Is AGAT a bad copy of Apple?
“The first time I saw Agate was in August 1983. And I had the opportunity to use it for a week. After observing the computer after boot, I christened it “yablochka” , ”Leo Bors, an eye surgeon and programmer, writes about Agat in the BYTE magazine (November 1984).
Once, while 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 floppy disk images with software.
In the section "There were fables" on this site, a brief overview was given.BYTE magazine articles for November 1984. The article was entitled “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 they talk about whether Agat is a clone of Apple II, and if so, how bad. I quickly found the original article and read it with pleasure (not so often you find publications about domestic PCs in famous Western magazines).
The author of the article was Leo D. Bores, an eye surgeon and part-time director of a small company developing medical software for Apple, which at that time collaborated with Svyatoslav Fedorov and visited the USSR several times, where he met with Agat. I was surprised at how well Mr. Bors “owned the subject” - more like a programmer than a 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 and I (a professional translator) decided to rectify the situation and made our own translation.
You can express your opinion on whether computers of the Soviet era were copies of foreign ones and, if so, how bad, in the comments.
NB It is worth noting that the author of the article worked with a mock Agate. These machines were assembled "on the knee" only 2 pieces, and in some aspects they were very different from subsequent serial Agates. An important difference was the performance: the prototype Agate had it by about a third less, since a partitioned microprocessor was used there. And on serial computers installed licensed clones of MOS Technology 6502 of foreign production. Thanks to this, the processor performance of the serial Agate was the same as that of the Apple II.
AGATE
Soviet Apple II
The first Russian microcomputer is a bad copy of Apple
At the mention of a personal computer, an ordinary Soviet citizen will simply be speechless. A computer? At home? “Ne voz moshna!” In Russia there is not even such a thing as “private”: production is not focused on consumer goods, the dishwasher is something from the realm of fantasy, and you can only have your own personal computer dream. For Russians, computers are associated with huge machine rooms that are crammed with obscure electronic equipment and hidden in the bowels of a secret research institute somewhere in the Siberian wilderness under the reliable guard of a platoon of soldiers.
Posted by Leo D. Bores, MD, MD, an internationally renowned eye surgeon for his pioneering work with the Soviet surgeon in developing radial keratotomy, a fundamentally new method for microsurgical correction of myopia (myopia) and astigmatism. He held the first joint Soviet-American ophthalmology seminar and is currently conducting ophthalmology seminars 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 at kiosks throughout Moscow), and Russian goods appear in the west. But still, the prototype desktop computer, presented by the Soviets at the Moscow Industrial Exhibition in July 1983, was a big surprise. The computing machine manufactured 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 minicomputer category, on which there was usually 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 the earlier IBM 1401 and 370 models are most often used, many of which are equipped with obsolete readers with punch tapes and perforators. With the exception of Hewlett-Packard and sometimes quite rare DECs (and possibly hidden in the bowels of the Ural Mountains VAX), computers in Soviet institutions are outdated, although they work properly. So an Apple compatible computer is definitely a step forward.
I first saw Agate in August 1983. And I had the opportunity to use it for a week. After observing the computer after boot, I christened it "yablochka". The operating system and ROM (read-only memory) seemed to be on Apple's computer yesterday and underwent subtle changes, and the case was patriotically painted red, so that the nickname fits perfectly.
Hardware
Agate is definitely not portable. Rather, it is a transportable computer (if you do not carry it too far, you will not be threatened with a hernia or back pain). I think it can be called impressive. The monitor that comes with the machine weighs almost as much as the computer itself. This is a standard 30 cm SECAM color TV with an RCA connector on the rear panel for receiving composite video signals.
The keyboard can be attached to the front of the computer with two lightweight metal clips. There is no space for cable storage. The meter cable from the keyboard is terminated by a 9-pin DIN connector (Deutsche Industrie Norm), which connects to the back of the system unit.
The keyboard is full-sized with a raised upper edge (angle of inclination 15 degrees). The layout is traditional for Russian typewriters, which has nothing to do with what you have ever seen: in the Cyrillic alphabet - 33 letters (31 of them indicate sounds). The Control key is located in the upper left corner. The Return key is practically not allocated in size and is positioned so that it is easy to accidentally touch it. I never found the Escape key. To the right of the keyboard is a full-fledged numeric keypad - it is separated from the alphanumeric block by a set of presumably programmable function keys. Above the alphabetical block are traditional numeric / auxiliary keys. Cyrillic and English letters are written on the keys under each other. Auto repeat and lower case are provided. Contact bounce protection is unstable and sometimes causes a false key response, especially with fast data entry. It feels like Agate keys resemble the keyboard of an IBM PC, and even the sound produces a similar. Since the keyboard is quite thick (3.5 cm) and has a slightly steeper than usual angle of inclination, working with it quickly tires, and with prolonged use, pain in the hands appears.
On the right side of the system unit, a single 5.25 '' standard height drive is integrated. The possibility of installing another drive, apparently, is not provided, in any case not internal. There is also no rear port for adding a drive. Agat 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 looked inside through the holes in the back and top. Before me was not a very encouraging sight. I saw the nightmarish wilds of wires. The 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 back), and came to the conclusion that in front of me was a kind of backplane, with rigidly attached daughter boards.
