AGAT - a bad copy of Apple?

“For the first time I saw Agat in August 1983. And I had the opportunity to use it for a week. After watching the computer work after loading, I christened it “yablochka”, “ - Leo Bors, an eye surgeon and programmer, writes about Agat’s computer in BYTE magazine (November 1984).

Once, studying the Internet in search of information about the successfully acquired Apple IIe, I came across a site dedicated to domestic computers Agat. The resource was pleasantly surprised by well-structured information and a large database of software diskettes.

In the section "There were fables" on this site a brief review of an article from BYTE magazine for November 1984 was given. The article was called “AGAT: A Soviet Apple II Computer” with the subtitle “The Russians first microcomputer is a bad copy of the Apple.” According to the author of the site, this article is often referred to when it is discussed whether Agat is a clone of Apple II, and if so, how bad. I quickly found the original of the article and read it with pleasure (not so often you will find publications about domestic PCs in famous Western magazines).
')
The author of the article was Leo D. Bores, an eye surgeon and part-time head of a small medical software development company for Apple, who at that time collaborated with Svyatoslav Fyodorov and came to the USSR several times, where he met Agat. I was surprised at how well Mr. Bors "owned the subject" - rather, at the programmer level, than the doctor.

Unfortunately, the translation of the article into Russian was never published. In my opinion, this is an unfortunate omission for lovers of old computers, so my friend (professional translator) and I decided to correct the situation and made our translation.

Your opinion about whether the computers of the USSR times were foreign copies and, if so, how bad you can make in the comments.

NB It is worth noting that the author of the article worked with mock Agat. These machines were assembled "on the knee" only 2 pieces, and in some aspects they were very different from the subsequent serial Agates. An important difference was the performance: at the model Agat it was less by about a third, since there was used a partitioned microprocessor. And on the serial computers were installed licensed clones MOS Technology 6502 foreign production. Due to this, the performance of the serial Agate processor was the same as that of the Apple II.

---

AGATE

Soviet Apple II

The first Russian microcomputer - a bad copy of Apple

At the mention of a personal computer, an ordinary Soviet citizen will simply lose the power of speech. Computer? Houses? “Ne voz moshna!” In Russia, there is not even such a thing as “private”: production is not focused on consumer goods, a dishwasher is something from the realm of fantasy, and you can only have a personal computer dream. In Russian, computers are associated with huge machine rooms, which are stuffed with incomprehensible electronic equipment and hidden in the depths of a secret research institute somewhere in the Siberian wilderness under reliable protection of a platoon of soldiers.

The author is MD Leo D. Bores, MD, an eye surgeon who gained international fame for his innovative (joint with the Soviet surgeon) work on the development of radial keratotomy, a fundamentally new method of microsurgical correction of myopia (myopia) and astigmatism. He conducted the first joint Soviet-American seminar in ophthalmology and now conducts seminars in ophthalmology for American surgeons in Moscow. He is president of Sun Bear Software, a small company that specializes in medical software.

The international situation is slowly but changing. Western goods appear in Russia (Pepsi is sold in kiosks throughout Moscow), and Russian goods in the west. But still, the prototype of a desktop computer presented by the Soviets at the Moscow Industrial Exhibition in July 1983 was a big surprise. The computer produced by ELORG (Elektronorgtekhnika) is a landmark for Russia. ELORG is responsible for the production, purchase and sale of electronic equipment and computers in the USSR. Prior to this, ELORG produced machines of the category of minicomputers, which usually had a clumsy version of the CP / M operating system or a similar BIOS (basic input-output system). It is worth noting that in Russia, copies of early IBM 1401 and 370 models are most often used, many of which are equipped with outdated readers with punched tape and punches. With the exception of the occasional Hewlett-Packard and very rare DECs (and, possibly, the VAX hidden in the depths of the Ural Mountains), computers in Soviet institutions are outdated, although they are working properly. So a computer compatible with Apple is definitely a step forward.

I first saw Agat in August 1983. And I had the opportunity to use it for a week. After watching the computer work after booting, I christened it “yablochka”. The operating system and the ROM (read-only memory), it seemed, yesterday were in the Apple computer and underwent subtle changes, and the case was patriotically painted in red, so that the nickname could not be better.

