Our new video is out! kzread.info/dash/bejne/mp6px5ehf5OtncY.html

@ryelor123

19 күн бұрын

Be careful with plugging in old electronics. Supposedly you're supposed to condition the capacitors on the circuit boards or else they won't work and something will fry. Look it up, its some process that probably involved charging and discharging the capacitors manually till they work like they should.

Reminds me of that old joke. "How's life in the Soviet Union?" "I can't complain." "How were the printers in the Soviet Union?" "I can't complain." "Then why do you want to defect?" "I can't complain."

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Oh yes

@thedungeondelver

Ай бұрын

Back in the 70s, this old fellow, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War, he tells his wife he's going to go buy bread at the market. "Ivan, I have heard there is no bread today!" "Nonsense, I am a Hero of the Soviet Union, I will get bread!" So he goes out and at the market there's a huge line of people. He waits for an hour and just as he's getting up to the window he hears the clerk say "No more bread today!" "No bread!" he cries. "This is an outrage! I served the Motherland! I fought the fascist hordes back! What do you mean 'no bread'!" A guy in a suit, wearing sunglasses, walks up and puts his arm around the old fellow's shoulders and says "Tut tut comrade - don't make a scene, or else, you know..." and pantomimes pistol to his temple. Dejected Ivan goes home and collapses in a chair by the window. "Ivan, did you get any bread?" "Nyet!" he says in despair. "Were they out of bread?" his wife asks. "No, it was worse!" "What do you mean 'worse'?!" she cries. "They were out of bullets!"

@maxgoldman70

Ай бұрын

As far as I remember, the ending of the joke sounds rather "Because here [in western countries] I finally CAN complain!"

@plateshutoverlock

Ай бұрын

Military: Top notch quality, would likely survive a nuclear war. Public: Crap like you would expect in a sketchy dollar store in the death trap toys isle. ...in what is supposed to be a "classless" system. :-/

@agranero6

Ай бұрын

@@plateshutoverlock in Metro 2033 (the book not the game) is told that there was a separate line on the subway for authorities in case of a nuclear war. I think it is called Metro-2.

If it doesn't require a subscription to do anything, it's not the worst.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I still cannot put in my head this grоss concept of a subscription for printing..m

@absurdengineering

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamilyBack then, “fulfillment of the Plan” was everything. In the runaway capitalism, “the extraction of profits” is everything. When they “optimize” for a single and unsustainable goal, bad things follow.

@monoamiga

Ай бұрын

Well that's the difference between capitalism and communism: In communism people abuse people. In capitalism it's the other way around.

@markhodgson2348

Ай бұрын

Far better than today's over complex junk

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily It's starting to become a standard thing, now. What we once were able to buy and use for as long as it lasted is now becoming _„You get 100 prints valid for three months included with the printer, then have to pay $9,99/month to keep the printer working. You no pay, you buy new printer (And repeat the process again)“_ 💸 Personally? I'd keep that СМ6337 close to hand - Yes, I mean the _Comrade_ unit as well as the _Military_ one. Beat-up and badly made as it is, the _Comrade_ unit will still give a longer service life than any post-2020 western model... 🖨🇬🇧😉

"Quality Control team, report!" - "We made sure quality didn't get anywhere near our products, sir!"

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

- Boris is here. Guys, where is our vоdka?

@plateshutoverlock

Ай бұрын

More like: "Good job! You met quota for this month. And there are no accidents that we are responsible for with our (common citizen aimed) products. Anyone saying things to the contrary is shifting blame from themselves to us, and probally needs to be institutionalized, or perhaps tried for unpatriotic/treasonous behavior of slandering the State." This is pretty much how it went down, and there was no such thing as suing the State who owned these factories. Of course, it's a whole different story with products aimed for the top brass, one that could get the manager and workers sent to the Gulag or in front of the firing squad if they bollocks up anything ment for them. I suspect two seperate sets of workers made the products for the top brass and the common folk.

@rickharriss

Ай бұрын

In the 80s I worked for a uk cad cam company who sold to Russia. I installed over 2 weeks a system for producing printed cct boards probably in the same factory the printer came from. They already had such a system but it filled a room! The output of the Russian machine was a glass plate smoked over a candle and the printed circuit was scribed by a sharp needle in an x y plotter. It worked, sort of. The output of our machine was a photographic film 4 times bigger than the Russian plate. I arrived to find the crates, clearly marked with umbrellas and wine glassed piled all ways in a dark corridor. Requesting light I was told no light so I took the company electrician to an office and had him remove a fluorescent light so we could see something. Working there was chaotic I hated it. The locals did their best but lacked resources. PS Oriel (means Eagle) is a grotty industrial place. I went in winter and may not have seen it at its best.

@charlesc.9012

11 күн бұрын

@@rickharriss Well, the 80s in the ussr was never in good shape, in fact it never got good in its whole history. In Eastern Europe, it was even worse, because soviet russia "traded" with them at fixed prices, naturally creating a major trade deficit for all its members. If a top 20 russian city was that bad, you could imagine what it was like in rural Poland or Hungary

That marking on plastics shows that it was damp when moulded. Plastics like that absorb water from the air, what you are seeing is steam in the moulding.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for those details.

@worawatli8952

Ай бұрын

They might be short on grease and oil, so they used water. rofl

@Kirillissimus

Ай бұрын

100%, pure utter negligence. The technology was designed and tested properly but noone in the factory cared enough to follow it properly. It was not a critical device so the government will not complain and it was such a rare and highly desirable item that the cusomers will not complain either so they knew they could just throw all the parts into a bag along with the schematics and people would still buy it and fix it all shortcomings themselves. So the biggest mistake the author made here was buying a new in the box general purpose soviet product. It would be much better to buy a well used printer. The fact that it was used would already mean that the previous owners had already dissassembled and reassembled it properly following the guidelines of contemporary computer enthusiast's magazines and they did it already applying the required modifications and homemade relacement parts when necessary. And if the printer has significant wear then it is even better as it means that the work of the last owner stood the test of time and the thing should work with minimal repair or even as it is.

@absurdengineering

Ай бұрын

@@KirillissimusYou got that right. The various magazines would cover all sorts of fixes and upgrades to “commercial” products, whether in the nascent personal computer industry, or kitchen/home appliances, cars, motorcycles, and so on. Buying a “product” and having to modify it yourself to fix known design or manufacturing issues was common. There was a constant shortage of goods, so getting a “product” was hard enough - having to modify it post-purchase was a comparatively minor nuisance.

