Talk:Agat (computer)

Architecture Details

This article seems like it goes into quite some detail concerning the architecture of the Agat, particularly as concerns the microprocessor:

• AF Ioffe - Massive personal computer series "Agate" / №1, 1984 Массовые персональные ЭВМ серии «Агат». А Ф. Иоффе

It's quite extensively cited on the topic (including by the Russian version of this article), but I can't seem to find it online. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 08:09, 27 December 2009 (UTC).

The title of the article, " Массовые персональные ЭВМ серии «Агат»" ought to be translated more like "Consumer-grade personal computers of the "Agat" series". (Массовые = "produced for the mass market") Vmenkov (talk) 01:29, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

The Russian language version is much larger. A translation to here is definitely in order.--69.248.225.198 (talk) 04:34, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

That was the basis for much of my creation of this article, but unfortunately, there is no inline sourcing of the Russian version and many of the sources do not seem to be available online (at least to me as an English speaker with only rudimentary Russian). I wasn't really prepared to add content that I couldn't source here. If one of our contributors located in Russia can track down the sourcing and expand the article significantly, I would be giddy with excitement =). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 06:05, 3 January 2010 (UTC).

How many?

How many Agats were manufactured? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 08:30, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Curious about characters

If the Agat came with a Cyrillic character set, maybe there should be an article on Wikipedia about that.

Did the graphics modes work like the Apple II?

If you set bit 7, and stored a byte to the character output routine, or screen memory, did it appear to flash? Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 08:32, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

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Irrelevant "reception" undermining WP:NPOV and WP:RS, POV-pushing

What has been presented as "reception" is nothing more than a reference to an old, irrelevant, factually inaccurate and horribly biased article by ophthalmologist Leo D. Bores, who never worked with the Agat (it was not even produced at the time of the "reception"), confused it with a different device, had almost no knowledge of the PC, and distorted almost every fact regarding the computer and the Soviet Union in general while writing for a popular magazine, as was typical for Cold War-era publications.

Not only is his opus far from being a "reception", since the author was not among those who worked with the Agat, it is also irrelevant to the subject of the article: as Yuri Rogachyov, one of the key figures in the history of the Soviet/Russian computer technologies, co-founder of M-series computers and an infinitely more reliable source than the aforementioned medic, has pointed out in one of his works published in the PC Magazine ([1]) and elsewhere ([2]), no Agats had been produced by the time Bores arrived in the Soviet Union, and what the medic mistook for an Agat during his visit to the Fyodorov Eye Microsurgery Complex in Moscow in 1982 was a mock-up device built and used for debugging medical software, i.e. it was NOT the PC described in this article. The real Agat was completed and went into production only in 1984, two years after the visit, at the Lianozovo Electromechanical Plant (same source: [3]). Unsurprisingly, almost every single "fact" reported by Bores is also blatantly wrong and has little to nothing to do with reality. For example, he (or the editor) claimed that the PC was a "copy", though it was not, that it cost $17,000 (a price not supported by any evidence whatsoever), whereas in fact it was designed for mass use in schools and was the cheapest and most popular serial PC available in the Soviet Union, the selling price being 3,900 rubles (see: В.И. Грубов, В.С. Кирдан, С.Ф. Козубовский. Справочник по ЭВМ / Отв. ред. Г.Е. Пухов. — Киев: Наукова думка, 1989. С. 190. ISBN 5-12-000304-4; this is the real price published by an official source, and as such the only one worthy of note). Bores doubted the Agat would be used for the purpose of education (and in his laughable ignorance went as far as to say that Soviet citizens didn't need personal computers at all), whereas it is a matter of fact that it was designed, put into production and introduced to Soviet schools for educational purposes, and that is why it came with the "Schoolgirl" package and other educational software.

Irrelevant and tremendously incorrect "receptions" like that are without a doubt misleading to the reader, blatantly violate WP:RS and WP:NPOV, and have no right to be present on the page. If something doesn't even describe the subject matter of the article and had been written before that subject was even completed, pre-dates it, confuses different devices and spreads misinformation, it can neither be defined as "reception" (the only noteworthy reception came from Soviet consumers, the only real recipients of the Agat) nor used as reliable evidence. Not to mention that the price cited must be the same as in official, reliable publications, i.e. the one at which it was actually sold. A single dubious claim by Bores does not fall under the definition of WP:RS, can't be preferred over the official cost, and is at odds with established facts and documentary evidence. This is an encyclopedia, not a personal blog of M.D. Bores, and such POV-pushing is unacceptable here. Rosso Primavera (talk) 13:01, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

BYTE magazine is certainly a reliable source, and claiming otherwise is going to get you laughed at. If the article is incorrect or misleading, the thing to do is to edit the article accordingly, citing other reliable sources that disagree with it, and letting readers decide for themselves. What is not appropriate is deleting text without a better explanation than WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Ylee (talk) 21:13, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Read the message above. As has been noted there, the problem with the "reception" is that it is irrelevant to the Agat: "no Agats had been produced by the time Bores arrived in the Soviet Union, and what the medic mistook for an Agat during his visit to the Fyodorov Eye Microsurgery Complex in Moscow in 1982 was a mock-up device built and used for debugging medical software, i.e. it was NOT the PC described in this article" (check the sources cited above).

