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

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

- I became interested in radio electronics as a child. As a preschooler, he traveled on dumps on a bicycle in the vicinity of the dacha, breaking multicolored radio components from discarded receivers and televisions - they were very interesting, beautiful, made of good materials. Capacitors - ceramic with lead plates, resistors - green tracks with silver legs, electron tubes - thick space rockets. The semiconductor elements on the boards then almost did not come across - the transistor era in household appliances was only just beginning, and the previous generation appliances, i.e., tube ones, ended up in landfills. However, if there were diodes in glass cases and three-legged aliens in hats - transistors - took it right away. I really liked them.

At first, I was interested in just simulating some kind of circuit. He poked a cardboard with an awl, fixed elements and hung on a bicycle. I imagined that I was a spy, and this is a transmitter.

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

- How did the transition from aesthetic perception to practice?
- I tried to solder - they even gave me a kit for building some kind of electronic device in the second or third grade. But soldering is not an easy task: in order to succeed, it is necessary for someone to show. Nobody showed, instead of beautiful durable rations, I got some falling clods 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. He started making some simple radios, and a year later, in the fifth, he studied in the radio electronics club in Anichkov Palace. They taught to solder well, with high quality. But the pace of the receiver assembly did not suit me at all, because we had been doing this for a whole year. In the 6th grade, I made this rather complicated (11 transistor) receiver in one evening on a cardboard board.

“How did you get from analog designs to numbers?”
- Amateur radio in the classical sense by the time of transition to high school I was not very interested. Sitting, “pee-pee” broadcast and listen to the broadcast - I realized that this is not mine. Things have become interesting that perform some reasonable actions - something like electronic automation. In this regard, the analog technique is very limited - complex functions are done through numbers. Then it was in the form of logic circuits of the 155th series - a small degree of integration. Logic elements, triggers, counters, decoders - these are chips.


Central Research Institute "Morphizpribor", St. Petersburg, Chkalovsky Prospect, 46

My mom helped me a lot here, because she worked at Morphispribor, a mailbox that was involved in building digital computers for on-board computer systems of military equipment. Well, since digital microcircuits, unlike analog ones, were sold rather poorly and expensively in our Electronics stores, she got them for me. I studied the principles of building digital circuits, built several devices according to other people's circuits, invented and made some of my own and, in the 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, Modeler-Designer, and To Help the Ham Radio. In the "Young Technique" there was very little radio engineering - mostly crafts are different: mechanical, wooden.

The journal "Microprocessor means and systems" was published by the State Committee of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on science and technology.

From the industrial literature there was a good journal "Microprocessor means and systems." It seems that his mother wrote him out at Morphizpribor and from there brought them to my home. My father worked for LOMO, from there I got American magazines on computer systems. They were, of course, in English, at the same time studied the language. This was already in high school, in the late 80s.

- In the “Young Technique” did they print a computer circuit?
- It was called "UT-88" and with an LED display it was more like a programmable industrial controller. Very limited I / O, a keyboard of a couple of dozen buttons and all. One could probably program some kind of automatic office lighting control module on it. It was not a widespread use computer, it even lagged behind Radio 86RK. Moreover, very controversial circuitry solutions were used in RK. The authors nailed it to the cross, depriving them of the slightest movement. It was possible to add two or three microcircuits and make it much more expandable without losing compatibility with the existing version. Why this was done before the presentation of the design to virtually the whole country through publication in the journal Radio is still a mystery to me.


The cover of the UT For Skills special issue dedicated to the UT-88 computer

When I learned to program in assembly language, I almost immediately started to upgrade the computer. And since I immediately lost compatibility, I had to rewrite it. 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 other components?
- Mom helped with general-purpose microcircuits, low and medium degree of integration. Logic gates, counters, triggers, decoders. The microprocessor itself, peripheral LSIs and memory had to be obtained in the market, in the crowd on Krasnoputilovskaya. I got there for the first time in the 9th grade just during the assembly period of my RC.


Design project for the Electronics store, 12. Gagarin Ave., 12. Leningrad, 1971

Resellers hustled in the Electronics store on Gagarina Street, 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 unrealistic money. In general, radio components in the retail network during the Soviet era were unreasonably expensive. Some powerful transistor for line scan TV could cost, for example, 15 rubles. Yes, a TV would not start without it, but 15 rubles is a huge amount. Because the salary is from 120 to 180. Simple microcircuits of the 155th series (for example, 155LA3) cost, in my opinion, 30 cents. 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 40-50 rubles for dealers. Moreover, without a guarantee that they work.

The processors were then made using MOS technology (field-effect transistors), and this is such a thing with a very high (almost infinite) input impedance. As a result, the electric charge on the human body, with a simple touch of the fingers with the fingers of the ICs, could damage the microcircuit for one or two times. Now the IC inputs on field-effect transistors have learned to make protected from static electricity, but before 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, they had to be soldered with a special low-voltage soldering iron with an earthed sting and with an earthing bracelet on his hand.

