Gleb Nitsman: “I found the very end of an era when people had not yet chased the gold contained in radio elements”

Gleb Nitsman has been working in DataArt for more than 20 years and in recent years has been mainly engaged in automating the company's internal business processes. He also remains the main inspiration and ideologist of the DataArt Museum . While still in ninth grade, he decided to assemble his first computer. So began his trip to Leningrad flea market.

- I got interested in radio electronics in my childhood. Even as a preschooler, he cycled around a landfill in the suburbs of a dacha, breaking out of radio stations of multicolored radio parts from discarded receivers and television sets - they were very interesting, beautiful, made from good materials. The capacitors are ceramic with lead plates, the resistors are green tracks with silvery legs, electronic lamps are thick space rockets. At that time, the semiconductor elements on the boards almost did not come across - the transistor era in household appliances was only beginning, and the previous generation equipment, that is, the tube one, turned out to be at the dumps. However, if you came across diodes in glass cases and three-legged aliens in hats - transistors - took them right away. I really liked them.
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At first, it was interesting to me just to imitate some kind of schemes. He wriggled the carton with an awl, fastened the elements and hung it on the bicycle. I imagined that I was a spy, and this is a transmitter.

There was a period when my friend and I collected measuring instruments. Individual ammeters, voltmeters, large manometers, and sometimes even whole measuring devices were found at the same landfills.

- How did the transition from aesthetic perception to practice occur?
- I tried to solder - they even gave me a set to build some kind of electronic device in the second or third grade. But rations are not easy: in order to succeed, it is necessary for someone to show. Nobody showed, instead of a beautiful, solid ration, I got some falling lumps of solder, the device did not work, and I abandoned everything.

Then, in 1983, when I was in 4th grade, I got carried away for the second time, for real. I began to make some simple radio receivers, and a year later, in the fifth, I studied in the radio electronics circle in the Anichkov Palace. They taught you to solder it well, qualitatively. But the pace of receiver assembly did not suit me at all, because we had been doing this for a whole year. In the 6th grade on a cardboard board, I made this rather complicated (11 transistors) receiver in one evening.

- How did you come from analog designs to numbers?
- Amateur radio in the classical sense at the time of transition to high school I was not very uninteresting. Sitting, “pee-pee-pee” broadcast and listen - I realized that it was not mine. Things that perform some reasonable actions — something like electronic automatics — have become interesting. In this regard, analogue technology is very limited - complex functions are done by means of numbers. Then it was in the form of a 155-series logic circuit - a small degree of integration. Logic elements, triggers, counters, descramblers are such microcircuits.


Central Research Institute "Morphyspribor", St. Petersburg, Chkalovsky Ave, 46

My mother helped me a lot here because she worked at Morphise Device, a mailbox that was building digital computers for on-board computing systems of military equipment. Well, since digital microcircuits, unlike analog ones, were sold rather poorly and expensively in our electronics stores, it took them to me. I studied the principles of building digital circuits, built several devices using foreign circuits, invented and made some of my own and — in ninth grade — finally decided that I could build Radio 86RK .

- Have any magazines been published on this topic?
- On digital technology and computers there were articles in the magazines “Radio”, “Model-designer”, “To help the radio amateur”. There was very little in the “Juno Technique” of radio engineering - mostly crafts were different: mechanical, wooden.

The journal “Microprocessor-based Means and Systems” was published by the State Committee of the USSR Council of Ministers on science and technology.

From industrial literature there was a good magazine “Microprocessor-based Means and Systems”. It seems that his mother wrote out for Morphyspribor and from there brought them to my home. My father worked for LOMO, from there I got American magazines on computing systems. They were, of course, in English, at the same time studying the language. It was already in high school, in the late 80s.

- In the "Yunom technology" also printed a computer circuit?
- It was called the "YUT-88" and with a LED display rather resembled a programmable industrial controller. Very limited means of input and output, the keyboard of a couple of dozen buttons and that's it. On it it was possible, probably, to program well some control module for automatic office lighting. It was not a computer of wide use, it was even behind Radio 86RK. Moreover, in the "RK" were used very controversial circuit solutions. The authors nailed it to the cross, denying the possibility of the slightest movement. You could add two or three chips and make it much more expandable without losing compatibility with the existing version. Why this was done before the presentation of the design of the entire country through the publication in the magazine “Radio” is still a mystery to me.


Cover of the “UT For Skillful” special number dedicated to the “UT-88” computer

When I learned how to program in assembler, I almost immediately started upgrading my computer. And since I immediately lost compatibility, I had to rewrite. With that eight-bit technique, this could be done by the efforts of one person.

- In addition to chips with my mother's work, where did you get the other components?
- Mom helped with chips of general use, low and medium integration. Logic gates, counters, triggers, descramblers. The microprocessor itself, the BIS peripherals and memory had to be found on the market, on the crowd in Krasnoputilovskaya. I got there for the first time in the 9th grade just at the time of assembling my RK.