In short,

1. The "reception" pre-dates the subject of the article and, as noted in a RS, describes a different, mock-up device, not the Agat. It is not appropriate to include receptions that have little to nothing to do with the subject of the article. You cannot add a description of A into an article about B, even if the author confused them.

2. The price cited must be the same as in official, reliable publications, i.e. the one at which it was actually sold. A single claim from Byte cannot be preferred over the official price that I have provided (along with the official source). Removing official Soviet data in favor of Byte is ridiculous and unacceptable. Rosso Primavera (talk) 07:16, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

"Chip in the Curtain: Computer Technology in the Soviet Union" (1989) (http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a259360.pdf) says (p. 10) that an "authoritative 1986 report on AGAT places its value at $5000", finding that report would be a good place to start. ETA: In Notes section, it says that report "was supplied by Michael Woods, researcher and science editor for The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) newspaper". No further info on that report's origins. shattered (talk) 21:39, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Indeed, this one is closer to reality, though also exaggerated (the official price was 3,900 rubles, as confirmed by the Soviet handbook of computers). Another problem with the Byte article is that the author had no idea what PC he found and tested during a visit to a medical institution in Moscow in 1982; the medic thought it was a brand-new Agat but it turned out to be nothing more than a mock-up device built for debugging medical software and not intended for production. His article is virtually based on factual inaccuracies. Rosso Primavera (talk) 07:16, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

BYTE article is unambiguous, he "first saw AGAT in August 1983" and then "in April of 1984". When did production run start? shattered (talk) 07:46, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

This is not to mention that he actually saw it (or rather what he regarded as an Agat) in 1982, two years before the production decision, so we have three different dates. Factual inaccuracies were typical for old Cold War-era publications on Soviet computer industry and products due to the atmoshere of secrecy that often surrounded Soviet technologies, lack of knowledge and attempts to discredit Soviet goods and progress, and it would be at least strange, if not laughable, to consider the most dubious of them as equally or more reliable than official Soviet or more recent and reliable sources. Bores might have been "good" for Western readers in 1984, when they knew little to nothing about Soviet computers, but by modern standards his article is just ridiculous. Rosso Primavera (talk) 18:08, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

Right, and I was about to revert the entire section back out of the article again. But, I think we should approach this a little differently. The Byte "review", inaccurate or otherwise, was how the computer was perceived in the Western world, and therefore mentioning this perception is valid. If the more reliable source discredits the Byte review, then we should go on to mention that as well -- in fact the more reliable source then becomes a reason that the inaccurate Byte review is relevant. Would you be able to propose some wording on this, or would you like others to propose some wording? MPS1992 (talk) 22:34, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

I've just added a bit of information in order to counterbalance the problematic "review", though I still have no idea why a single publication on some custom-built device is still present there. Perhaps the only thing that will come to mind to those reading the "Reception" paragraph is "why is it here", if it doesn't even describe the Agat as we know it and is clearly off the mark. "Reviews" like that are not normally included into encyclopedias.

Another issue that we're dealing with is that of price. We've got a US source that disagrees with Bores and puts the price of the Agat at $5,000, and there is also an official Soviet handbook of computers which puts it at 3,900 rubles. The latter source is, in my opinion, the only one that deserves a mention, as long as we don't have any other official Soviet publications at hand, and given the fact that non-Soviet works on this subject are often incorrect and based on suggestions. Rosso Primavera (talk) 09:20, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

The handbook you're quoting from also says that Agat has CPU built from KR588 series chips, which is not true for the production model, so the rest of info is also suspect. Let's find another source. shattered (talk) 18:09, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

You're right, the publisher did not update the information on the CPU (which is not exactly unusual, as even in 1984 the Agat was still described as having the KR588 chip), but still the source is an official one and lists official selling prices, so if we need the Agat's introductory price, it's the only work we can cite in a reference (and one that is already cited in the Russian Wikipedia). The world's only website about Agat computers has an interesting advertisement, where the price is 4,800 rubles, but, alas, they don't know what newspaper published it.