Hardware

Agate is definitely not portable. Rather, it is a transportable computer (if you don’t carry it too far, then neither hernia nor back pain threatens you). I think it can be called impressive. The monitor, which comes with the machine, weighs almost as much as the computer itself. This is a standard SECAM color TV with a diagonal of 30 cm and an RCA connector on the rear panel for receiving a composite video signal.
The keyboard can be attached to the front of the computer using two lightweight metal clips. Cable storage is not provided. The meter cable from the keyboard is terminated with a 9-pin DIN-type connector (Deutsche Industrie Norm), which is connected to the back of the system unit.

The keyboard is full-sized with a raised upper edge (tilt angle of 15 degrees). The layout is traditional for Russian typewriters, having nothing to do with what you have ever seen: in Cyrillic - 33 letters (31 of them denote sounds). The Control key is located in the upper left corner. The Return key is practically not sizeable and is located so that it is easy to accidentally touch it. I did not find the Escape key. A full numeric keypad is provided on the right of the keyboard - it is separated from the alphanumeric block by a set of supposedly programmable function keys. Above the alphabetic block are traditional numeric / auxiliary keys. Cyrillic and English letters are put on the keys under each other. There are auto-repeat and lower case. Protection against jingling of contacts is unstable and sometimes causes false triggering of keys, especially with fast data entry. Feels like the key agate resembles an IBM PC keyboard, and even the sound produces a similar sound. Since the keyboard is quite thick (3.5 cm) and has a slightly steeper than usual tilt, working with it quickly tires, and with prolonged use, pain in the hands.

One 5.25 ″ standard height drive is built into the right side of the system unit. The possibility of installing another drive, apparently, is not provided, in any case, not internal. There is also no port to add a drive. Agath has a printer port, a serial port and a keyboard port, but no game port. The machine has convection cooling from above, below and behind.

I did not try to open the case, but I looked inside through the holes from behind and from above. In front of me appeared not too encouraging sight. I saw the nightmare jumble of wires. Pale brown boards looked like old translucent boards from antiquity. I did not find anything resembling a motherboard (although it may have been buried somewhere in the depths), and came to the conclusion that there was a kind of backplane in front of me, with rigidly fixed daughter boards.

Software

I did not think that I would study Russian computer - especially Russian Apple - so I didn’t bring along a “set of tools” with which I usually “dissect” Apple diskettes. However, I managed to conduct several tests and record my impressions of the system. During the next trip, I studied DOS (disk operating system) in more detail.

In my opinion, the system boots a bit slower than on Apple under DOS 3.3. As I later found out, this sluggishness is not limited to the boot process. The motor and drive head movement mechanism produced more noise than one would expect. The greeting program was in Russian and was intended to demonstrate the three available graphic modes. Apparently, the graphic mode was used to display the text. I was convinced of this after watching the demonstration and restarting Agath. The computer entered normal text mode, displaying a random set of English letters. It was obvious that the Apple Tool Kit was used to display Cyrillic in the user interface. This was confirmed by the listing of the source code of the program.

Also from the listing I realized that the variation of Applesoft BASIC is recorded in the ROM. I said “variation”, because at least all the usual Applesoft BASIC commands did take place, they were used slightly differently. And in some cases, and processed differently. For example, the command TEXT. On Agate, you can use the TEXT command with an argument in the form of a number that specifies the position of the cursor. In general, the teams worked the same way as usual. I did not test them all, but the ones that I tested were no different from Applesoft.

I especially liked the opportunity to access text and graphic video pages directly - there were three text pages in the demo program. I realized that in general, you can refer to the seven text pages, but I did not try it myself. And considering that only 64 KB of RAM (RAM) is installed in the basic computer configuration and, apparently, there is no possibility to expand memory, it seems to me that this is a very useful feature.

Agate has three graphic modes - low, medium and high resolution - and the display of graphics in general corresponds to the expectations. The resolution in medium resolution mode is almost the same as in high resolution mode, the number of colors is the same as in low resolution. Color artifacts are almost absent. I also liked the ability to set the color in text mode. Text can also be displayed in medium resolution mode.

The screen appears to be bit-mapped, and the video mode change commands are the same as at Apple, plus commands for additional pages have been added. Using color and graphics commands in low resolution mode, I was able to display characters with parameters similar to those of Apple. For this reason, I assumed that the same bit-by-bit memory mapping system used by Apple is used to display the screen.