@f.d.6667

Ай бұрын

... possibly even the addition of a gas-forming agent like sodium carbonate: it forms CO2 bubbles when heated, transforming the PS into a dense foam with the tell-tale flow lines. This was sometimes done in order to save material. Still practiced by toymaker Playmobil today...

We totally want the clock review, please!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Will do this weekend!

@Damien.D

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily

@martinhorner642

Ай бұрын

Yes, please!

@plateshutoverlock

Ай бұрын

That clock, with it's quirkiness, is something I would really like to have as a collector's item.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I happily will give it to you.

I was born and raised up in late Soviet Union. I can confirm, that every plastic thing looked exactly like that. It was low quality with lots of geometrical distortions and disgusting color. It smelled really bad too. Toys, appliances, everything was made out of it. When I got my first Lego set, after the Soviet Union collapsed, it looked totally out of this world, like a piece of an alien civilization 😀

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I was there, Gandalf. I was there 3000 years ago.

@u2bear377

Ай бұрын

They used polystyrene for almost everything. Had had a Lego-like set that looked pretty dull. On the other hand, it coulf be fixed with dichloroethane glue. :)

@mattx5499

Ай бұрын

I was born in Poland in 1986 and we had plenty of CCCP era home appliances. Not all of them were made of shit materials. Some of them were actually really nice and very durable. Of course after like 20-30 years the looks deteriorated, but the same was with Western products like computers which turned from nice white, beige into piss colour.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

@mattx5499 that beige coloring is such a pain for us... sometimes, after a complex workvon reverting it back it is like a relevation to see the original designer idea.

@mattx5499

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily I would like to be just about this. It wasn't that bad when it comes to the products made in communist controlled countries. Many of these products were designed to last, they used common parts and were quite easy to repair. They were kept together with the common type of screws, no glue no fucking resin on the enclosures and electronics. Kinda like well made DIY devices. Now they want you to buy the new shit and throw the old ones away. We are losing our 'human touch' in this to support extreme, wasteful consumerism against skills of all sorts. I'm crying while writing this and I feel that I said it best as I could.

An old Ukrainian friend of mine who grew up in the Soviet Union used to say that all Soviet technology looks like it was designed with an axe. :)

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Yes, I know this saying :) Vast majority yes. There were good exceptions, but those were exceptions.

@tibbydudeza

Ай бұрын

I suspect it is a cultural and geographical thing - Russians had a hard time since the Tsarist and under communism, it is reflected in their culture, art and literature and outlook on life. It must just work somehow - elegance and beauty is not patriotic :).

@the_kombinator

Ай бұрын

In Poland we have a saying "spasowane stopami"- meaning "assembled with feet".

@markevans2294

Ай бұрын

Wouldn't a hammer and sickle be a more appropriate tools.

@monad_tcp

Ай бұрын

@@markevans2294that's used for teaching in the universities (although not those of the soviet union)

My father was into the maintenance of the russian "Ludmilla" BR132 (now BR232) locomotives in east germany. He often sayed something like "This locomotives are so primitive, they can be repaired just by the train driver in the middle of the taiga dessert." or "They used a garden hose for isolation on high voltage wires". I think he loved and hated this machines at the same time. On the other hand some of this machines running still today.

@SergioEduP

Ай бұрын

Sometimes primitive isn't bad, having an easy to repair vehicle must have been a prerequisite in Russia considering the vast near inhospitable areas that they had to go trough, but it also massively held them back technologically.

@plateshutoverlock

Ай бұрын

The "primitive design" of Soviet vehicles were actually by intent. The SU is/was a huge, rugged country where you had to be able to repair vehicles with the most basic of tools if you were anywhere outside of the western part of the country. And we are talking about vast, burning deserts and frigid, icy tundra. Much of the SU was as sparsely populated as the Austrailian outback. This repairability and simplicity of course was at the cost of fuel economy and luxury. If I was stranded in the middle of nowhere, I'd rather it happened while I was driving a Ford Model T instead of a Tesla. A Model T you could repair with basic tools, a Tesla, you cannot.

@JimBob1937

Ай бұрын

@@plateshutoverlock , it's a good methodology for some things, but will limit the engineers on inherently complex tasks. A good engineer already attempts to solve problems with as simple a solution possible. Forcing even more requirements for simplicity beyond this is asking for trouble. You can reduce designs further, but you'll get compromises in things like safety and operational tolerances, shorter lasting materials, and so on.

@mfree80286

Ай бұрын

@@plateshutoverlock So... it was definitely going to strand you, so it had better be field expedient to repair?

@u2bear377

Ай бұрын

@@SergioEduP The "Ludmilla" (BR13x / TE109 class) were designed for East European railways, not for the Soviet Union (although some units had been used in Russia, and the 2TE116 class is a direct descendant of "Ludmilla"). While the class' design itself was pretty fine, the quality was not. That's the issue that plagued the whole Soviet machine-building industry.

i went skiing in Romania in 1986. i was pleased i got to peer behind the iron curtain. my grandmother, who was born in Vienna in 1928, knew what poverty was like. so before 12 year old me went tthere she gave me a hundred bic biros. she said "give these to people you see". so on first day of holiday, i stood outside the hotel and started giving passers-by a 12pence biro each. the people didnt get it at first, not until our guide came out asked me what i was doing, and translated for me. within minutes i had a line of dozens of people, no clamouring or pushing, just patiently waiting for a pen. a cheap plastic pen. my grandma also gave me a marks and spencer soap set, in a little wicker basket, and told me to give it to the lady who cleaned my room. so i did. the cleaning lady wept for joy. so i bet even this crap printer would have delighted someone when new.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Right. It probably would.

@KarldorisLambley

Ай бұрын

​@@ChernobylFamily thanks for your reply. My other memory from the school skiing trip was the hotel guards (the hotel was only a few miles from a training camp for Ceaușescu's soldiers, in Poiana Brașov) watching Disney cartoons on a TV and video recorder we took with us on the bus. They leaned their AKs against the wall, sat down with us kids, and loved the cartoons.

@Kannot2023

24 күн бұрын

Thank you, for your kind gesture for my Romanian compatriots.