In production, installers wore special anti-static robes, grounded mounting tables with a conductive coating were used, and increased humidity was maintained in the premises - a lot of things. Therefore, when a speculator just pulls the processor out of his pocket (even in candy foil), there is no guarantee that it is not punched. In "Electronics" they were selling a cat in a poke.

In general, I traveled there. It was expensive there, a very small selection and a great desire for sellers to put on a schoolboy. Because a person knows that he has some percentage of broken circuits, he needs to get them somewhere, and he chooses the simplest victim for this. A gift for the weakest.

- What did the process of communication with resellers look like?
- As in Ivan Vasilievich, but not so grotesque. Someone was holding a piece of paper with the names of microcircuits. Or it was necessary to guess in appearance that this person was a reseller and ask: “Is there such-and-such?” He said how much it costs.

- The resellers looked somehow special?
- No, but you walk around the hall, look, and everything becomes clear. It's like a janitor in a hotel guessed that it was not a foreigner who wanted to enter, but a Soviet man - intuition.

“Did they have any relationship with the store employees?”
“I don't think so.” They sold what was stolen from production. Their prices were lower than in the store, two times. Because retail wrapping is completely unscrupulous. If you assemble, for example, a color TV from parts purchased in a store, it would not cost 700 rubles, but seven thousand.


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

- And how did you end up at Krasnoputilovskaya?
- I don’t remember who told me about her, but everything was much more democratic there. It seems that the resellers in Electronics are already a derivative of those that were on Krasnoputilovskaya in front of the Young Technician. There the 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 gold contained in radioelements. Products of military acceptance and industrial then still cost about the same. There were industrial and military series of radioelements - secondly there were gilt legs, gold wires inside, and they looked very beautiful.

I remember that microcircuits of military and industrial series differed in letter marking. And then everything military was gilded, and the prices were almost the same. Then merchants from the Caucasus appeared on the market and began to ask "YELLOW." They were treated with disdain, because quite normal people were hanging out in the crowd, if you didn’t take hucksters, who were sorry to give a good element base under the knife for the cost of smelting gold. But prices still crawled up, because yellow was bought in bulk directly from those who took out the military element base from production - and an increase in demand naturally led to an increase in prices. The same ROM with gold findings in a very short time began to cost not 10 rubles, but 20. A


microprocessor in civilian (top) and military design. For the latter, hunters of yellow

- Tell us about the atmosphere at 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 has active elements, someone has passive ones. Solutions for etching circuit boards, drills. Almost all components of the manufacturing process of electronic devices. Some kind of legs, gaskets, nuts, bolts - as for the mechanics. And so all year round, every weekend.

- Wasn't it scary? This is an illegal story.
- To take microchips in production is also not very legal. I was told that in the backwoods of people who collected computers, they checked for where they got the elemental base. Because outside Moscow and Leningrad it was generally impossible to get anything. There was no Electronics store in which at least theoretically something could be bought, but the microprocessor series was not delivered by mail. There were some mailing lists of radio components, but it's just some kind of hellish junk - so that you can fix the Record TV in the village. And so they said that someone there pressed OBHSS. But there was still no legal way, whatever one may say, and from a moral point of view, this did not bother me at all.

- How was the buying process?
- As in any market. Walk around a few people, look at the average price, choose. Sometimes local deficiency occurred. They didn’t bring, say, an eight-digit shift register. The person has not stolen 100 pieces. And people need to collect sinclair, someone has already started a business. The market cut through this, and the price immediately soared.

It was easier for me, I didn’t do business-wide procurement at that time. When he began to collect and sell AONs, it was already "Juno" and 1991.

- Before moving to Juno, the flea market still had a transitional version.
- Yes, from “Young technician” she moved diagonally through Krasnoputilovskaya for the railway crossing. There everyone was hanging out in the field. It was the dawn of the Sinclair era. There were many sinclerists with some cassettes, programs, joysticks. Caller IDs also started around the same time. In my opinion, their first version was 1990 - on the Z80 processor. It was a popular thing, and again demand for a complete set grew, and with it prices.

- Did the Z80 have a Soviet counterpart?
- Yes, T34. He was called a "tank." For some reason, it was marked T34VM1 and "sickle and hammer." I don’t know whether the sinclators started up on this T34 (AONs worked on it), because it was completely compatible in software, but whether it is seamless at the command execution level is not known. The microcode is different.


The same "tank" - processor T34VM1

- Did the police appear on the market?
- Somehow the cops drove the people, everyone ran leisurely, I ran too. The impression was that the task was simply to spray the crowd, to scare. It’s like during the Cold War - a fighter flew near the border of other people's territorial waters, made a maneuver - the enemy was alert. Maybe they screwed someone, - I did not see. But, most likely, sellers paid off. To prove the speculation, apparently, it was very difficult even for sellers - well, you have a suitcase with details. For those who bought, it’s an absolutely painless story. I saw people running somewhere, I saw a “bobik” in the distance. Scattered with everyone. If something still needed to be bought, he went in circles and came back.

