DataArt Museum. Unpacking and launching Radio-86RK

The DataArt collection has been added to a unique exhibit - a test sample of the Radio-86RK personal computer intended for assembly by radio amateurs. We asked Gleb Nitsman , the ideologue of our museum, to perform in the traditional unlocking genre of video bloggers.

In the early 1980s, far from everyone even dreamed about personal computers in the USSR: they almost laughed at the Micro-80 project at the Ministry of Radio Industry ( Sergey Popov , one of the authors of the Micro and Radio-86RK schemes, recalled this) . The Soviet branch leadership did not discern the potential of small technology, but the PC was nevertheless put into production: in 1983, the first Agat was officially introduced.
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Illustration to the article about the first Soviet personal computer "Agat". Magazine Byte, 1984

On March 28, 1985, a resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On Measures to Ensure Computer Literacy of Secondary School Students and the Widespread Introduction of Electronic Computing Techniques in the Educational Process" was issued. Point number 5 prescribed the relevant departments to organize by 1990 the production of 120 thousand personal micro-computers. In 1986, a secret decree of the Presidium of the Central Committee and the Council of Ministers on the creation and development of the production of Soviet personal computers was issued. That is, the opinion of the top management has changed by 180 degrees, but, apparently, the moment was already lost.


Assembled "Micro-80" - the first Soviet computer designed for self-assembly by radio amateurs

The implementation of the Micro-80 scheme turned out to be very difficult - many components were simply not available. Therefore, the same list of authors: Dmitry Gorshkov, Gennady Zelenko, Yuri Ozerov, Sergey Popov, decided to rethink the project and created a new scheme for assembling a personal computer. She was handed over to Radio magazine and, after a preliminary check, was published in 4-7 issues of the magazine for 1986



A test sample on the instructions of the editorial board was assembled by Alexander Sergeevich Dolgiy, a Moscow programmer and radio amateur. He also gave his copy of "Radio-86" to our museum.


The ideological inspirer of the DataArt Museum, Gleb Nitsman, unpacks Radio-86RK and carries out its trial launch.



The current view of the computer acquired immediately. Initially, it consisted of a separate module of the system unit and a keyboard and was connected to a regular TV. But later, Alexander Long was able to get a video terminal Videoton VDX 52600, at the base of which there was a space that was ideally suited to accommodate a computer board.



The emulator of this computer can be found here .



The DataArt Museum plans to recreate the Radio-86RK assembly process. We are looking for engineers and radio amateurs, who once collected it and are ready to repeat this process.