@KarldorisLambley

24 күн бұрын

@@Kannot2023 my pleasure. in fairness it was my perceptive grandmother, not me. i often think of this 2 week holiday. i can't remember any skiing at all, but i can remember a lot of my interactions with people. i wonder if the hotel still exists, and what the surrounding area is like now. it was an hotel in the middle of nowhere in poina brasov that westerners stayed in, in 1987. it was fairly large, but a chum and i paid to rent a sledge thing, with a steering wheel.it had 3 runners and could seat 2, just, from right next to the hotel, yet we managed to, from same place, slide for ages and ages, and then end up in a ditch. so this big hotel was on a hill, and wasn't in a built up area. in fact I, in error, bought the key home in my suitcase. it was a flat rubber disk about 3 inch across. i had it for years, but lost now I'm afraid. my other abiding memory (and it shames me to recall it, i should have been more understanding) is the food was vile. cabbage, cabbage, cabbage. minced cabbage, with meat, in cabbage parcels, then more cabbage. now i know the meat in the cabbage involved effort. we ate better than anyone nearby. but at that age those things never occurred to me. i am sure it wasn't vile, but i meant as a young English lad unused to such things it was very different to that which i was used to. i meant to me, at the time, it was vile, upon reflection it was probably delicious.

@elozvyut

21 күн бұрын

And that is when Romania was considered one of "The dispaly countries" for rotten West. Imagine jow things were going in the core of that shitshow calles soviet union?

I don't agree with you that only Robotron was a luxury thing in USSR. Any kind of computer related thing was a luxury. Even this terrible printer was so far away from average soviet man as an average american was far away from personal business jet. This printer price was almost a year salary of USSR engineer.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Let me clarify: I did not mean Robotron only, it is just an example. But from what I remember, any Socialistic bloc tech was > USSR one. And when I deal with that, I understand why.

@karlpron

Ай бұрын

Not only in the USSR. In all countries in communist block. I was living in Poland ( still live) and my far cousins had a Schneider CPC 464 (an Amstrad clone). It was in middle or late 1980's and it was a luxury. I remember dreaming about owning one :). Some years later when I acquired this exact machine I copied code from old Amstrad Action magazines. In Basic. As it only had cassettes as persistent memory it was rather tedious task to copy 3 or 4 pages of fine print in one go. :D

@bigalejoshileno

Ай бұрын

that was the reality of 90% of the world

@dannydanny2789

28 күн бұрын

Dude most people in America in those days couldn't afford personal computers and printers as well lol

@karlpron

27 күн бұрын

@@dannydanny2789 You just don't get it. :D In our countries there weren't any computers available in shops. There was only private import if one had connections and money. I don't know how much did Amstrad cost then, but if teacher's monthly salary was about $12 equivalent, he certainly couldn't have afforded it even if it was available. Even in 1990 such Amstrad with old Z80 was a treasure. Just to remind, 80386 debuted in 1986 and i486 in 1989. And don't tell me people in America can't afford $50 used laptop on ebay (just looked - i5 3rd gen, 8 GB RAM)? They don't have smartphones, where even the oldest with old android can run a C sandbox compiler? If you need a computer to work not to play that's enough.

Man, looks like you found the last unit made on Friday before vacation after getting a bad performance review

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

You won the internet today!

@theALFEST

Ай бұрын

soviets always worked like that

@rarbiart

Ай бұрын

i assume that this factory just scored for matching the number in the 5 year plan. quality was no objektive. and the polit officer got promoted for good leadership of the socialistic collective.

@yeoldebaccyfarm3081

Ай бұрын

we call these monday pieces

@bayo_yayo4317

Ай бұрын

This printer dosent even belong in the recycling lol

The title had me asking: "What would happen if the Soviets built the already-most-frustrating device in computing history?" I was not disappointed.

@swokatsamsiyu3590

Ай бұрын

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Glad to be helpful!

Looks like saved from recycling plant after sitting 10years outdoors.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

It gives this sort of vibe...

@alherch

Ай бұрын

For how old it is, it is in great shape. Who knows, it may have been perfect straight out of the factory. At least this one won't steal your data or force you to be ink cartridges all the time 😂

@matrix54190

Ай бұрын

🤣🤣🤣👍👍

My parents visited the USSR around 1990. A local complained that their Soviet Video Cassette Recorder was s**t, and offered lots of money to any foreigner that would import a Japanese VCR to the USSR.

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

A Soviet citizen with a VCR? *And* money to offer Westerners payment for any Japanese imports?!? I suspect he might well have been a KGB plant... 🌵

2:55 fins of the die projecting into the mold were broken. That's how you get that odd smooth angle of extra plastic, they were snapped off. Possibly a concodial fracture on the right side (or shadow), which could indicate it was stuck sharply and not bent. The die don't lie.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for the explanation

@ryelor123

19 күн бұрын

Makes sense. Broken pins are common in metal die-casting so I wouldn't be surprised if its happening with plastic casting too. They probably used too little die release spray and when the die broke, they didn't fix it. I imagine what happened with this printer was that this and several other defective items were just stored at the factory for when they were having trouble meeting a quota or something so they could quickly assemble extra units. Of course, with all defective parts, you're going to get fully defective units. That's the kind of stuff I'd expect from Soviet industry.

I recently bought the same programmable clock at a flea market (an earlier version called "Signal 201"), and literally everything about it looked as if it was some kind of student project. The keyboard, for some unknown reason, had numbers arranged vertically (like Japanese writing), and combining that with the fact that there was no backspace, it became frustrating very quickly. It ate 2x9v battery to keep time for 2hrs (i don't even know how they managed to make TTL consume so much energy). The drawings of the device in the manual looked as if they were drawn by a 5-year-old who had seen this clock once. The funniest part was that it had only one thyristor to control the output voltage (they attempted to make an SSR before SSRs were a thing), and because the plug was not polarized, it either didn't work or any device (even period-correct ones) really didn't like that control method. And on top of all that, it just died one day (clock just refused to access it's fancy 1byte a second internal memory) so I just scrapped it for parts. Cheers from Poland

@absurdengineering

Ай бұрын

TTL is fairly energy-hungry. It’s weird that they didn’t use the Comecon equivalents of the 4000 CMOS-series ICs. Those consume almost no power in a clock application.

@zyv2335

Ай бұрын

@@absurdengineering i checked the schematic right now and they for some reason attached batteries before linear stabilizer :0 . And also by the looks of it display driver works reguardles of power source :/// . So no surprises here ...

It can't be worse than HP subscription printers.

