For anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of Bulgaria's IT industry, I suggest Victor Petrov's book, "Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023). The ebook is even available open access for free.
Oh, I'm gonna have to look into that! I was considering following up my Radio-86RK kitbuild with a Galaksija repro kitbuild - Would make for some very nice supplemental reading!
300KG, with wheels, so it is easy to move -- until you drop a wheel into the hole in the raised floor under the drive, where all the cables went down under the floor. Then get two friends so the three of you can get it level again and moving again. Been there, done that. You DO NOT want to do that with a vertical tape drive!
A few years ago this same type of tester was up for sale here in Hungary on a local auction site. IIRC, the asking price was more than 100 000 HUF, which was rougly 400USD in 2018 (now it would be about $280 due to inflation). HEY! I just checked, and it is still up for sale from the same seller, but now for just 30 000HUF / $85. It is claimed to be brand new (NOS). I just asked him if he has documentation for it. EDIT: He answered, and unfortunately he has no documentation for it.
Yes! _That's_ what's now no bigger than the palm of your hand these days (external drives), and CPUs (SoCs) are even smaller, and everything has anywhere from 100 to 1000 times the capacity, processing speed, and at a small fraction of the actual power consumption! Amazing how tech has changed in a tad less than 40 years!
In fact a fingernail sized microSD working with 3.3V has billions order of magnitude more capacity than this 300kg cabinet, 3 phase powered cabinet. But the people who have designed these ancient technologies paved the way for all of our digital living. Allways respect ancien hardware.
At first sight, that looks a copy of a DEC removable hard disk: with RM03 (67MB)) or RM05 (256MB) packs even down to a DEC color scheme. In the west they would have been 70k$ back in the 1980s. The pull about 30A on spin up. If the heads crash, there is enough metal in the air that sometimes the next disk will crash too. As a summer student, I can tell you that they broke easily and the budget for maintaining them was enormous. Good times.
Except for color, they are also nearly identical to IBM 360 era disk drives. Can't remember the model numbers anymore, but I think 2716 might have been one of them. I don't remember one pack crashing eating the adjacent packs much. In a good machine room with proper ventilation all the dust would have been pulled down under the floor. There were also air filters in the drive cabinet itself, and they would catch most all the dust. I do remember when long seeks would get these machines rocking, and one would start banging into the drive next to it, resulting in possible head crashes.
It is beautiful, you're absolutely right. Thank you for continuing to take us on these fascinating trips through the looking-glass, to see the mysterious alternate world of Soviet-era computing!
I have the same EC-5053 disk pack (with slightly different labeling) and a few ORWO tape reels from Ukraine. I was looking for information about the disk drive for it and found your video. I already saw some other ones from you and i'm really amazed by all the fantastic parts and equipments you can find, and all the information you give about them. Thanks you! And good luck for all your projects. It's great to know that some equipments are saved in this museum in Kyiv, even if not in working (yet?). I hope that some other museums in other countries have also saved precious remains of computer technology history! If some of you here have good adresses, please share!
Good luck guys! I'm always fascinated that such technology still exists. It warms my heart that you try to resurrect the system... A tip: If you manage do do that, then the next project is a maket of the old control room of the duga radar :) Use Oled screens for the computers :D
@@ChernobylFamily Yes, like a relay or like a headphone jack with a switched contact. Probably manufactured with existing tooling and materials well characterised by use in open frame relays.
@@ChernobylFamilyIn America those were known as "telephone switches". They were used by the telephone company as part of the switching equipment. Lever switches were more common than push buttons, but the internal workings were almost identical in both kinds. They were extremely reliable in both mechanical operation and electrical operation, and could be easily cleaned or adjusted when needed.
Cool! Fascinating journey into the past. These great and intricate machines, so many different and individually engineered and laboriously assembled components. The labor and genious of hundreds. The aesthetic of those builds. Craftsmanship. Durability. Serviceability. And all that to store a few megabytes of data.
90 MB was HUGE. Probably from the mid 1980s. When I started working with computers, spinning packs like that had more like 5 MB, though pretty soon 20 MB became standard for the 5-disk packs, if I remember correctly.
Nice to seen these two obscure pieces of technology reunited again since decades. The museum seems to be a must sen for any nerd... Hope you'll find the documentation and that there will be a follow up about this stuff.
@@ChernobylFamily that's great. I love that people are still involved this way, and hapilly share their knowledge around a subject. Good old internet spirit here.
@@ChernobylFamily I can open sandacite.bg. I dont know whay you can't. Anyway here is the documentation. drive.google.com/file/d/1Rov0zgC1YrxJnpSfHAPAnVgCz-gYUyWI/view?usp=sharing
@@ChernobylFamily I studied in the technical high school affiliated to the factory. My uncle was one of the head engineers - he passed away last year. Most of the appartments had one or 2 of these hdd plates with a slot - used as tv antennae. :) DZU stara zagora was making all kinds of magnetic and optical (in the end) devices and media. I call around if i find something but i dobt any1 would have documentation left. If ot was before y2000 the chances would've been bigger
Our school class visited a recycling centre in late 80's and I remember seeing these kind of huge cabinets on the massive junk metal pile. There were lot of those disk packs as well, at the time we did not know what they were. They were on their way to a machine that chopped them and spit out hot steaming balls of crushed metal.
Looking at the inside of the briefcase it reminds me of an old guitar amp I used to have. Also from the early 1980s. Lots of space. Not a lot of stuff in said space. Very cool indeed.