The next point I'd like to make is that some of the article's conclusions are dubious at best: e.g., "It based its CPU, disk, and sound interfaces on the architecture of Apple II". While this might have been true for early pre-production prototypes, the only part the two PCs had in common was their CPU (for a short introduction to the differences between these computers you can check another article on the same website created by a person familiar with the developers of the Agat). Saying that "[t]he Agat was based primarily on the design of the Apple II" is more than just an exaggeration — it is plainly incorrect. The only two sources for this groundless assertion are, unsurprisingly, all based entirely on the notorious BYTE article, with one of them being nothing more than a private page. It is needless to say that we can't turn this page into a retelling of Bores' "review" and introduce his claims as universally recognized facts. That is unacceptable here and violates WP:NPOV. Rosso Primavera (talk) 17:04, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

The Mymrin's book does acknowledge that Apple II served as a prototype for Agat, right on page 1, so there's some truth to that claim. Especially if you also look at the bus architecture (almost exactly the same -- physical connectors have extra power pins), softswitch layout... yeah, it's not a 100% compatible clone but is not a 100% original design either. shattered (talk) 18:19, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

It's far not a clone, as they are different in almost every detail, but it was undoubtedly influenced by Apple II (this a matter of fact and confirmed by the articles I have provided). Mymrin is right in his assertion that the first Soviet PC had a source of inspiration, since it was intended to be a Soviet reply to the popular Apple PCs and was influenced by them (this, despite a huge difference between Apple II and the Agat). The problem is that we have two dubious claims that are exaggerated and not universally recognized by scholars; the first of them is unsourced and the other one is based on a retelling of the controversial BYTE article in a book and on a private page that doesn't even fall under the definition of WP:RS. That is hardly acceptable. Rosso Primavera (talk) 11:14, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

You're welcome to edit this article in NPOV-style with supporting sources, then. For example, I did some Googling and found an excellent site with primary sources on Agat -- the Andrey Ershov's archive. Not sure if these can be quoted directly, but they do confirm some dates and numbers, see below. shattered (talk) 10:51, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

I've removed a few unsourced claims that lacked any references or were not supported by the sources cited (for example, Walgenbach says nothing of the "lack of reliable source" for the 6502 microprocessor and makes it clear the Agat PC wasn't a clone), as well as a link to a partisan source, and also fixed the part on the influence of Apple II on the Agat in order to make it a bit more neutral and correct. A reference has been added to illustrate the difference between the two PCs (as in fact they have very little in common). Rosso Primavera (talk) 13:50, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Infodump

• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaindex.asp?did=7448&lang=2 -- 10.01.1982. A proposal to purchase Apple hardware for schools. Apple II Europlus and a host of accessories and software.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaindex.asp?lang=1&did=7314 -- 10.05.1982. Contract between Computing Centre of Siberian Branch of the Soviet Academy of Sciences (CC) and NII VK. NII VK commits to deliver an engineering sample of Agat in 1982Q4.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?lang=1&did=25928&fileid=162098 -- 17.09.1982. Saint Petersburg State University of Aerospace Instrumentation asks if they can borrow one of Apple's from CC.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?did=28109&fileid=161123 -- 22.12.1982. A slide from presentation on personal computing. Agat is described thus: CPU: K588, memory: 64+64, disk: cassette 2x125, screen: 256x256, cursor: keyboard, bus: RS-232; Q-Bus, programming languages: Assembler; Robik; Rapira; Apple, cost: 3000 rubles.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?did=43445&fileid=228699 -- 24.12.1982. Highlights of the "Dialog-82-micro" conference. Agat is mentioned as having instruction set that's entirely incompatible with any Soviet or Western computer.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?lang=1&did=7500&fileid=110061 -- 10.05.1983. Artist's depiction of Agat?
• http://ershov.iis.nsk.su/ru/node/772388 -- 23.05.1983. Preliminary test report of engineering sample of Agat and "Schoolgirl" software package. Test conducted between 17th and 20th of May, 1983.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?did=22174&fileid=161728 -- 22.07.1983. Article on use of computers in schools. CC expects to receive a test batch of 20 Agats in 1983.
• http://ershov.iis.nsk.su/ru/node/787164 -- 16.10.1984. Meeting notes. Ministry of Education: acceptance test schedule is slipping, manufacturer's cost of 3000 rubles is too expensive for schools. Ministry of Radio Technology: acceptance test scheduled for mid-November 1984, cost could be reduced to 1200 rubles.
• http://ershov-arc.iis.nsk.su/archive/eaimage.asp?lang=1&did=7551&fileid=112124 -- 13.01.1986. State of software for Agat. Acceptance test for Basic passed in January 1985, "Schoolgirl" -- in April 1985.