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

Based on my experience of recent HP output, the Comrade СМ6337 shown here is both better made *and* will be considerably easier to service and maintain. 💯 It doesn't require „Special“ inks at $175,000/litre, either. 😉

@WJCTechyman

Ай бұрын

@@dieseldragon6756 Yeah but before HP became what it is today, it made some things that the Soviets would have craved.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

If you look with attention, you'll notice that in that vacuum plastic package there is also a set of maintenance hammer and sickle.. (just kidding)

@goclunker

Ай бұрын

It’s almost as if this printer was made by Lada

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily I've been wanting to make computing equipment - To unquestionably British designs - For quite a while now. If I ever get that far, you can be sure to find ten Tetley tea-bags thrown in with every purchase! 🫖🇬🇧🙃

The cat stole the show , greetings from Romania !!! 👍👍👍

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Puuurrrrrfect

It looks that after the plastic case was made, the excess plastic was hand-trimmed with a knife. Also you can see the direction plastic flowed in the mold, reminds me of 1980s and poor quality consumer plastics from the era. After 1990s started I was amazed that reliable plastic things can be made, and that life can depend on them. Greetings from Poland 😸

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you! Greetings from Kyiv!

@fvckingtest

Ай бұрын

My grandmother had a plastic box she kept her makeup in she brought with her from cuba in the early 70's. It was yellow and the plastic looked IDENTICAL to this! It was probably a soviet-made product imported to communist cuba.

@ryelor123

19 күн бұрын

Usually that's done by a trim press. Maybe they couldn't get the right angle or something and had to do it by hand.

In Czechia/Czechoslovakia we used to say "DoDo" or "Dodělej doma" about the eastern technology. It translates to "Complete it at home", which is a nice example of this printer. Very nice video man.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you!

@Ajrocket

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily And yes, we want the "Chasy" review, please.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

this weekend!

@AAaa-wu3el

Ай бұрын

Now you don't have any of yours technology at all.

@Ajrocket

Ай бұрын

@@AAaa-wu3el Why do you think so? We produce nuclear power plant turbines and it’s equipment, engines, computer parts… what your country did?

The legendary printer scene from "Office Space" (1999) tells me that crappy printers must be the universal thing

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Ahahaha

@meikala2114

Ай бұрын

they are still crappy

Cat review: "I wouldn't want to use it as a litter. I deserve better."

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Meow

As far as I know there were several levels of product quality in the Soviet Union: Military Grade (OTK-Standards), State Authorities, Export and ... the rest for the people. "Commercial Grade" would not suit what you'd got there. My family came from the GDR on mothers side and we frequently visited them. A few kilometers outside the town was a large russian garrison with a "russian market". Due to some ... err ... "relations" my aunt was allowed to go shopping in there. I once accompanied her. Food wasn't much of a problem. Clothes basically not as well - even though style, size and quality was prone to quality variations. Electronics ? Forget it. In the late 1980s briefly before the german reunion they sold all-tube radios and TVs. The "little stuff" like household gear and small radios or cameras was just crap. No computer stuff there. I own two Soviet Era B7-22A Digital Multimeters built in 1978 and 1979 - the later one with english, the earlier one with german front printings. They have Nixie tubes for display and mainly single transistor inards. Manufactured at OTK standards they work absolutely flawlessly after that long time. One came with the original shipping box with spares, add-ons and manual. And I own the fabulous Soviet Era "Iskra 111" desktop calculator. Welknown for the "inverted 2" for the 5 symbol in its Nixie tubes. Thanks for presenting this "working class disappointment". The labelling is identical to the "officials" printer - but cut in pieces to match the different layout on this one. Why they cut it *after* being applied to the unit will always remain a secret. Most likely the one responsible for it had a knife but no scissor and no clue how to properly handle it.

@piotr433

Ай бұрын

As far as I remember from my Soviet childhood, military grade electronic components had a ВП in a star logo on them (военная проверка - military quality control). I still have transistors with this stamp somewhere. I've never heard about the OTK-standards as being specifically military grade. The OTK acronym I know stood just for отдел технического контроля - an inspection department of the factory, you could find their stamp in the papers of all consumer grade products. By the way, those all tube radios must have been some vintage ones, I believe they seized being produced somewhere in mid-1970s...

@wacholder5690

Ай бұрын

@@piotr433 You are - most likely - right in that respect. I have numerous tubes that were positively military grade and came with corresponding boxes (6N3PI in most cases but also Nixies) and these *only* had the OTK-stamp present. I guess I misjudged that here. However: I do have russian tubes with no OTK stamps ... recovered from the former GDR ... and *their* quality is ... well ... "mediocre" to say the least. So I *guessed* the ones with OTK stamp were selected types and those without are the ones barely working and "good enough for other customers" probably. I will have an eye on the star stamp. Thank you !

@MrJohnTripperson

27 күн бұрын

​@@wacholder5690 the star too look for is like Chrysler logo.

@AP57532

27 күн бұрын

@@wacholder5690 There were special military acceptance stamps for that. The way it usually worked was that a military customer had an office right in the factory and made an independent check on the OTK. Those stamps can be looked up on the internet.

That's got to be the most Soviet name for a product I've ever heard.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Well noted.

too much vodka on the production line!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Jokes apart, that could be a potentially realistic scenario.

@alexturnbackthearmy1907

Ай бұрын

Or short story of soviet union - it died because everyone involved cared just as much as shift that made this thing.

@Drew-Dastardly

Ай бұрын

It was only recently that Russia banned the sale of 9% ABV beers in petrol stations. They were considered a soft drink at the time. Vodka is proper manly drink.

@TradieTrev

Ай бұрын

ROFL!!

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

Too much production on the Vodka line, I'd say... 🙃

If you say people from the west always praise "eastern" stuff. Well we in the "west" got the best parts that they were able to make for hard currency from (deutsche mark, dollars). one supermarket here had a certain brand of sweets that was sold by the piece (say 2ct each) there was even the GDR price imprinted on the sweet (EVP 10Pf). After the fall of the wall I told people from the former GDR that these were good and they were totally upset that we had it and in GDR the shelf was always empty. IKEA build (after some difficulties in the early 80s) its image of low cost good furnitures on made in polish factories. I don't think anyone ever saw those billys in the east. From an engineering point that plastic part is a prime example of everything that can go wrong in a mold. Flashing, sink marks, non precise core marks and even broken cores/fin. I think with the sticker the glue might have failed in high storage temps in all this time, as the outline of the glue mark seems to be right.