- In addition to electronics lovers, was there anyone else hanging out in the crowd? Music lovers, for example?
- I think they had their own hangouts. When the Krasnoputilov mob was transferred for the move, and then to the "Juno", there they already didn’t sell it. Some things, Chinese technology. It was already the “market of everything." But the Krasnoputilov mob was purely electronic.

I remember, once in the middle of the crowd, thimbles appeared. But radio amateurs are specific people. Strangers did not take root - no one played with them. They tried to portray the game hype - they also had dummy players, but they copied them right away in physiognomy.

- Sellers of buyers cheated?
- It happened. They put in something expensive for you, but it doesn’t work. Of course, there is no guarantee. The processor check is almost impossible. Unless you bring a car battery with you, connect a sinclair and a pocket TV from it. Maybe it was. A memory check - something that Sergey Zonov talked about in an interview - existed. I remember there was such a block, you insert a microcircuit into the panel, press the button - after some time there is either a red or a green signal. But they told me that there were people with left-wing devices that always gave a green signal - imitators of the test.


Oscilloscope. Radio Magazine, No. 9, 1987

Nobody checked logic circuits. TTL-series were resistant to static and were cheap, so there was no point. True, if you soldered a faulty chip, this could be a problem. Let's say a circuit of 50 microcircuits does not start, you need to diagnose it, you start to look at the oscilloscope. If there are connections between the microcircuits, they make it difficult to check - since the output of one is fed to the input of the other and to check this other one must cut the track. With two-layer boards, they did so. You cut a path - you give an impact - you look. Your entrance is freed, as it were. In multi-layer boards, this is impossible. You cannot cut the path in the inner layer.


Dual chip KR565RUZ5

If you suspect that this chip is defective, you need to remove it from the board. Drinking is a very destructive operation. Even if you bite it, you need to pull out the legs one at a time and clean the hole with a heated needle, then to put a new one - all the legs at once. There are special means for drinking - these are linings. But they too often overheat the board and damage it. In general, after the first soldering, the interlayer contacts are already worse. After the second board becomes a curve, you need to put the bus and so on. Therefore, for example, many assembled sinclair and RC in sockets. But this is also unreliable, because good imported panels are very expensive - you can’t supply them for each chip), and in Soviet panels there is poor contact - and the board is slightly bent, the legs of the chips creak out of the panels, and the computer crashes.

- You also bought a soldering iron in the market?
- Soldering iron was easy to get - they were sold in a store. I started with large oak - 40 watts, a sting with a ballpoint pen thick. Simple analog pieces with such a tool are easy to solder. For microcircuits, a six-watt soldering iron, my mother, in my opinion, brought from work. And in the crowd, good soldering irons were sold, including home-made ones. Very high quality. A few years ago a dog ate such a soldering iron. I worked for them for about 20 years, probably. As thin as a ballpoint pen. He was very comfortable, with good balance in his hand - neither the pen nor the sting outweighed. The sting is heating, then - the plastic part, carbolic with a side, so that the heat does not go into the hand. A historical soldering iron, in it an immense number of stings burned out. I soldered very delicate things to them, and squeezed with it as if it were an extension of my hand

- was it easy to get rosin?
- No problem. Everything related to such oak amateur radio was available. But microcircuits needed a flux - an alcohol solution of rosin. You take alcohol, which you also had to get, you throw rosin into it, you get an alcohol solution. The solder is needed not POS-40, but POS-61 - low temperature. Because POS-40 - they only tin bucket or teapots. We need a low-temperature solder so as not to overheat, and it is desirable in thin rods. Millimeter-two, like this. Well, the technology is a little different. Do not rosin something there, but with a brush you moisten the right places with a liquid flux, a little bit of solder. When the connection is moistened correctly, do not need to be coated with a soldering iron. He gains a certain amount of solder, you just touch the connection, and the solder itself flows where necessary due to the force of surface tension.

- Have you been to other markets in other cities?
- On fleas. They are all very similar to each other. I didn’t go to Moscow for elements; I just had enough here. Then it became even easier when “Juno” appeared and trade was legalized. In Moscow, the same crowd transformed into a huge Mitinsky radio market. Official high-level suppliers work there, and companies order any honest kit.

- That is, the St. Petersburg market is not so developed now?
- Yes, he did not grow up with us, he went into trade with something around, and suppliers work separately, without reference to the place. I have not been to the Juno for 10 years. Maybe someone out there has a representative office. But when I search the Internet, I don’t see that people with a large list of opportunities have a container on Juno. And if you look at Moscow ones, it’s very often “a company is such and such, we are doing this and that, and we are also represented in Mitino”. Trading Moscow is just interesting for its ranks. They followed a path that is historically closer to them.