CM 5405 29 MB Disk Memory The CM 5405 large-capacity disk memory (variant IZOT 5061-Bulgaria) serves for storing a large volume of data with direct access. The disk memory is formed by a control unit (which makes it possible to connect up to eight disk units of the EC 5061.C type) and two basic disk units. The memory medium is formed by the EC 5261-01 20-surface disk pack. The con- trol unit has 12 registers accessible by program. Data are recorded with double frequency with 2200 bpi density. It has 10 sectors, each with 256 words. The control unit with power sources structurally forms independent grids. These grids are placed into a casing which is a part of this disk subsystem. In the casing there is free space of 15 U for building in additional SMEP expansion modules. The disk unit is an independent device (Figure 21) which is connected to the control unit by cable
As someone who worked with such computer disk drives in the 1970's I can say they need three phase power. And the disk in the drive is removable, weighs around 30 pounds, and only contains about 30 MB of data. The most important thing is to ensure the heads weren't damaged in transit otherwise that disk will squeal from contact as the data is destroyed.
Exactly, 3 phases 380V... we'll see if it is possible to get this input at museum. I am not sure if you checked that part where we review the packet itself, but it is correct - it is 29Mb.
@@ChernobylFamily In Australia the 3 phase was 410V and the 30MB was probably because of how they counted the Bytes here in the 1970's as in 1000 instead of 1024. Also we used 12 inch tape reels as storage and the disks were mainly for sorting and outputting the data to print. I wish you the best of luck with getting it running.
"Requires 3-phase 380 Volts AC..." Dang, that thing would put my welding machine to shame when it comes to power consumption. I bet every light in the building dims when you fire up one of these units. And Holy Hard Drives, doesn't this thing put the "Hard" in HDD. What a beast! But another awesome video. I so enjoy all these nerdy videos with such rare machines/ computers.
@@ChernobylFamily I truly wish I could be there when it spins up for the first time after all those years. These projects of yours are so incredible and awesome. A technical unicorn is a very good description indeed. The rare gems you keep unearthing^^ *Remembers how computers sounded back in the 80s
The first hard drives I used were a slightly amaller size on a mini computer. The disks themselves were in sealed removable drums and had less platters than the ones in the video and came in 1Mb or 2Mb capacities IIRC.
Recently one of the engineers who developed these drive publish a book about the story around the factory and the economical impact. Unfortunately it is only in Bulgarian and available only as a paperback.
chornobylfamily@gmail.com Thank you! However, a few commenters found it, though already. It seems it is good to understand the principle, but 3M version looks to be very different... if there would be a chance to find a 3P documentation, that would be something
Hi! Thank you for your excellent job! I were wondering if I could find schemes showed in the video in full size without crops? I'm very interesting in it as a ex-DCS-engineer.
Thank you! You mean SKALA scheme? You can order it as a huge and beautiful poster - check the link to a public patreon post in the description of this video.
Back in the '90s in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, almost every home had these strange brownish disks sticking out of the building balconies. Later, I found out that these were the hard drives(probably stolen) from the DZU (IZOT) factory, and people used them as antennas for receiving analog TV. :D
I have (kinda drunk) idea. How awesome would be to create complex Chernobyl power plant management system emulator (with aproximation of reactor core functionality)? I know, that this would be too complex to recreate or even impossible due to lack of documentation. But still I think Idea is pretty good :)
They feel like 11x7 cm (need to disassembleto measure), so they are more than twice as smaller compared to standard TEZ cards of ES EVM. Personally, we did not see that small cards like in TIDU in ES equipment; but they are nevertheless marked in the standard way.
Привет из Болгарии. There is some documentation available for ТИДУ-3М. It is not much, but inside there is User manual, BOM and plenty of schematics - about 50 pages at all. I will be happy to share, please advise the method. P.S. sandacite website is up and running.
Thank you! Already got that file with the help of a few viewers. As for website, I have a feeling they have IP-based access blocking, because from many countries it just shows 403 Forbidden.
this disk was produced in Bulgaria, during Soviet times it was one of the first countries in the world to produce computers and computer technology, after all John Atanasov is Bulgarian and he is the father of the computer
I always wondered if you can use the skala system as a computer, connect a graphics card to it and actually use it with an operating system. (Maybe sometime in the future)
No. It is too specialized to be a general-purpose computer, but a graphic interface for its specialized purpose is exactly what DIIS subsystem provides. It is not just a card though, it is a bridge to modern computers.
A logic circuit (clock, 16-bit register 1,2,4,8..., function, mode and i/o switches). I have no idea how the sectors and files are allocated - which is pretty much everything on a hard disk (I somehow doubt it's FAT :)
Literally this morning we got a full technical description for the drive, which ALSO explains how to use the TIDU briefcase; I did not inspect it really much, but I see there is the information you are talking about as well it gives enough details to start the drive, will need to solder a few connector terminators though.
These are quite rare to find I actually have one of these it was a type used by Chernobyl but the one I have isent one that was in the plant it came from the Kursk power plant Wich still operates rbmk 1000 reactors
Serviced, tested, confirmed operation by manufacturer or service center. Similar to any product - varranty void if removed. Just they did not seal entire device as to connect cables you must open the rear cover. Now, those seals already is a museum issue; because if item is in museum, it must not be altered.
Оце нахлинули спогади про дитинство.В мене батько працював у відділі АСУП ,завод ГМГУиА у Фастові . Памятаю як малим їздив до нього ,ці шкафи ,цей запах,шум.... що тут казати😢. А ще пам'ятаю як були антени ,,чебурашка,, два диска разом , в боксі пластиковому з під дисків ми вирощували розсаду))) ,під магнітну ленту садили картоплю . Перфокартами весь шкільний клас користувався)))
@@ChernobylFamily @CuriousMarc has also restored huge disk drives for Xerox computer and also helps a computer museum with a lot of IBM mainframe equipments, so could be interested to help too?
