better engineered prototype, but to mass production went this crude... something.
О,it is incredible vintage laptop.
Glad that you liked!
0:22 did it for me!
Meow!
Don't expect people who break things apart for scrap metal to be able of logical thought. They cut IEC and figure-8 cables instead of just unplugging them.
...that's why I called my question 'philosophical'..((
Hello, im not sure if you will see this comment but I was wondering. Do you know any places where you can purchase old Soviet computers like the DVK-2 ?
Well, I search by gold scrappers, recyclers... occasionally such stuff appears on internet marketplaces... but all that is always very expensive, or very damaged.
The demon core reference is very smooth and unexpected
It was very much influenced by Chernobyl Zone's internal humor culture, tbh, despite this particular piece of tech is not related to it as many our other exhibits.
cool laptop
Hmm, very interesting machine, thank you for your very well made review! It shows how much effort had run into the basic hardware layout, if the chips are genuine russian made (which I assume). The AMI Bios makes sense, to keep it IBM PC Compatible and thus open to the world of programs. All in all not shabby, a 386 was ok in 1991, not the cutting edge, but good to work with. If it had been developed further to make it more affordable and the international PC world wouldn't have gone that crazy cheap for used machines, it could have become a success story as well.
Chips are mostly Belrusian, same as a laptop. In fact, surprisingly good machine. They had some prototypes of a more advanced model, known as PC400 based AFAIK on 286, but all (known) what exist of it is one case prototype and a few textual references.
WE found it, Kamerade, we found it...
Serious question though: are all the board-mounted components hand soldered or did the Soviets have wave soldering and pick and place tech at that time?
I believe at top factories they had pick and place, logically they had to. Though I am really not sure. Sometimes it is very much visible when it is really hand-soldered.
Kiev 'Elektronmash' did have wave soldering.
And there was domestically designed DIP chip placement machine named 'AVUMIS' (Rus.: "АВУМИС", "АВтомат для Установки МИкросхем" = 'automatic chip placement machine').
The name is kinda pun on 'VUM' ("[завод] ВУМ") which is another name for 'Elektronmash' of Kiev.
@@u2bear377 thank you for this clarification
Котички роблять будь-який контент кращим :)
Мняв! *активно топче лапками*
Nice to see one disassembled, I knew about it's existence and that it was a clone of the early Toshiba laptops, but I never realised how much similar they are even inside - having repaired T1200 some years ago this looks almost identical layout and plastics wise.
I wonder if pinout of the Toshiba PSU is the same. In other words, if it is pissible to put in here a Toshiba PSU.
@@ChernobylFamily It looks kinda similar, but i don't have it here by me so I can't check. I know that schematics for these old Toshibas are online so it might be worth to take a look. Also these Toshiba PSUs are notoriously unreliable so I would suggest only comparing the pinout, not actually looking to buy one 😁
Thank you for the hint!
i wonder if there are any more readily keyboards available from the time who were using the same alps clone micro switches as this keyboard used on the laptop.
Найс ревью, комрад. Сенкс фор йо джоб. Энд пис ту йор хаус.
Глед зет ю лайкд ит.
Круте відео, так тримати!
Дякуємо!
Nice looking cat & computer! Any idea where I could find a replacement LCD for a MK-85?
If we'd know the part number, then there is a chance to find in the old stock...
@@ChernobylFamily I'll take a look, thanks!