@absurdengineering

Ай бұрын

You’re so right about the plastic molding issues. I’ve experimented with injection molding at home and the initial moldings had similar problems. But I have never done it before and I didn’t have anyone to consult, and I didn’t bother getting a book about it. I was crestfallen back then about how finicky the process seemed to be to get good results. It made me feel better that “commercial” goods often were not much better in appearance. And eventually I figured the process out and was able to make small pieces (LEGO-brick sized) to good tolerances.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I did not say "always". I just find it really cringe, when people who lived all their life in free or relatively free environments praise something, where were no freedom at all. Or where you needed to hunt for goods, etc, etc. Especially, when those say 20-25 year old people.

@absurdengineering

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamilyYeah. I had good fortune to travel across the Iron Curtain when I was growing up, so I had direct comparison. Large cities in Eastern Europe were fairly bleak places - dirty facades, stores that sold anything worthwhile only “under the table”, having to know the right people just to buy common consumer goods without waiting years, and decent consumer goods being mostly made for export and not for domestic consumption. And if one had the “good fortune” of living in a heavily industrialized area, you had to wash your windows every month or you wouldn’t be able to see outside as they would get smeared with organic aerosols and precipitates from the polluted air. You’d put a nice shirt on at the beginning of the day, and by the evening the collar would be blackened just from being outside. The border crossings were also “interesting” places, especially international airports. People think that a secondary inspection at US immigration is a bad thing - it’s white glove treatment compared to a “secondary inspection” on an international departure back in the 80s.

@bitrexgm

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily The US constructed up a highly profitable industry during the cold war called "the defense industry" to "keep up" with the Soviets. It's good to know what many intelligent people in the West were aware of at the time: that the fear -mongering was based on a big healthy serving of BS about the Soviet's realistic capabilities. But the Soviet Union made a good Schrodinger's Enemy in its day - incompetent, inept, ineffectual - but surely otherwise dangerous enough to warrant the world's largest defense budgets to "counter." However the land of the free has largely successfully moved on to even more absurd paper tigers to justify its own fashion of "wealth redistribution."

They really did break the mould with this printer.

In my country, during communism times, there was saying: "Czy się stoi czy się leży 500 złotych się należy" - "it doesn't matter if you are standing or lying down you deserve 500 zloty". Of course the amount changed rapidly with inflation :) We had the same problem :) I was just a teen when communism ended, but I remember well some disappointments. Mainly The RUBIN TV which burnt with our piano and my first tape recorder with my 2 tapes with western music recorded from the radio. I wont forget it: cassettes looked like from Dali pictures, just frozen flow from the shelf. They didn't burn completely because they were in the opposite corner of the room but temperature had to be high enough to melt them down.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

That is epic. Though really sad.

In the time I grew up here in the US, there were many Soviet refugees as my classmates or their parents, at least, and none of them ever had anything positive to say about it. The closest any came was that one family, after the fall of the USSR, went back to Lithuania for a couple years to use their engineering expertise to help their native country get on its feet. Then, they came back to the US. I imagine that some people just a few years younger than me, who grew up too late to have any contemporary experience with Soviet-born peers, may (naively) idealize the Soviet Union as an outlet for their frustrations with the sheer greed of the billionaire class, and how their political influence has lead to the gap between rich and poor being much, much worse than it was here in my childhood. Mind you, in the Old Days, the rich were heavily taxed here, which made it less desirable for many executive types to give themselves infinitely large salaries, as most of it went to the People of the United States. Nowadays, after the massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations championed by President Reagan and others, they are much more eager to "line their own beds", fire their workers, overwork their workers, loot their companies, and more, for pure greed. It's so much harder for ordinary Americans to succeed economically today than it was thirty or forty years ago. All of which is to say that while there were many fine people born in the Soviet Union, I don't idealize their government nor their economy for a second, but I can kinda understand why some younger people might. Somewhat more on-topic, that printer looks exactly like I would expect from descriptions of Soviet home electronics, just by word of mouth. I remember hearing about people testing radios and such in the store, to make sure that they bought "a working one", because even new electronics were considered suspect, just as a matter of routine. Not to say that Soviet engineers didn't know what they were doing, just that when an entire supply chain, with all its management, is so very corrupt, so very self-policing, and so little incentivized to pursue quality (no competition as such, after all), well, things are bound to turn out much worse than they really should. Just my two cents from the other side of the world, anyhow. 🙂

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for sharing this!

@bitrexgm

Ай бұрын

Incidentally, Putin was the darling of American business newspapers and economics journals in the late 90s and early 2000s. The man who was going to make Russia an economic powerhouse, the savior of commerce, the man who was going to stabilize Russia and deliver it from its autocratic past. They had almost nothing bad to say about the guy. Sometimes billionaires aren't the best judge of character...

@derekchristenson5711

Ай бұрын

@@bitrexgm I remember such reports. I also remember that, in 2003, a university professor teaching my Russian Politics class, warned us about Putin, saying "He promises normalcy but is intentionally silent on what that means. Keep an eye on him." That's just roughly summarizing, but boy was he right!

@championknife

27 күн бұрын

Corruption in the USSR was in its infancy. If we compare it with corruption in the capitalist world, then there was no corruption in the USSR. The problems in the USSR were with the fear of stratification of society by income. Therefore, they paid everyone little. And with a small salary, there was no point in punishing a bad job. Therefore, a worker who worked poorly had a salary slightly less than a worker who worked well. People lost the point of working well and efficiently.

Printers are already evil things, but your face as things just kept getting worse was pretty much the same face every technician makes when handed a turd and asked to polish it.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Yes. Polish printers were way better. :)

When even HP produces outstandig products compared to yours, you know you fcked up big time.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Bhaha

@georgegonzalez2476

Ай бұрын

HP used to make very high quality products, before like 1995. Most of them very expensive, too. I have a HP 8640A signal generator from circa 1985. List price, around $12,500. You could buy a nice car for that much back then.

@DrakkarCalethiel

Ай бұрын

@@georgegonzalez2476 Also have an old scope from them, 54542A. After minor repairs, it still keeps going. New HP gear is just utter junk, especially their consumer products are just beyond scum. Their printers are just the worst on the market. Even their business line is junk. Ours at work was dead every couple months.

@DrakkarCalethiel

Ай бұрын

@@georgegonzalez2476 have an old HP 54542A Scope. After just minor repairs, it still goes strong! Old HP gear was made to last, new gear just breaks to easily, especially consumer stuff.

@vintageelektro5437

Ай бұрын

Have a HP LaserJet 4+ from 1995 and still using it with modern PC (I added LAN module to printer), very good machine. Nostalgic era when these items was made in japan

I hope Russian tanks are made to the same quality standards as this printer.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

As we say, "let your words go to God's ears!"