* SKALA/СКАЛА (ROCK/CLIFF) computer - Control System for Apparatus of Leningrad NPP - Система Контроля Аппарата Ленинградской АЭС * ROCC - Reactor Operation Control Computer
According to the paper documentation it is SLIGHTLY different - "System of Control and Automation of Leningrad NPP", not "Apparatus"... (we were interested in that detail, so checked it physcially)
It looks like a copy f an IBM 70s main frame. The ICL system 4 was very similiar.In my time at ICl in the 70s I changes hundreds of those read write heads on disk packs.
The East German ROBOTRON R300 was mainly built as a copy of the IBM System360. My dad was a service technician and installed and serviced some of these machines in different countries. I remember he fixed ferrite memory ring arrays at home. I built my first amplifiers with scrap parts from decommissioned tape and hard drive machines, some early portable disks drives looked like this in the video. Punched paper cards for data, punched paper strips for programming later ½ inch tape and theses disks drives like a washing machine. I remember he told me every country of the eastern hemisphere had a specific field they had to cover. Bulgaria was responsible for these hard disk drives and heads of magnetic tape machines. But CzechSlovakia I believe to remember was also involved with tape drives. I played my first computer game on one of those machines, which was actually a star treck battle game where you would try to avoid getting caught by Klingon and then should shoot them down with photonic torpedoes. No real graphics, only characters used to make a graphical appearance. The other game was the board game GO.
At this rate, you’ll fix the entire reactor core, and the plant will be entirely functional again! 😂 Also, is it possible there is still any data on the drive? If there is it would be amazing to be able to recover it, and examine it!
Man...As a hobbyist data technician/archivist with a _huge_ love of Soviet-era technology, I so wish I had hardware like this available to diagnose faults on my disks too! Does anybody know if Uzom ever did a version of these for IDE or even SATA devices? 😋 (And yes, I wish the devices I had were rugged enough to keep on working after a nuclear incident, too! 😇)
*IZOT No, they ceased to exist in the 90-s... though the quality of their storage devices was very good compared to Soviet crap, so for retro-computing IZOT drives are a preferred choice.
@@ChernobylFamily The drive you're operating in this video certainly seems *very* well built, and made to last a literal lifetime. Better still - Because it's the disk-pack type - The media can be exchanged, so you just need the one unit plus storage for the media, as opposed to my collection of modern drives where every unit has its own controller, motor, head assembly etc... 👍 Granted; A 300Kg unit is probably a bit too big for consumer applications (Good luck getting one of those up the stairwell in my UK block of flats, or the floor safely bearing the weight! 🤣) but the flipside is my devices definitely won't last a 30-50 year lifespan. Recently had one fail on me that wasn't even a decade old! 😋 (Also; Looks like I need to vastly improve my Cyrillic on the side. Time to start studying the manuals I got with that Elektronika calculator... 😇)
100kB was just what they were aiming for in the early development stage. When they were delivered it said minimum 85kB. I remember typically it was 88kB. If you pressed the cartridge into the Microdrive while formatting, you might get 92kB but you would probably always need to hold it press it in to be able to use it like that, so not recommended! I expect pressing the cartridge in just pressed the tape harder against the tape head, creating more friction, so it took a bit longer for the tape loop to go around.
It might be so simple as to not have either, or if it does have anything like a ROM or RAM, it'd just be like, lookup tables for logic and flip flops/registers for some state.
Аз съм от България и до колкото знам приятел на дядо ми е работил в завода във Велико Търново по времето когато са произвеждани тези компютри. Знам, че на голяма част от работниците не им е казва о по какво точно работят, а просто са изпълнявали работата по технически схеми които са им давали. Ако се интересувате имам едно видео от завода от 80-те. Мога да ви го пратя.
Благодарим ви много! Ще се радваме да видим видеото. Можете ли да ни напишете имейл на chornobylfamily@gmail.com? Още веднъж благодарим. Поздрави от Украйна!
I have a scanned coppy of the documentation for the tester. Give an email, where I can send it to you. I will check bulgarian sources if I can find something for the disc aswell.
If you need help with tech. Documentation written in Bulgarian just write me a message to this comment. I am an electronics engineer and i studied at the electronics tech school next to DZU. Nowaday i do automotive electronics but ;)
@martin-fc4kk This means it was a work pull after authorized servicing, which means it is guaranteed intact. Actually, a unicorn-level luck to find this:)
Лише в цьому відео почув Ваш голос за кадром, та зрозумів, що Ви також з України :) Можливо є сенс спробувати відео на рідній мові ? Ато доводиться субтитри читати :) Думаю таких як я багато :) Дуже цікава тематика ! :) Маю невелику колекцію ретро ПК, серед них перфоратор, підмотчик, перфозчитувач- такі як у Вас :) Дуже цікаво було подивитися на той жорсткий диск та "чемодан" для налагодження :) Велика Вам подяка, лайк та підписка !!! :)
Дякуємо! Проблема в тому, що відео іншою мовою - це співрозмірний шматок роботи по монтажу, бо інша довжина фраз, дещо інші історії. Наразі ми просто фізично це не потянемо, хоча запитів немало. Ледь вдається робити одне відео раз на два тижні. Плюс, моя дружина не володіє вільно українською для розмовного рівня.
Again, a fascinating look into the Soviet / COMECON computer tech! And a beautifully made piece of test equipment. I love these bitbanging switches. I've got a bunch of germanium DTL boards recovered from e-waste, with MLT resistors, mostly USSR made semiconductors and markings in Cyrillic. They may have been made for the early unified series computers, but I'm not sure. You might find them familiar. ruclips.net/video/Bjyzd0HevTA/видео.html
Those are not ES, I am sure, this is something earlier than 70-s, element base and overall design is greatly different from ES standard. It is more a style of e. g. MIR or MINSK machines. ES boards (so called TEZ - standartized exchangeable elements) always have a unified form-factor of 140х150 mm and have either lamellae for corresponding type RPPM connector on a backplane, or in case of later 1060 and greater machines - SNP-135 connector (female on a TEZ and male on a backplane). They also must have an inscription ES-xxxx or EST-xxxx on them.