The design of the store-salon "Electronics", etc. Gagarin, 12. Leningrad, 1971

The dealers were still jostling in the store “Electronics” on Gagarin, 12 - inside, in the hall directly. There have always been a lot of people. Officially, virtually nothing needed to build a computer was sold, but what was worth the unreal money. In general, radio components in the retail network in the Soviet era were unreasonably expensive. Any powerful transistor for line scanning of the TV could cost, for example, 15 rubles. Yes, without it the TV will not start, but 15 rubles is a huge amount. Because the salary is from 120 to 180. Simple chips of the 155th series (for example, 155LA3) cost, in my opinion, kopecks, each at 30. It is more complicated (registers, counters) - a ruble or two. I have never seen processors on sale, I don’t even know their price. But, as far as I remember, they cost the dealers 40-50 rubles. And without guarantee that they work.

The processors then did MOS technology (field-effect transistors), and this is such a thing with very high (almost infinite) input resistance. As a result, an electric charge on the body of a person, with a simple touch of an IC with the fingers, could break the chip one or two times. Now the IC inputs on field-effect transistors have learned to make them protected from static electricity, and before that there was no such protection, and at all stages of human interaction with them it was necessary to use strong means of protection against static. That is, they were delivered wrapped in foil, you had to solder with a special low-voltage soldering iron with a grounded sting and with a grounding strap on your arm.

At the production, fitters wore special antistatic bathrobes, grounded assembly tables with a conductive coating were used, and high humidity was maintained in the rooms — a lot of things. Therefore, when the speculator just gets the processor out of his pocket (even in the foil from the candy), there is no guarantee that it is not pierced. In "Electronics" they sold the cat in a bag.

In general, I traveled there. There was expensive, a very small selection and a great desire of sellers to put on a schoolboy. Because a person knows that he has a certain percentage of non-working microcircuits, he needs to put them somewhere, and he chooses the simplest victim for this. A gift for the weakest.

- How did the process of communication with dealers look like?
- As in "Ivan Vasilyevich", only not so grotesque. Someone was holding a piece of paper with the names of the chips. Or it was necessary to guess in appearance that this person was a second-hand dealer and ask: “Is there such a thing?” He said how much it cost.

- Resellers looked somehow special?
- No, but walk around the room, look, and everything becomes clear. It was like a janitor in a hotel who guessed that he wanted to enter not a foreigner, but a Soviet person - intuition.

- Did they have any relationship with the store employees?
- I do not think. They sold that which is shamed from production. Prices they were lower than in the store, two times. Because retail cheat is completely shameless. If you collect, for example, a color TV from parts purchased in a store, it would not cost 700 rubles, but seven thousand.


There were four total stores “Young Technician” in Leningrad. The very first, flagship, was located at 55 along Krasnoputilovskaya Street.

- And how did you get to Krasnoputilovskaya?
- I don’t remember who told me about her, but everything was much more democratic there. It seems that the dealers in the "Electronics" - is already a derivative of those that were on Krasnoputilovskaya before the "Young Technician". There prices were lower, and the choice is much better. And then there was still no refining technology - I found the very edge of an era when people had not yet chased the gold contained in radio elements. Products of military acceptance and industrial then still cost about the same. There were industrial and military series of radio elements - secondly there were gilded legs, golden wires inside, and they looked very beautiful.

I remember that the chips of the military and industrial series were distinguished by letter marking. And all the military was gilded, and prices are almost the same. Then traders from the Caucasus appeared on the market, they began to ask for “yellow”. They were treated with disdain, because on the crowd, if you did not take baryg, quite normal people were hanging out, who were sorry to give a good element base for the cost of smelting gold. But prices still crawled up, because the yellow bought in bulk directly from those who carried the military element base from the production - and an increase in demand naturally led to an increase in price. The same ROM with gold outputs in a very short time was no longer worth 10 rubles, but 20.


The microprocessor in civil (top) and military execution. For the latter, seekers of yellow hunted

- Tell us about the atmosphere of the "Young Technician".
- It was interesting, of course. A cloud of people, the positions of hundreds of elements are written on pieces of paper. Someone specialized in analog circuitry, someone in digital. Someone active elements, someone passive. Solutions for etching boards, drills. Almost all the components of the process of manufacturing electronic devices. Some legs, gaskets, Gadget, bolts - with regard to mechanics. And so all year round, every weekend.

- It was not terrible? This is an illegal story.
- Taking chips at work is also not very legal. I was told that in the outback people who assembled computers checked for where they took the element base. Because outside of Moscow and Leningrad it was impossible to get anything at all. There was no Electronics store, in which at least theoretically something could be bought, and the microprocessor series was not delivered by mail. There were some catalogs for the distribution of radio components, but this is just some hell of old stuff - so that Record TV can be repaired in the village. And they said that someone pressed there OBKHSS. But, anyway, there was no legal way, anyway, and from a moral point of view it didn’t bother me at all.

