OT: Reminiscences, Was: Re: gnome-software and release upgrade?

On 2026-07-08 11:04, Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2026-07-08 at 10:29 -0400, Frank Bures wrote:
>> However, bear in mind that this happened in early 70's in Eastern European
>> socialist country.  CNC systems then were nothing more than interpreters,
>> reading G-language (something like a relatively primitive assembler) from a
>> punch tape (or keyboard in case of manual step-by-step operation). There
>> was no memory to speak of, no logs, nothing that we take for granted today.
>>    What's more, we were under embargo (very effective, not like the current
>> sanctions against Russia) so almost no western parts were available.  We
>> actually became sort of a legend when we created an Intel 8008 emulator
>> from discreet components on two Euro-sized cards, that actually ran the
>> system.  The only info we had was a stolen Intel programming and
>> application manual. When the 8008 actually became available through some
>> Middle-Eastern country, they could simply scrap the two cards and wire the
>> 8008 in.  I was somewhere else by then.
> 
> Now *that* reminds me of a tale I was told when studying electronics in
> college in the 1980s.  Gutted pinball machines had been found near a
> Soviet embassy.  The machines had the same chips in them that were
> forbidden by the embargoes.  They'd discovered that, raided the
> machines, and found a way to ship them.
> 
> Then some wag at the back of our class stands up and says "how the
> Russians launch their missiles" and mimes pulling back the spring
> loaded ball-shooter that fires the ball bearing into the table.

During the detente between the US and USSR, Americans helped to built a 
heavy truck manufacturer in  Naberezhnye Chelny, called KAMAZ.  A part of 
that contract was an IBM/370 with 2CPU's and the whole plethora of 
peripherals.  The contract stipulated that the mainframe would not be 
removed from KAMAZ, would not be disassembled and would not be used for 
anything else than truck manufacturing.  After the system had been 
installed in KAMAZ and commissioned, it disappeared without a trace.  IBM 
guys only found out when they arrived to provide contractually scheduled 
maintenance and the system was nowhere to be found.  Well, the system was 
moved to Moscow, reverse engineered and the whole family of EC machines 
based on it (EC - Unified Systems in Russian) was manufactured later on in 
Kazyan.  Including the whole array of ECL chips reverse engineered from 
Motorola.  The Russian chips were perfectly pin-to-pin compatible with the 
Motorola originals.  The only thing they could not copy was the operating 
system that was still speaking English to their great embarrassment I 
presume.  Source:  Russian engineer who worked in Moscow during copying and 
my personal experience with EC-1045, the perfect copy of IBM/370.

Cheers
Frank


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