For anyone who is interested in learning more about the history of Bulgaria's IT industry, I suggest Victor Petrov's book, "Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain" (MIT Press, 2023). The ebook is even available open access for free.
Oh, thank you!
Thank you for this information. This topic is really interesting!
Oh, I'm gonna have to look into that! I was considering following up my Radio-86RK kitbuild with a Galaksija repro kitbuild - Would make for some very nice supplemental reading!
300KG, with wheels, so it is easy to move -- until you drop a wheel into the hole in the raised floor under the drive, where all the cables went down under the floor. Then get two friends so the three of you can get it level again and moving again. Been there, done that. You DO NOT want to do that with a vertical tape drive!
Oh yeah. Oh yeaaaah. Thought about that while moving it.
This guy datacenters!
Again, you succeed in providing unique and really interesting content! Thank you!
My pleasure!
A few years ago this same type of tester was up for sale here in Hungary on a local auction site. IIRC, the asking price was more than 100 000 HUF, which was rougly 400USD in 2018 (now it would be about $280 due to inflation).
HEY! I just checked, and it is still up for sale from the same seller, but now for just 30 000HUF / $85. It is claimed to be brand new (NOS). I just asked him if he has documentation for it.
EDIT: He answered, and unfortunately he has no documentation for it.
Thank you! Buy it out for any local museum. Because test instruments are all gone like at all, that can be a good addition to exhibitions.
Hope everything goes well with the restorations. Thank You
This is a very unplanned project, as we got that TIDU briefcase accidentally; we'll see!
It's always exciting to see unique manufacturing electronic test kits.
:)
Ikr
Yes! _That's_ what's now no bigger than the palm of your hand these days (external drives), and CPUs (SoCs) are even smaller, and everything has anywhere from 100 to 1000 times the capacity, processing speed, and at a small fraction of the actual power consumption! Amazing how tech has changed in a tad less than 40 years!
Well said!
In fact a fingernail sized microSD working with 3.3V has billions order of magnitude more capacity than this 300kg cabinet, 3 phase powered cabinet.
But the people who have designed these ancient technologies paved the way for all of our digital living.
Allways respect ancien hardware.
yeah kinda crazy, we are at 2tb microsds, ones that one could swallow and not feel it, crazy.
G’day from Melbourne Australia. I can’t wait to visit both of those museums, one day. (made a note!) I am awed by your projects, please keep going.
Thank you! They both are very interesting, and Chernobyl museum is truly one of a kind. Stay tuned - soon more!
At first sight, that looks a copy of a DEC removable hard disk: with RM03 (67MB)) or RM05 (256MB) packs even down to a DEC color scheme. In the west they would have been 70k$ back in the 1980s. The pull about 30A on spin up. If the heads crash, there is enough metal in the air that sometimes the next disk will crash too. As a summer student, I can tell you that they broke easily and the budget for maintaining them was enormous. Good times.
if only IT was then what it is now
Except for color, they are also nearly identical to IBM 360 era disk drives. Can't remember the model numbers anymore, but I think 2716 might have been one of them. I don't remember one pack crashing eating the adjacent packs much. In a good machine room with proper ventilation all the dust would have been pulled down under the floor. There were also air filters in the drive cabinet itself, and they would catch most all the dust. I do remember when long seeks would get these machines rocking, and one would start banging into the drive next to it, resulting in possible head crashes.
It is beautiful, you're absolutely right. Thank you for continuing to take us on these fascinating trips through the looking-glass, to see the mysterious alternate world of Soviet-era computing!
Glad you enjoyed it
I have the same EC-5053 disk pack (with slightly different labeling) and a few ORWO tape reels from Ukraine. I was looking for information about the disk drive for it and found your video. I already saw some other ones from you and i'm really amazed by all the fantastic parts and equipments you can find, and all the information you give about them. Thanks you! And good luck for all your projects.
It's great to know that some equipments are saved in this museum in Kyiv, even if not in working (yet?). I hope that some other museums in other countries have also saved precious remains of computer technology history! If some of you here have good adresses, please share!
Thank you so much! The Politechnic Museum is working, though in a bit limited way.
ИЗОТ or IZOT was a Bulgarian manufacturer. It is even written "Made in Bulgaria" in cyrillic on the disk plates.
...and? Did we tell anything different?
@@ChernobylFamily I just could not miss an opportunity to glorify IZOT and Bulgaria :)
@ButilkaRomm actually, every time we see this logo on a vintage drive we feel a great relief as this thing will always JUST WORK. Good job!
29 megabytes was a lot of information for that era of solviet computer! Such beautiful technology.
It was made by motives of IBM machines, after all. That laser drive is interesting, that is 100 Mb.
@@ChernobylFamily When you say laser drive do you mean a WORM drive?
Hi, thank You for another highly interesting footage about The SKALA! Friendsly greetings from CZ, stay safe, be healthy! ❤
Thank you! More to come!
Good luck guys! I'm always fascinated that such technology still exists. It warms my heart that you try to resurrect the system...
A tip: If you manage do do that, then the next project is a maket of the old control room of the duga radar :) Use Oled screens for the computers :D
Consider it as spoiler, but with duga radar we gonna have a working replica of certain equipment at some point...))
I visited a NPP in Germany about 30 years ago. The harddisks they used back then were similar in size, only a little bit smaller.