- How was the buying process?
- As in any market. You go around a few people, you look at the average price, you choose. Sometimes there was a local shortage. Not brought, say, any eight-bit shift register. Do not steal a man 100 pieces. And people need to collect Sinclair, from someone already business was born. The market has penetrated it, and the price immediately flew up.

It was easier for me, I was not doing business purchases at that time. When I began to collect and sell AONy, it was already “Juno” and 1991.

- Before moving to “Yunon”, the flea market still had a transitional version.
- Yes, from the “Young Technician” it moved diagonally through Krasnoputilovskaya for the railway crossing. There in the field and all hanging out. It was the dawn of the Sinclair era. There were a lot of Sinkleristov with some cassettes, programs, joysticks. Caller IDs also began at about the same time. In my opinion, their first version was 1990 - on the processor Z80. It was a popular thing, and again the demand for a complete set grew, and with it the price.

- Did the Z80 have a Soviet counterpart?
- Yes, T34. He was called "tank". For some reason, it was marked T34BM1 and "hammer and sickle". I don’t know whether the synclers started up on this T34 (caller IDs on it worked), because it was fully compatible with the software, but it’s not known whether it’s compatible at the command execution level. The microcode is different.


The same "tank" - processor T34BM1

- Militia appeared on the market?
- Once the cops drove the people, they all slowly ran, I also ran. The impression was that the task was simply to disperse the crowd, to scare. It’s like during the Cold War - the fighter flew past the border of foreign territorial waters, made a maneuver - the enemy became alert. Maybe someone and screw, - I have not seen. But, most likely, the sellers paid off. It seems that it was very difficult to prove speculation even for sellers - well, you have a suitcase with details. For those who bought, absolutely absolutely painless story. I saw people running somewhere, I saw Bobby in the distance. Dispersed with all. If something else had to be bought, I went in circles and came back.

- Besides the fans of electronics, was someone else hanging out on the crowd? Music lovers, for example?
- It seems to me that they had their own parties. When the Krasnoputilov crowd was transferred for the move, and then to the "Juno", there they already didn’t sell anything. Some things, Chinese equipment. It was already the “market of everything”. But the Krasnoputilov crowd was purely electronic.

I remember that somehow, thimbleriggers appeared right in the middle of the crowd. But radio amateurs are specific people. The aliens did not survive - no one played with them. They tried to portray the game excitement - they also had fake players, but they immediately sketched them in the face.

- Sellers of buyers cheated?
- Sometimes. You smell something expensive, but it does not work. Understandably, there is no guarantee. The processor is almost impossible to check. Is that to bring a car battery, from him to connect Sinclair and a pocket TV. Maybe it was. The memory check - that which Sergey Zonov was talking about in an interview existed. I remember, there was such a block, you insert a microchip into the panel, you press a button - after a while either a red or a green signal. But they told me that there were people with left instruments who always gave a green signal — test simulators.


Oscilloscope. Radio Magazine, No. 9, 1987

Logic chips no one checked. Static-resistant TTL-series were cheap, so there was no point. True, if you soldered a faulty chip, this could be a problem. Say, a circuit of 50 microcircuits does not start, it is necessary to diagnose, you begin to look with an oscilloscope. If there are connections between the microcircuits, they interfere with checking - since the output of one is fed to the input of the other and to check this other one has to cut the track. With double-layer boards and did. You cut the path - you give the impact - you look. You seem to be getting access. In multilayer boards this is impossible to do. You can't cut the track in the inner layer.


Dual Chip KR565RUZ5

If you suspect that this chip is faulty, you need to remove it from the board. Feeding is a very destructive operation. Even if you bit it, you need to pull out the legs one by one and clean the hole with a heated needle, then put a new one - all the legs at once. For watering there are special tools - such nakladochka. But they, too, often overheat the board and damage it. In general, after the first soldering, interlayer contacts are worse. After the second board becomes a curve, you need to put the bus and so on. Therefore, for example, many assembled Sinter and RK in sockets. But this is also unreliable, because good imported panels are very expensive - you can't put them on every chip), and there is poor contact in the Soviet panels - and the board should be slightly bent, the legs of the chips will creak out of the panels, and the computer crashes.

- You also bought a soldering iron on the market?
- Soldering was easy to get - they were sold in the store. I started with a large oak - 40 watts, a sting with a ballpoint pen thick. Simple analog things like this soldering tool are easy. For microcircuits, the six-watt soldering iron is, in my opinion, my mother brought me from work. And on the crowd, good soldering irons were sold, including homemade ones. Very high quality. . 20, . , . , — , . , — , , . , . , ,

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