@chukkie0001

Ай бұрын

tonk turret reached earth orbit(including mobik). Printer not, so it failed doing its job.

@vjhighlander

28 күн бұрын

Unfortunately, they arn't... Russia can't make something hightech for living, but Russia quite well make thiungs for killing... That's the problem of this country.

@AP57532

27 күн бұрын

They weren't that bad. The quality was enforced by force and threats, but it was there for the army. But fortunately for us, the Soviets didn't understand that quality must be an inherent part of the production chain, and that's why even otherwise closely monitored weapons are of poor quality and less reliable than ours.

@jimacklaw

26 күн бұрын

They're NOT. They are probably the best proven combat tanks in the world.

I actually hurt myself laughing at that face you made after the ice cream remark! I'll thank you properly Alex when I can stop giggling.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

You can`t imagine how sensitive the residents of the unspoken country are to that ice cream thing...)

@aggese

Ай бұрын

? To what extent did ice cream even exist in the usse?

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

@@aggese I am afraid it will be quite hard to explain, but shortly, older generation of USSR fans recall soviet ice cream as cheap and the most tasty ever in the whole universe. Which is logical, as there were no alternatives and they were young back then, and nature of human psychology makes childhood memories very bright and positive . Somehow this very thing with ice cream appears in many attempts to explain "what a great country we lost".

@aggese

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily right nostalgia for a time long gone, if a "bit" excessive it would be interesting to see if it's possible to find any documentation of what actually went into soviet ice cream and if any western tourists ever mentioned it.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I found a good summary at this blog of some russian guy. dzen.ru/a/ZBWLs5kKBW354PIq You will need to translate it though, but he shares details with specific IDs of state standards (GOSTs) and industry standards (OSTs), revealing that while the process of ice cream making was strictly regulated, there was a regulatory gap for standardization of ingredients. Basically, this all together busts those USSR-fans-stories...

This build quality and even the deformed and streaky plastics remind me about toys I used to see on second hand stores when I was a kid. Obviously they were made in some eastern block countries. I think I might have even had some. Consumer items made near the end of USSR were just lowest possible quality. And nobody cared. As long as the quota was met, no ones job would be in danger. This video shows perfectly what kind of contrast USSR had. I think a word apathy describes this printer, and its time in USSR pretty well.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Apathy. Yes, a good choice.

Alex, that's a printer made in the late hours of a Friday afternoon shift :D But I agree, the Soviet industry made mixed quality products. I have an Elektronika B1-011 turntable, which is more massive than the Thorens TD125 it was inspired by. Outstanding equipment, but it was rarely found in homes of common people. Same for the much praised Elektronika 004 or Olymp 005 reel to reel decks, inspired by the Revox A700. I could continue with the Estonia LP001C CD player, but that had a Philips mechanism and chips inside, and was built with the help of Tesla. Again, not really intended for the common working class people. The mass produced crap was the one intended for them, because it was planned that way.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Right. I do not mean that all things were crap, but gems like this underscore the rule.

@hoedenbesteller

Ай бұрын

Love how you use the word " Inspired" ... Chinese nowadays would call that: OURS...

@plateshutoverlock

Ай бұрын

The Soviets could and did make some outstanding consumer products, but rarely did they filter down to your average factory worker or farmer. "We are all the same, there are no classes or strata here, unlike America", was just a grand illusion, propaganda for the rest of the world and the Soviet citizens. There were rich and poor in the Soviet Uniion, but the government tried to hide this fact. Most of the high wealth oligarchs in today's capitalist Russia were former top ranking KGB and military commanders and others that were high up in the Soviet system.

@SergioEduP

Ай бұрын

@@plateshutoverlock The USSR and the USA had a lot more in common than either of them were willing to say.

@marcoaurelio4903

Ай бұрын

@@plateshutoverlock But communism has nothing to do with diffrent levels of quality.. Nerdy people look too much for HP "corporate" grade or "lab" grade, but the consumer grade, like those who got to peoples homes? was more or less than same crapiness but with a good looking plastic case. Iam curious to know how much it costed to produce.. Here in brazil we had our own domestic computer market (that raegan and collor blowed out with sanctions). They was made to reflect our country necessiteis, so they made it cheaper and crappier. On a specific moment of our "rollercoaster" economy, we had itautec business laptops with a built quality compared with the thinkpads and HPs (in the core2duo era).

they made the whole printer with a hammer and a sickle

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

)))))))))

The old joke about Lada - buy only one made on Wednesdays. So the computers were made on Wednesdays and printers were made on Mondays and Fridays.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Lol

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

Sounds to me like Hewlett-Packard might have adopted the same approach... 🙃

I used such a printer with 386DX-33, Lexicon&ORCAD, and it wasn't so bad. I compared it with Epson, and the main advantage of SM6337 is that I could print on A3 paper.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Right, I also had SM6337, but those had way better quality. Not even close to this.

At least it won't ask for a new ink cartridge everytime it is turned on.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Very often it would ask for a new firmware, if there is a power glitch.

@youghurt2k

Ай бұрын

Still very advanced. Many modern printers don't have that luxury either.

@Kirillissimus

Ай бұрын

The thing will never ask for new ink. It will keep printing until the ribbon gets completely dry and you make a decision that the letter are way too dim to expect other people to recognize them. And even then you did not just buy a new cartridge of course as it was also quite a rare item. Insted you disassembled it, then you purchased an alcohol solution and soaked the ribbon with a little bit of it and then reassembled the cartridge. And after it no longer had enough ink you just got yourself new ink. And after the ribbon itself started to tear you just cut it and replaced the ribbon after it got too short. Even after the plastic wheels and axis inside wore down there were replacement options available. The only reason to replace a whole cartridge was if you accidentally break it.

@youghurt2k

Ай бұрын

@@Kirillissimus ha ha... actually I had an old typewriter like that. They just keep on writing.