I really like the push button implementation. It allows both cleaning the contacts and adjustments to the pressure of the springs.
It gave a strange impression of being a reworked part of a relay. Just it looks oddly familiar.
@@ChernobylFamily Yes, like a relay or like a headphone jack with a switched contact.
Probably manufactured with existing tooling and materials well characterised by use in open frame relays.
@@ChernobylFamilyIn America those were known as "telephone switches". They were used by the telephone company as part of the switching equipment. Lever switches were more common than push buttons, but the internal workings were almost identical in both kinds. They were extremely reliable in both mechanical operation and electrical operation, and could be easily cleaned or adjusted when needed.
Thank you for those details!
Cool! Fascinating journey into the past. These great and intricate machines, so many different and individually engineered and laboriously assembled components. The labor and genious of hundreds. The aesthetic of those builds. Craftsmanship. Durability. Serviceability. And all that to store a few megabytes of data.
Glad you enjoyed it!
90 MB was HUGE. Probably from the mid 1980s. When I started working with computers, spinning packs like that had more like 5 MB, though pretty soon 20 MB became standard for the 5-disk packs, if I remember correctly.
@@lwilton our first hard drive, extremely costly upgrade for our 8086 PC, was less than 20MB
...
Nice to seen these two obscure pieces of technology reunited again since decades.
The museum seems to be a must sen for any nerd...
Hope you'll find the documentation and that there will be a follow up about this stuff.
Thank you! A few commenters found some documentation, we will work on it!
@@ChernobylFamily that's great. I love that people are still involved this way, and hapilly share their knowledge around a subject. Good old internet spirit here.
I live in Stara Zagora. Those drives are clones (exact copies) of memorex drives.
Cheers! If by the chance you know anyone who has documentation for ТИДУ-3П or -3М, we will very much appreciate it.
@@ChernobylFamily I'll see what I can do. But I'm not promising.
Thank you anyway, any contribution will help.
@@ChernobylFamily I can open sandacite.bg. I dont know whay you can't. Anyway here is the documentation.
drive.google.com/file/d/1Rov0zgC1YrxJnpSfHAPAnVgCz-gYUyWI/view?usp=sharing
@@ChernobylFamily I studied in the technical high school affiliated to the factory. My uncle was one of the head engineers - he passed away last year.
Most of the appartments had one or 2 of these hdd plates with a slot - used as tv antennae. :) DZU stara zagora was making all kinds of magnetic and optical (in the end) devices and media. I call around if i find something but i dobt any1 would have documentation left. If ot was before y2000 the chances would've been bigger
Our school class visited a recycling centre in late 80's and I remember seeing these kind of huge cabinets on the massive junk metal pile. There were lot of those disk packs as well, at the time we did not know what they were. They were on their way to a machine that chopped them and spit out hot steaming balls of crushed metal.
Well, at that time this was yet not valuable historical stuff, unfortunately
Man, I watched the printer video and that was cool as hell, now this? Subscribed.
Thank you! Check one about first Chernobyl robot recreation, and about SKALA. And many others. We have interesting things here.
Looking at the inside of the briefcase it reminds me of an old guitar amp I used to have. Also from the early 1980s. Lots of space. Not a lot of stuff in said space. Very cool indeed.
Thank you:)
CM 5405 29 MB Disk Memory
The CM 5405 large-capacity disk memory (variant IZOT 5061-Bulgaria) serves
for storing a large volume of data with direct access. The disk memory is
formed by a control unit (which makes it possible to connect up to eight disk
units of the EC 5061.C type) and two basic disk units.
The memory medium is formed by the EC 5261-01 20-surface disk pack. The con-
trol unit has 12 registers accessible by program. Data are recorded with
double frequency with 2200 bpi density. It has 10 sectors, each with 256
words.
The control unit with power sources structurally forms independent grids.
These grids are placed into a casing which is a part of this disk subsystem.
In the casing there is free space of 15 U for building in additional SMEP
expansion modules. The disk unit is an independent device (Figure 21) which
is connected to the control unit by cable
As someone who worked with such computer disk drives in the 1970's I can say they need three phase power. And the disk in the drive is removable, weighs around 30 pounds, and only contains about 30 MB of data. The most important thing is to ensure the heads weren't damaged in transit otherwise that disk will squeal from contact as the data is destroyed.
Exactly, 3 phases 380V... we'll see if it is possible to get this input at museum. I am not sure if you checked that part where we review the packet itself, but it is correct - it is 29Mb.
@@ChernobylFamily In Australia the 3 phase was 410V and the 30MB was probably because of how they counted the Bytes here in the 1970's as in 1000 instead of 1024. Also we used 12 inch tape reels as storage and the disks were mainly for sorting and outputting the data to print. I wish you the best of luck with getting it running.
"Requires 3-phase 380 Volts AC..."
Dang, that thing would put my welding machine to shame when it comes to power consumption. I bet every light in the building dims when you fire up one of these units. And Holy Hard Drives, doesn't this thing put the "Hard" in HDD. What a beast!
But another awesome video. I so enjoy all these nerdy videos with such rare machines/ computers.
Why would it dim? It would likely consume way less than 2kW of power - less than your welder...
@@Sixta16
It's a figure of speech😅
I have no idea if something will come out of that, but if we will be able to, we will power it all up after 20 years of lethargy :)
@@ChernobylFamily
I truly wish I could be there when it spins up for the first time after all those years. These projects of yours are so incredible and awesome. A technical unicorn is a very good description indeed. The rare gems you keep unearthing^^
*Remembers how computers sounded back in the 80s
We'll see... it is not really a project, we got that thing accidentally, and the museum got interested... let's see where it will come :)
It smells like the cylinder address is sent as parallel, rather than the usual step and direction signals.
