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A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

llama.gs

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Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#31

Post by actionfromafar »

anovikov wrote: post #24
summa_tech wrote: post #8

This was a fascinating article, because I've seen so many results of the Eastern Bloc reverse-engineering efforts basically founder into obscurity. Many of these re-created (sometimes with minor variations, or quite novel and ingenious implementation choices) computers were made in small series, but could not compete against illegal imports, and in any case would only be briefly popular in their local university town…

>could not compete against illegal imports How could that be possible? Imports had to be made in hard currency which was incredibly scarce in the Soviet Bloc (a VCR cost couple years of engineer's income on a black market), and was hard to obtain both for official/communist enterprises, and private individuals. Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper.

Yes, but, wasn't the prices fixed for stuff? I imagine there must have been things which were either cheap to buy, or which could easily "disappear" from a production line and sold in the West for more than it was worth on the other side of the curtain.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#32

Post by nickpp »

anovikov wrote: post #24
summa_tech wrote: post #8

This was a fascinating article, because I've seen so many results of the Eastern Bloc reverse-engineering efforts basically founder into obscurity. Many of these re-created (sometimes with minor variations, or quite novel and ingenious implementation choices) computers were made in small series, but could not compete against illegal imports, and in any case would only be briefly popular in their local university town…

>could not compete against illegal imports How could that be possible? Imports had to be made in hard currency which was incredibly scarce in the Soviet Bloc (a VCR cost couple years of engineer's income on a black market), and was hard to obtain both for official/communist enterprises, and private individuals. Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper.

> Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper.

Lots of stuff under communism was cheaper on paper. It was also extremely crappy and/or unavailable.

So black markets were thriving, even though, as you rightly point out, used hard to get, expensive currency.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#33

Post by varjag »

yehat wrote: post #16

I know there's predominant thinking that "communism" existed somewhere, but in fact it doesn't. It was the ideology developed in the West and brutally imported into the East. Why I say that and why it matters to understand the difference? Because there was no "communist" thinking behind the motivation to do whatever by the ordinary people. There was something deeper that manifested in a way that many people mistake f…

It's a bit of No True Scotsman. USSR (and other places) did an earnest attempt to build communist societies based on Marxist tenets. They went full in: class war, expropriation, even the attempts to abolish money and family. That it failed after decades of attempts was not for the lack of trying, so maybe at this point it's worth reconsidering viability of the idea.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#34

Post by vidarh »

keybored wrote: post #27
unmole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind. Francis Spufford explores this idea in Red Plenty , which I highly recommend. More broadly, I think the book would appeal to many HN readers.

The incredible things I read on this site. The communist mind? Oh right, there’s a book for that, and it’s probably agreeable to people on this site. What the heck is this psycho-mysticism.

It's a fascinating exercise in antrhopology to see otherwise smart people confidently discuss the mind of people most of them have had no exposure to in person. Having spoken to a variety of people across the very broad spectrum of left-wing thought, ranging from libertarian marxists opposing the very existence of a state, to hardline marxism-leninists who thought the former group belonged in labour camps, I find the idea of a singular "communist mind" as ridiculous as you.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#35

Post by Ambix »

grishka wrote: post #22

There was also a Soviet Apple II clone, called Агат (Agat). But iirc, for whatever reason, they couldn't clone the 6502, so they built one out of logic ICs, and the thing was too slow to run Apple II software unmodified. Later there was an expansion card with a real imported 6502 that added full compatibility. The USSR did make their own Z80 and 8080 clones later though. There existed an IBM PC compatible built compl…

There were two popular models: Agat 7 and Agat 9. The second one was great machine, one of the best personal computers produced in USSR in large quantitites.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#36

Post by mike_hearn »

vidarh wrote: post #34
keybored wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The incredible things I read on this site. The communist mind? Oh right, there’s a book for that, and it’s probably agreeable to people on this site. What the heck is this psycho-mysticism.