As someone who have been in consumer electronics industry for 20 years, I thought I'd seen everything that was possible in terms of injection molding plastics problems. But subject to market pressures there are just limits to how far any one supplier can slide into mediocrity before they're out of the game and so there is some pressure on every level to at least try. What you have shown us is a remarkable specimen.of a time and place where no market forces and the absence of any pressure created a potential for uncontrolled descent into a fascinating state of apathy. Imagine the miserable quality inspector who rubber stamped this or any of its component parts as "good enough". Compare his outlook on life with the japanese contemporary who would allow a crooked sticker or a mold crease not even on a child's toy. The DDR East German authorities famously were suspicious of communications technology in the hands of citizens, and maintained files with printed specimens from every typewriter sold and licensed to individual users, such that flaws and irregularities in the letter types could be used to fingerprint the authors of subversive, counter-revolutionary letters passed between intellectuals. It is interesting to imagine that the frightful state of these soviet machines could be intentional; to make them individually distinct enough to also leave telltale marks on the paper passing through the warped and crooked paper transport. But that would take effort, and by the looks of things that would perhaps be giving the soviet bureaucrats far too much credit. ( But yes please, we want to see the cool weird VFD clock! )

@KallePihlajasaari

Ай бұрын

It is very likely that all modern smartphone cameras embed traceable information into the pictures and videos that they take. In new Apple phones it is not possible to swap the rear camera between two identical new units. Some Android units the same situation. Soviet photocopiers also had the photoconductor drum scratched to leave telltale marks that would identify the owner of the machine. Modern smart phones will also inspect your email for subversive pictures and words and flag you BEFORE they perform the end to end encryption that you think protects you from state surveillance. All these tools are used to track dissidents and collect compromising information for blackmail purposes by state sponsored political agencies.

@awocrf

Ай бұрын

didn't all modern printers print some microscopic dots on paper that can be later used to identify them?

@monad_tcp

Ай бұрын

@@KallePihlajasaari With the iPhone I don't doubt, with Android its possible, it would be harder because of diversity of hardware. That would have to be done by software in the blob/driver, but as you can actually process raw data from the camera sending it to the GPU directly, you could in fact just get pictures in RAW and that tricky wouldn't work. I doubt they would include another processor in the stream just for doing some stupid watermark for some 3-lettered agency of the government. I can imagine Qualcomm doing that, but there is a lot of diversity of SoC manufacturers (Samsung probably wouldn't do it, as they sell for both sides of the fence), some wouldn't bother with it, specially if it saves cost.

@KallePihlajasaari

Ай бұрын

@@awocrf I have seen the yellow 'random' dots on some inkjet printer output. Easier to see on a white image under blue light.

@JimBob1937

Ай бұрын

@@monad_tcp , likely it'd be done at the OS level via digital watermarking, an embedding of a signal on top of the image data. Though, this should be identifiable through a bit of signal analysis, but difficult to remove.

I’m a plastics engineer. That cosmetic appearance on the case is called splay. It’s cause by molding material with too much moisture in it, too high of molding temperatures, or injecting the plastic too fast. It could also be glass on the surface if the material is a fiberglass reinforced grade. If that is the case it would be from running the mold too cold of cooling temperature of injecting the plastic too slow. The damaged areas on the slots on the back were probably from the thin metal cores breaking off in the mold. I’m guessing the mold was probably not made out of high quality tool steel so those thin cores would be susceptible to breaking

Really shows the difference between hardware that was designed for the military/government, and hardware designed for regular people. I don't blame you for not wanting to plug it in, it looks like it would immediately catch fire!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I actually tried after I published this video; it does power on, shows error and makes an attempt to position the head. That's all.

@UpLateGeek

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamilyI'm really surprised it does that much! The only way I would've tried powering it on was from behind some cover, and with a fire extinguisher nearby.

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

@@UpLateGeek Steady on, chap...It was made in the *USSR* _not_ the *UK* ... 🖨🇬🇧🔥😉

Recently dug out my revered HP serial pen plotter. Plugged it in. It works (grime, bits of loft stuff shrugged off). About 20 odd years vintage. Even then it was 2nd hand....

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

It connects via serial, will run for as long as the parts and the pens last, and has no remote management capability... I bet that's a part of their history HP would _really_ like the world to forget! 😉

Like everything, few advantages on the trash background. Have a MS6317 printer, made in Kyiv Octava factory, clone of the HP inkjet. Small (A4 sheet with 40mm thickness), absolutely silent. But with big troubles of compatibility, printing quality, inkhead supply, paper feeding. So practically unusable. And they made it with 8080 CPU (3 powerings, 2 tacts, huge hot DIP package, special periferials) in such small space!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thanks for sharing!

Great video. Wow it looks like a diy made prop for a tv show or something with that plastic quality

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

What if all this, I mean, all my experience with all this weird hardware, is a part of a TV reality show? I am scared to think about this chance :)

@themamosians62

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily oh my god I hope not

A blyatiful printer 🤣

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Suuuuqqqaaa

Soviet industry should be praised for making useful things like computer printer housings out of carved recycled chewing gum... (No, not really. That "thing" is inexcusable.)

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I mean, there existed way better built examples of this very model. But this one is... as you described it.

The classic soviet hardware. As a TV-sets which may cause fire or a CRTs that exploded or friges which may stroke you with electricity )

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Oh... yes.

@vintageelektro5437

Ай бұрын

Definitely. There are cases when large ocean ships sunk due fire caused by forgotten electric kettle. There was no automatic off or protection on these items (often peoples used only simple spirals with heating element thrown in water) ever. Lack of such simple automation which caused millions of roubles damages. Most items for regular peoples are poorly built without attention to details. If there is some protection or features it often looked like last minute job. There was better quality items, for special consumers as military, but these things also was strange, because this was like handmade, low volume production.

@ttl3000

Ай бұрын

@@vintageelektro5437 about what we may talk, if most of all soviet appliances were the cheap and simplified copies from a western tech.

@vintageelektro5437

Ай бұрын

@@ttl3000 They had the innocent name "foreign analogue" for the copy. For example, microchips. It didn't even seem sinful, inferior quality, but about the fact that it was stolen, not even a thought.

@ttl3000

Ай бұрын

@@vintageelektro5437 aha

I worked for IKEA over 30 years argo and we invited to Sweden production managers from four Soviet furniture factories to train them to the IKEA policies. During a lecture in quality control, the managers were stunned: “Quality?! We sell everything we produce, quality or not.”

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Omg...

ok, the "quality" is not the best, but the production plan was fulfilled. :D

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Boris was happy.

Russia may not have had the "best" ice-cream, but wow, was it cheap for western tourist. In the late 80's, if my memory is correct, an ice cream cone was 10kopek or maybe, it was after exchange 10 US cents. When we were in Novosibirsk, a vendor was selling them out of cardboard box. We each bought a couple for ourselves and then bought one for every kid that was in the park. Looking back, it was probably something they did every time a tour group came through and the local kids probably weren't that surprised. As an aside, we visited Orel on that trip.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for sharing!