That would be rather flashy!
Need to check documentation to say something about this
in post USSR, people were making TV antennas from these disks, which looked like cheburashka
Yes!!!! I remember those vividly!!
The first hard drives I used were a slightly amaller size on a mini computer. The disks themselves were in sealed removable drums and had less platters than the ones in the video and came in 1Mb or 2Mb capacities IIRC.
Thank you for sharing!
The TIDU-3P is the hardware grandfather of the CrystalDiskMark and the AmorphousDiskMark storage testing apps.
Well said!
These old mainframe is amazing machine. Data almost see in hard disk surfaces :)
Check out our ES-1060 restoration project on Patreon!
Recently one of the engineers who developed these drive publish a book about the story around the factory and the economical impact. Unfortunately it is only in Bulgarian and available only as a paperback.
Both are ok for us, do you have the title? Thank you.
Didn't know that Chernobyl used Bulgarian drives 🤯. Greetings from Bulgaria
From my experience, a vast majority of data centers used them (though Chernobyl NPP also uses German reel drives made by Zeiss Jena in DDR).
@@ChernobylFamily nowadays the only thing we manufacture is ракия 🥲
@@ChernobylFamily I sent you an email about the documentation for the tester :)
Excited to be here early!
Grab popcorn and take your seat in the cinema! :)
Usagi Electric would be jealous for certain
:)
I would love to visit that Chernobyl museum in Kiev and that big open air museum of former Soviet passenger and military aircraft.
You are warmly welcome here. It is tough, you will need to react to air raid warnings, but we all are up and running.
Stay strong and safe❤
Wikid Awesome Guys!
Really cool stuff, that's a TON(s) of hardware lol
Thank you :)
Are there any simulations of the "Promin" machine? I understand it was one of the first widely used computers to have microcoded logic.
This is a good question. I wonder if MAME emulator has it...
How can i send you the documentation for the TIDU-3M?
chornobylfamily@gmail.com
Thank you! However, a few commenters found it, though already. It seems it is good to understand the principle, but 3M version looks to be very different... if there would be a chance to find a 3P documentation, that would be something
the most interesting computer video i've seen in yt!!!
Thank you! Check our previous episodes. You will open a portal to unknown. :)
Hi! Thank you for your excellent job! I were wondering if I could find schemes showed in the video in full size without crops? I'm very interesting in it as a ex-DCS-engineer.
Thank you! You mean SKALA scheme? You can order it as a huge and beautiful poster - check the link to a public patreon post in the description of this video.
I am curious why at the buttons it can be read STOP and START in cirillic, instead the russian equivalent word
Frankly, I am not sure if written on that panel is not Bulgarian. But I am not a speaker...
How come the museum pieces are sealed shut?
They are work pulls from a functional ES machine which was based in Kyiv, and was scheduled for a permanent shut down in around 1995.
Back in the '90s in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria, almost every home had these strange brownish disks sticking out of the building balconies. Later, I found out that these were the hard drives(probably stolen) from the DZU (IZOT) factory, and people used them as antennas for receiving analog TV. :D
We also had them! Some survived long, now all them gone as we no longer have analog tv.
I have (kinda drunk) idea. How awesome would be to create complex Chernobyl power plant management system emulator (with aproximation of reactor core functionality)? I know, that this would be too complex to recreate or even impossible due to lack of documentation. But still I think Idea is pretty good :)
There is an app, we will come to it. You can see it here on 11:30 - ruclips.net/video/B2sjzxPBcO8/видео.html
What is format of TIDU PCBs is it standard?
They feel like 11x7 cm (need to disassembleto measure), so they are more than twice as smaller compared to standard TEZ cards of ES EVM. Personally, we did not see that small cards like in TIDU in ES equipment; but they are nevertheless marked in the standard way.
дуже дякую за видос :) рідко таке на ютубі знайдеш!
Дякуємо! Скоро додамо українські субтитри.
In Ocident, the "high capacity" (10 or 20 MBytes) HHDs during 70s and beggining of 80s were not much different.
In RSX-11M/M+ SYSGENed as 20GB DP: so IMHO it corresponds with Memorex / OEM DEC RP02 disk drive.
Привет из Болгарии. There is some documentation available for ТИДУ-3М. It is not much, but inside there is User manual, BOM and plenty of schematics - about 50 pages at all. I will be happy to share, please advise the method. P.S. sandacite website is up and running.
Thank you! Already got that file with the help of a few viewers. As for website, I have a feeling they have IP-based access blocking, because from many countries it just shows 403 Forbidden.
Good luck! I hope to visit some day.
Thank you!
this disk was produced in Bulgaria, during Soviet times it was one of the first countries in the world to produce computers and computer technology, after all John Atanasov is Bulgarian and he is the father of the computer
I always wondered if you can use the skala system as a computer, connect a graphics card to it and actually use it with an operating system. (Maybe sometime in the future)
No. It is too specialized to be a general-purpose computer, but a graphic interface for its specialized purpose is exactly what DIIS subsystem provides. It is not just a card though, it is a bridge to modern computers.
Amazing Tech! Thanks for sharing 🤗
Our pleasure! Check out other episodes!
13:50 this is what caused resonance cascade last time
))))
One must love the Lada doors. 😄
:)) that is a thing I prefer to see in a far distance...))
My father had a couple of Lada's in the 80's, and you really had to slam the door to get closed.
But those cars were cheap back then.
A logic circuit (clock, 16-bit register 1,2,4,8..., function, mode and i/o switches). I have no idea how the sectors and files are allocated - which is pretty much everything on a hard disk (I somehow doubt it's FAT :)
Literally this morning we got a full technical description for the drive, which ALSO explains how to use the TIDU briefcase; I did not inspect it really much, but I see there is the information you are talking about as well it gives enough details to start the drive, will need to solder a few connector terminators though.