Software
I did not expect that I would study a Russian computer - especially Russian Apple - so I did not bring with me the “tool kit” with which I usually “dissect” Apple floppies. However, I managed to conduct several tests and record my impressions of the system. On my next trip, I studied DOS (disk operating system) in more detail.
In my opinion, the system boots a little slower than on Apple under DOS 3.3. As I later found out, this slowness is not limited to the boot process. The engine and the drive head movement mechanism produced more noise than might be expected. The welcome program was in Russian and was intended to demonstrate the three available graphics modes. Apparently, the graphic mode was used to display the text. I was convinced of this after watching the demo and rebooting Agatha. The computer entered normal text mode by displaying a random set of English letters. It was obvious that the Apple Tool Kit was used to display the Cyrillic alphabet in the user interface. This was confirmed by the listing of the source code of the program.
Also, from the listing, I realized that a variation of Applesoft BASIC was recorded in the ROM. I said “variation”, because although all the usual Applesoft BASIC commands had their place, they were used in a slightly different way. And in some cases they were handled differently. For example, the TEXT command. On Agate, you can use the TEXT command with an argument in the form of a number specifying the position of the cursor. In general, the teams worked 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 directly access text and graphic video pages - there were three text pages in the demo program. I realized that in general you can access seven text pages, but I have not tried it myself. And given that in the basic configuration of the computer only 64 KB of RAM (RAM) is installed and, apparently, there is no possibility to expand the memory, it seems to me that this is a very useful feature.
Agate has three graphics modes - low, medium and high resolution - and the graphics are generally in line with expectations. 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 practically absent. I also liked the ability to set color in text mode. Also, the text can be displayed in medium resolution mode.
The screen seems to be with bit-mapped memory, and the commands for changing video modes are the same as in Apple, plus commands for additional pages have been added. Using color and graphic commands in low resolution mode, I was able to display characters with options similar to Apple. Based on this, I suggested that the screen uses the same bitmap memory system as Apple.
Only one “application” was available to me - a program for surgical calculations. Representatives of ELORG informed me that viewing the source code of the program is “forbidden”, but, to their great disappointment, I quickly circumvented the protection. The program was written in BASIC, using the English language. The program code looked clumsy and dazzled with IF ... THEN loops. I reduced the program by 5 Kbytes, just compressing the code.
Performance tests
I was not preparing for rigorous testing of the computer, however, I had with myself the last BYTE issue with an article on performance testing. I started programs on Agate to calculate the sieve of Eratosphen and the Fibonacci sequence and found out that it was about 30% slower than the Apple computer. Saving to disk (SAVE) BASIC-programs was 15% slower, and binary and text files - 22% slower. Download (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 on Agate a calculation program 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 slowdown of the system, possibly due to the low performance of the chips or due to the long conductive tracks and the use of wall mounting. These factors are likely to cause crashes when operating at higher speeds. In any case, I'm not an electronic engineer, so most likely I 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 the DOS floppy disk so I could try 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 an initialized disk using this system on Apple. This is probably an attempt to avoid prosecution by Apple.
However, this does not exclude the opposite. Examining the initialized disk using the Locksmith 5.0 sector-by-sector editor showed that VTOC (the table of contents for the volume), the RWTS routine as part of DOS (the routine that is responsible for reading and writing disk sectors) and the file manager are identical to DOS 3.3. After loading, the disc can be read and written to any of the systems. In Soviet DOS, some of the functionality of Apple DOS is missing, for example, boot code. Since Apple includes this part of the code only in order to ensure DOS compatibility with older versions of Apple with less than 48 Kb memory, it is obvious that it is not needed on a Russian machine. But all the commands are in place - for example, in the Russian system CHR $ (4) also transfers the command to DOS - so the differences are generally not significant.
AGAT for the teacher?
In general, the computer made a positive impression on me, especially taking into account the source of copying, however I would not buy it. It is 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 there is not covered by the supply, which means that Agate can also be in demand outside the Soviet Union. It should sell well in Russia as a computing device for use in institutes or other institutions, but not at home.
If ELORG plans to actively promote Agate in the west, it will have to significantly reduce the price, which, as I was informed, is $ 17,000, including software. When I told the representatives of ELORG which 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 certainly did not study the proposals of competitors.
As a government organization, ELORG can afford to sell Agate at a very low price in order to create a market for it. However, I think that even if Agat entered the modern international market, he would not have the slightest chance of success. He has neither elegance nor technical superiority 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 making towards the wider public. However, given the paranoia of the Soviet authorities about the leak of information and their tendency to bury everything with seven seals, I doubt that Agat was designed for home use. Soviet leaders were very suspicious of new technologies, and they could see the risk in the very idea of using a cybernetic device.
Even if the Russians could use the microcomputer for home use, they could compete with more mundane, but desirable consumer goods - refrigerators and washing machines - only at a very low price. And why does a Soviet citizen need a personal computer? He does not need to worry about investments or calculate income tax.
It is possible that Agate was developed for educational purposes: there is an assumption that it is intended for the higher education system. I do not see any opportunities for its use in high school, at least in the near future. In Russian education, the emphasis is on reading, writing and counting, while mechanical memorization and memorization is encouraged by high marks. In my opinion, the conservatism of the primary education system is not at all in favor of the possible computerization of classrooms.
It is unlikely that in the foreseeable future you will see Agate in a local computer store. The high exchange rate of the US dollar in the stock market and the nearly 60 percent duty that the US will burden this car transfer Agate to the category of exotic devices.