It's a fascinating exercise in antrhopology to see otherwise smart people confidently discuss the mind of people most of them have had no exposure to in person. Having spoken to a variety of people across the very broad spectrum of left-wing thought, ranging from libertarian marxists opposing the very existence of a state, to hardline marxism-leninists who thought the former group belonged in labour camps, I find the…

All actual communist societies work the same way, so it's clearly possible to generalize.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#37

Post by mike_hearn »

actionfromafar wrote: post #31
anovikov wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>could not compete against illegal imports How could that be possible? Imports had to be made in hard currency which was incredibly scarce in the Soviet Bloc (a VCR cost couple years of engineer's income on a black market), and was hard to obtain both for official/communist enterprises, and private individuals. Locally made stuff was bound to be a lot cheaper.

Yes, but, wasn't the prices fixed for stuff? I imagine there must have been things which were either cheap to buy, or which could easily "disappear" from a production line and sold in the West for more than it was worth on the other side of the curtain.

You couldn't just go and sell stuff in the west. The USSR had exit visas. You had to prove you had a genuine need to leave, would be searched and treated very carefully. And proving a need to leave was difficult. Merely wanting to go on holiday or see relatives wasn't close to enough. There were very few exit visas available, which is why stories about defectors are often about elite athletes or sports champions.

https://www.rbth.com/history/334094-athletes-fled-ussr-how

Also the Soviets manufactured very little of anything valuable to the west. Their primary exports were commodities.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#38

Post by gostsamo »

anovikov wrote: post #25
gostsamo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulgarian is phonetic to a large degree so if you know the sound associated to a letter, you can understandably pronounce it as well. Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind. If you search in the HN archives, you might find even more stories about the bulgarian computer industry with a MIT publication in the…

Was there "communist mind" in Bulgaria? Which is same as asking - did you guys perceive Communism as something homegrown, something of your own - "your take on how it is best to develop a country", or something forcibly imposed on you by the Soviets? Bulgaria was seen with disdain in the Soviet Union as seen as a country where little but tomatoes were made (even if we knew it wasn't really the case), so in our Soviet…

I used "communist mind" as a collective term for the ideological framework in which computers were discussed. The state had a party and the party had an ideology and the ideology legitimized the other two, hence all actions of the state and the party had to be justified through it. It does not mean some other kind of consciousness that allowed one to be closer to the ghost of Marx or whatever some people seem to ascribe to it.

Regarding your question, I cannot talk on behalf of everyone. Many who didn't like communism were killed or crushed otherwise in the early years, many who accepted communism did it because of the association with Russia and the historical connection there, many who had their best years in the booming years of the regime until 1970 approx remember it fondly, many who had their worst years in the nineties have a nostalgia avoiding to talk about the bad aspects of it, many didn't give a damn and lived in the system while undermining it, and many of those who would formulate intellectual criticism of it were actually well incorporated in the system to give a damn about what is good or bad. Overall, there were lots of people who disliked both the party and its dependence on the USSR, but there was not a mass movement until the very last years when things started to break down.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#39

Post by gostsamo »

keybored wrote: post #27
unmole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind. Francis Spufford explores this idea in Red Plenty , which I highly recommend. More broadly, I think the book would appeal to many HN readers.

The incredible things I read on this site. The communist mind? Oh right, there’s a book for that, and it’s probably agreeable to people on this site. What the heck is this psycho-mysticism.

As I commented elsewhere:

I used "communist mind" as a collective term for the ideological framework in which computers were discussed. The state had a party and the party had an ideology and the ideology legitimized the other two, hence all actions of the state and the party had to be justified through it. It does not mean some other kind of consciousness that allowed one to be closer to the ghost of Marx or whatever some people seem to ascribe to it.

Re: A communist Apple II and fourteen years of not knowing what you're testing

#40

Post by unmole »

keybored wrote: post #27
unmole wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regarding communism and computing, deterministic systems where the entire state is knowable and predictible have certain appeal for the communist mind. Francis Spufford explores this idea in Red Plenty , which I highly recommend. More broadly, I think the book would appeal to many HN readers.

The incredible things I read on this site. The communist mind? Oh right, there’s a book for that, and it’s probably agreeable to people on this site. What the heck is this psycho-mysticism.

Ponting out that communist regimes tried to implement planned economies with the help of computation is a statement of fact, not psycho-mysticism.

Red Plenty features Leonid Kantorovich trying to build a computer powerful enough to model the entire Soviet economy. It absolutely is something HN readers would find interesting, your uninformed, middle-brow dismissal notwithstanding.

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