These are quite rare to find I actually have one of these it was a type used by Chernobyl but the one I have isent one that was in the plant it came from the Kursk power plant Wich still operates rbmk 1000 reactors
Дуже цікаво ! Дякую ! :)
Будь ласка! Далі буде!
We used the HDD case as a bread basket back in 90s in our family, lol.
That is a lot of bread!
What is the reason for the seals on the boards?
Serviced, tested, confirmed operation by manufacturer or service center. Similar to any product - varranty void if removed. Just they did not seal entire device as to connect cables you must open the rear cover.
Now, those seals already is a museum issue; because if item is in museum, it must not be altered.
And here I thought the only soviet data recovery device was a briefcase connected with two wires to the prisoner's private area 😆
Well, you know...)
Оце нахлинули спогади про дитинство.В мене батько працював у відділі АСУП ,завод ГМГУиА у Фастові . Памятаю як малим їздив до нього ,ці шкафи ,цей запах,шум.... що тут казати😢. А ще пам'ятаю як були антени ,,чебурашка,, два диска разом , в боксі пластиковому з під дисків ми вирощували розсаду))) ,під магнітну ленту садили картоплю . Перфокартами весь шкільний клас користувався)))
Чебурашки добре пам'ятаю...)
absolutely amazing
Thank you!
Hi I saw the trademark "ИЗОТ" - I suspect a Bulgarian link here :)
Yess
10:51 I find it weird that "MHZ" is not written using Cyrillic script, but I guess it's a recognised thing.
In fact both were often used
usagi electric would enjoy this, he loves his vintage US electronics from fhe 70s back,
Would be cool to make a collab, actually.
@@ChernobylFamily @CuriousMarc has also restored huge disk drives for Xerox computer and also helps a computer museum with a lot of IBM mainframe equipments, so could be interested to help too?
congratulations
Still a long road ahead...)
"ИЗОТ" is a Bulgarian company
Yes, i say that.
Why is the OS in English?
Are you talking about the screenshot of Shater? That is a reconstruction translated to be more understandable for viewers.
Love Ukraine from Japan
Thank you, dear friend!
* SKALA/СКАЛА (ROCK/CLIFF) computer - Control System for Apparatus of Leningrad NPP - Система Контроля Аппарата Ленинградской АЭС
* ROCC - Reactor Operation Control Computer
According to the paper documentation it is SLIGHTLY different - "System of Control and Automation of Leningrad NPP", not "Apparatus"... (we were interested in that detail, so checked it physcially)
@@ChernobylFamily true. And thank you.
But ROCC sounds SICC, isn't it?
Yes
Sir , how can i contact you as i want to make a movie on n nuclear weapons . I want to know you more on this topic
Please write an e-mail to chornobylfamily@gmail.com
It looks like a copy f an IBM 70s main frame. The ICL system 4 was very similiar.In my time at ICl in the 70s I changes hundreds of those read write heads on disk packs.
Exactly, that's what I also said. ES series cloned IBM/360 and 370.
The East German ROBOTRON R300 was mainly built as a copy of the IBM System360. My dad was a service technician and installed and serviced some of these machines in different countries. I remember he fixed ferrite memory ring arrays at home. I built my first amplifiers with scrap parts from decommissioned tape and hard drive machines, some early portable disks drives looked like this in the video. Punched paper cards for data, punched paper strips for programming later ½ inch tape and theses disks drives like a washing machine. I remember he told me every country of the eastern hemisphere had a specific field they had to cover. Bulgaria was responsible for these hard disk drives and heads of magnetic tape machines. But CzechSlovakia I believe to remember was also involved with tape drives. I played my first computer game on one of those machines, which was actually a star treck battle game where you would try to avoid getting caught by Klingon and then should shoot them down with photonic torpedoes. No real graphics, only characters used to make a graphical appearance. The other game was the board game GO.
At this rate, you’ll fix the entire reactor core, and the plant will be entirely functional again! 😂
Also, is it possible there is still any data on the drive? If there is it would be amazing to be able to recover it, and examine it!
:))
These disks are god know from where, but maybe really there is something. We will see.
Man...As a hobbyist data technician/archivist with a _huge_ love of Soviet-era technology, I so wish I had hardware like this available to diagnose faults on my disks too! Does anybody know if Uzom ever did a version of these for IDE or even SATA devices? 😋
(And yes, I wish the devices I had were rugged enough to keep on working after a nuclear incident, too! 😇)
*IZOT
No, they ceased to exist in the 90-s... though the quality of their storage devices was very good compared to Soviet crap, so for retro-computing IZOT drives are a preferred choice.
@@ChernobylFamily The drive you're operating in this video certainly seems *very* well built, and made to last a literal lifetime. Better still - Because it's the disk-pack type - The media can be exchanged, so you just need the one unit plus storage for the media, as opposed to my collection of modern drives where every unit has its own controller, motor, head assembly etc... 👍
Granted; A 300Kg unit is probably a bit too big for consumer applications (Good luck getting one of those up the stairwell in my UK block of flats, or the floor safely bearing the weight! 🤣) but the flipside is my devices definitely won't last a 30-50 year lifespan. Recently had one fail on me that wasn't even a decade old! 😋
(Also; Looks like I need to vastly improve my Cyrillic on the side. Time to start studying the manuals I got with that Elektronika calculator... 😇)
Well, one Sinclair Microdrive (external drive for ZX Spectrum) had 100kB.