Only one “application” was available to me - a program for surgical calculations. Representatives of ELORG informed me that it was "forbidden" to view the source code of the program, but to their great disappointment, I quickly bypassed the protection. The program was written in BASIC, using English. The program code looked clumsy and motley loops IF ... THEN. I shortened the program to 5 KB, simply by condensing the code.

Performance tests

I did not prepare for thorough computer testing, however I had with me the last BYTE number with an article about performance testing. I launched on Agate a program for calculating the Eratosphan sieve and Fibonacci sequences and found out that it is about 30% slower than the Apple computer. Saving to a disk (SAVE) BASIC programs was 15% slower, and binary and text files 22% slower. Loading (LOAD) was a little faster, but still slower than on Apple.

The standard "grinding of numbers" was also performed more slowly, but it is difficult to say how much. I started a calculation program on Agate with intensive use of the SQR and SIN functions. I copied this program to a floppy disk that I had with me, and launched it on Apple when I returned home. Apple managed 6% faster. I think this is due to the deliberate slowing down of the system, possibly due to the poor performance of the microcircuits or due to the long conductive paths and the use of mounted installation. Probably, these factors lead to failures when working at higher speeds. In any case, I am not an electronics engineer, so I most likely do not fully understand everything.

A few words about DOS

During my last trip to the USSR, in April 1984, I again had the opportunity to work with Agat. Then they gave me a copy of a DOS diskette so that I tried to run it at home on Apple. I found out that the bootloader code does not match DOS 3.3, and it is impossible to load a disk initialized with this system on Apple. This is probably an attempt to avoid prosecution by Apple.

However, this does not exclude the opposite. The study of the initialized disk using the Locksmith 5.0 sector-based editor showed that the VTOC (volume table), the DOS RWTS routine (the routine that is responsible for reading and writing disk sectors) and the file manager are identical to DOS 3.3. Once loaded, the disc can be read and written to any of the systems. In the Soviet DOS there is no part of the Apple DOS functionality, for example, the boot code. Since Apple includes this part of the code only to ensure DOS compatibility with older versions of Apple with less than 48 KB of memory, it is obvious that it is not needed on a Russian machine. But all the teams are in place - for example, in the Russian system, CHR $ (4) also sends a command to DOS - so the differences are not significant at all.

AGAT for the teacher?

In general, the computer made a positive impression on me, especially considering the source of the copy, but I would not buy it. It’s too difficult to use the keyboard without knowing Russian, and the system is too slow to compete with the models on the market. Agate is rather similar to the old Apple I. Since the West is boycotting the export of computers to the countries of the Eastern bloc, the demand for such devices is not covered by the offer, which means that Agate may be in demand outside the Soviet Union. It should sell well in Russia as a computing device for use in institutions or in other institutions, but not at home.

If the company ELORG plans to actively promote Agat in the west, it will have to significantly reduce the price, which, as I was informed, is $ 17,000, including software. When I told ELORG representatives what kind of computer I could buy with this money in the USA, they were shocked. Not sure if they believed me at all. And, I think, they precisely did not study the offers of competitors.
As a government organization, ELORG can afford to sell Agate at a very low price in order to create a sales market for it. However, I think that even if Agat got into the modern international market, it would not have the slightest chance of success. He has neither elegance nor technical excellence to compete with other PCs. The Soviets seem to lack business acumen - especially in this area.

If ELORG released this computer for the domestic market of the Soviet Union, then Agat is a harbinger of an unprecedented step that the country's leadership is taking to meet the general public. However, given the paranoia of the Soviet authorities about the leakage of information and their tendency to bury everything behind seven seals, I doubt that Agat was designed for home use. Soviet leaders are highly suspicious of new technologies, and they could see the risk in the very idea of ​​using a cybernetic device.

Even if the microcomputer were available to Russians for use at home, it could only compete with more mundane, but desirable consumer goods — refrigerators and washing machines — only at a very low price. And why should a Soviet citizen have a personal computer? He does not need to worry about investments or to calculate income tax.

It is possible that Agat was designed for educational purposes: there is an assumption that it is intended for the higher education system. I see no opportunities for its use in high school, at least in the near future. In Russian education, emphasis is placed on reading, writing and counting, while rote memorization and memorization are encouraged by high marks. In my opinion, the conservatism of the primary education system does not in favor of the possible computerization of school classes.

It is unlikely that in the foreseeable future you will see Agat in a local computer store. The high rate of the US dollar in the stock market and the almost 60 percent duty, which the US will burden this car, transfer Agate to the category of exotic devices.