100kB was just what they were aiming for in the early development stage. When they were delivered it said minimum 85kB. I remember typically it was 88kB. If you pressed the cartridge into the Microdrive while formatting, you might get 92kB but you would probably always need to hold it press it in to be able to use it like that, so not recommended!
I expect pressing the cartridge in just pressed the tape harder against the tape head, creating more friction, so it took a bit longer for the tape loop to go around.
Back in 1950s... a 5 MB of hard drive, sized like a side-by-side 2 doors fridge. Even you need a forklift to carry it!! 😎😎
I believe you know that famous picture with a forklift and a drive...)
@@ChernobylFamily absolutely! The IBM 350
Interesting video and handsome man!
:)
I sent you an email with the links because it seems RUclips removes any comments with links
Thank you! Replied!
Wired up like an analog circuit AKA the inside of a 1970/80's pinball machine.
Well, it is quite a "dumb" device, so it is pretty good comparison.
id like to see the rom and the ram
It might be so simple as to not have either, or if it does have anything like a ROM or RAM, it'd just be like, lookup tables for logic and flip flops/registers for some state.
We will have an epispde about that!
Аз съм от България и до колкото знам приятел на дядо ми е работил в завода във Велико Търново по времето когато са произвеждани тези компютри. Знам, че на голяма част от работниците не им е казва о по какво точно работят, а просто са изпълнявали работата по технически схеми които са им давали. Ако се интересувате имам едно видео от завода от 80-те. Мога да ви го пратя.
Видеят ви са страхотни и много ви благодаря за интересната информация!
Благодарим ви много! Ще се радваме да видим видеото. Можете ли да ни напишете имейл на chornobylfamily@gmail.com? Още веднъж благодарим. Поздрави от Украйна!
@@ChernobylFamily
Разбира се. Ще ви пратя видеото! Поздрави от София!
Марти Митков
Odlican i kvalitetan kanal pozdrav iz srbije
Дякуємо! Привіт з України!
The giant harddrive
Yeah
Well, at least the caster wheels still work.
Yeah
I have a scanned coppy of the documentation for the tester. Give an email, where I can send it to you. I will check bulgarian sources if I can find something for the disc aswell.
We've got for ТИДУ-3М, but if you have for ТИДУ-3П specifically, it would be absolutely awesome!
chornobylfamily@gmail.com
But where is its diesel engine? 🤔
Aaaaaaa this is a goood one!
In the basement, near another one for the building.
Maravillosa y confiable ingeniería soviética
Except it is Bulgarian, not Soviet. Pure soviet drives were far from reliable.
BTW, there actually are some people who think Ladas are cool cars, it's like a sick cult.
True.
2:00 or smth like that, when he says cracial, it means crucial
Thank you for correction.
If you need help with tech. Documentation written in Bulgarian just write me a message to this comment. I am an electronics engineer and i studied at the electronics tech school next to DZU. Nowaday i do automotive electronics but ;)
Thank you! Can you please write us an email to chornobylfamily@gmail.com for easier communication?
Lol! You can copy all of that data onto an NVME drive the size of a pack of Rizla once you've got it working.
Of course you can, but it won't beat a beauty of a packet installation ritual :))
SKALA Means SCALE !
Not in this case; watch the video about SKALA we have and you will see the meaning of the acronym.
These days, couple of Raspberry Pi's would run a nuclear reactor from the past (as a joke, of course). 😂
It would need a HELL of signal multiplexing, though :)))
@@ChernobylFamily There is a reason packet-switched networking such as ethernet and PCIe exists.
time to make a usb disk controller card 😉
You won't believe, but those exist, well, for a RS232. Back in the 90s, those were used for data migration to newer hardware.
It is sealed!!..what the...🤣
@martin-fc4kk This means it was a work pull after authorized servicing, which means it is guaranteed intact. Actually, a unicorn-level luck to find this:)
@@ChernobylFamily ah ok, i thought someone at the museum did that just because of some weird procedure
Лише в цьому відео почув Ваш голос за кадром, та зрозумів, що Ви також з України :)
Можливо є сенс спробувати відео на рідній мові ? Ато доводиться субтитри читати :) Думаю таких як я багато :)
Дуже цікава тематика ! :)
Маю невелику колекцію ретро ПК, серед них перфоратор, підмотчик, перфозчитувач- такі як у Вас :)
Дуже цікаво було подивитися на той жорсткий диск та "чемодан" для налагодження :)
Велика Вам подяка, лайк та підписка !!! :)
Дякуємо! Проблема в тому, що відео іншою мовою - це співрозмірний шматок роботи по монтажу, бо інша довжина фраз, дещо інші історії. Наразі ми просто фізично це не потянемо, хоча запитів немало. Ледь вдається робити одне відео раз на два тижні. Плюс, моя дружина не володіє вільно українською для розмовного рівня.
👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍
Thanks!
Again, a fascinating look into the Soviet / COMECON computer tech! And a beautifully made piece of test equipment. I love these bitbanging switches.
I've got a bunch of germanium DTL boards recovered from e-waste, with MLT resistors, mostly USSR made semiconductors and markings in Cyrillic. They may have been made for the early unified series computers, but I'm not sure. You might find them familiar.
ruclips.net/video/Bjyzd0HevTA/видео.html
Those are not ES, I am sure, this is something earlier than 70-s, element base and overall design is greatly different from ES standard. It is more a style of e. g. MIR or MINSK machines.
ES boards (so called TEZ - standartized exchangeable elements) always have a unified form-factor of 140х150 mm and have either lamellae for corresponding type RPPM connector on a backplane, or in case of later 1060 and greater machines - SNP-135 connector (female on a TEZ and male on a backplane). They also must have an inscription ES-xxxx or EST-xxxx on them.
@@ChernobylFamily thanks a million! That's one step closer to solving the mystery :)