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

I was collecting coins for a while, and one of them - Odin knows how it even came to be in the UK - Is a _one_ Kopek coin. Looking at it for the first time, I could already tell that the value of the bronze it was made out of was at least 20 times its face value... 🙃

@ronburgundi6254

Ай бұрын

I think you tried real ice cream (from real ingredients) for the first time there, since ice cream from the USA was artificial (trans fats and cane sugar mixed with palm oil) In the Soviets ice cream made it from real cream - it was not usual for foreigners to try something for the first time natural!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

There is a tricky thing about real cream. While mixture was standartized, there was a gap in quality standards for the raw source of the cream, etc., so... there were issues.

@kcgunesq

Ай бұрын

@@ronburgundi6254 I don't doubt that it was real ice cream, though my recollection was that it had more air than was common in the US. But for American teenagers unaccustomed to Russian food, it was simply delicious. Don't get me wrong, most of the food we had on the trip was good, but very different from what we were used to eating at home. Familiar references points like Coke and ice cream were very welcome. As for being more "real" - I don't think so. In the 1980's most food was far less processed, even in the US. Baskin-Robbins was known for having many all-natural flavors. Also, it wasn't unusual for us to make ice cream at home using only natural and traditional recipes.

Your videos are awesome. So much fun.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

And now imagine how is it to deal with all this stuff...)))

Hi Alex, I will not forgive you, that you didn't plugged it in... 😉 I know it is kinda suicidal step but you could do it from far away.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

SO! ESPECIALLY FOR YOU! I did it right now. All what I got: "power" LED on, "error" LED on, and a weak attempt to move the head which gave a vibe "shoot me, I cannot anymore withstand this afterlife"

@nojbik

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 somehow I expected that...

"Rare soviet printer. New in box". Could sell for a fortune on ebay!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I do not know how to put in CN23 declaration THIS grade of "USED"

@Damien.D

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily =)))

@mfree80286

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily Do they have a selection for the designation "NOS"? Usually that means "New - Old Stock" but "New Old Soviet" or even "New Old Sucks" would be an appropriate expansion...

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Ebay yes, customs - no :)

The old saying about Soviet industry and how much stuff it produced, "Quantity has a quality all its own." meets its corollary in this printer. "Quantity without quality is just crap.". The dimpled areas are because the injection press was run without any pack and hold. Injection molded plastic has to be kept under pressure while the mold is cooled enough that the part can be ejected without it having shrinkback (the dimples) or warping. Pretty obvious from this example of superior Soviet engineering that the molding machine was setup to cool the shots just enough that the plastic parts wouldn't slump into a hot puddle of molten plastic. It's also evident they never ever cleaned the mold or the injection screw and barrel. Definitely didn't have a debris screen. I suspect there is a lot of pre-consumer recycled plastic in that housing. Likely sprues, runners, scrap and failed shots swept up off the factory floor then dumped into a never cleaned grinder to chunk it small enough to throw back into the hopper. From the areas showing damage to the mold I bet they had a guy with a screwdriver or chisel that "helped" the part ejection by prying them out of the molds. If he slipped and put another gouge in the mold, no problem. It's extra texturing. It's like the end stage Trabant 601 of dot matrix printers. All the production equipment was worn out, barely functioning, and whenever it broke down it was spit, bubble gum, bailing wire and duct tape to get it barely functioning again. No money for new equipment! The people in charge at Trabant would every so often make a mockup or design study (or were any fully functional?) of an all new Tatra. Years ago I saw a short video clip of where they had those stored together. It was like a trip through automotive styling from the 1960's through the late 1980's. Some looked quite nice, for a car that size. Every attempt at reviving the company with a new design, new equipment, new everything was always blocked.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for this thoughtful comment.

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

I think I'd still rather have a Trabant 601 than a Tesla. At least with the Trabi I only have to pay for the car *once* ... 👍 _Waits patiently for mandatory „usage“ subscriptions to start showing up on Tesla tablets..._ 😉

Not meaning to defend the quality of Soviet manufacturing, but plastic becomes brittle and shrinks with age. Some of the deformation you are seeing here may have occurred in the intervening years of storage, just like the disintegration of the foam rubber.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Might be, but I had the same SM6337 in the past, from the same period, same new-off-shelf, and.. nothing like that was spotted.

I need to spend more time here, always great work. So interesting to me

@ChernobylFamily

21 күн бұрын

Thank you!

Here I thought my printer was horrid. The only problem it has is the cartridges costing an arm, leg, and your first born.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

)))

@robertkalinic335

Ай бұрын

If u mean hp i suggest looking up some various hacks people came up with.

@IWishIDidntExist2333

Ай бұрын

Brother laser printer.

No wonder the Robotron Präsident 6313 from the GDR was such a success.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Robotron rocks!

I am so glad you make these videos. I’m so curious about what life was like in the USSR.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

oh, you do not want to experience this life... i was a child, but i remember it, no... never again.

Former East German here. It may well be that we produced better quality here (e.g. K6313). But as far as I know, no printer ever made it into a regular store in East Germany until reunification. Anyone who wanted to print at home either converted electric typewriters or used discarded, huge, ancient teleprinters.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Interesting...! Robotron printers are lovely. Used one for a while, gave good feelings.

As a teenager, I had a chance to work on one of the factories where the computers for CNC equipment were produced, as well as some other things, It was called "ПО Контур", and it was in the city of Tomsk in Siberia. Nobody remembers what was made there in terms of electronics, but many remember the plastic lanterns that were made there. The ones which looked like many icicles (made of plastic) handing around the circular frame. That was also made on the same factory. I remember working on "assembly line" where we were plugging components into PCBs, cutting pins to the right length and riveting contact terminals to PCBs. It was fun.

@ChernobylFamily

23 күн бұрын

Thank you for sharing!

It's like they molded the plastic in an abandoned coal mine. :-/ But as bad as this printer is, it pales to so many Soviet made TV sets of the era. Suddenly exploding CRTs that send shards of glass to impale the viewer, so much of a fire hazard that the Soviet television sign off warned users to unplug their sets, and posted signs at hotels warning the same (IIRC, upon checkout you were supposed to make sure the set was unplugged and the cord draped over the front of the TV). From what I understand, TVs made by the end of a month were the most hazardous as quality took a nosedive because production of those sets were rushed to meet the quota as prescribed by the bureaucrats in charge of those state run factories.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Pretty much true. I guess, varied from a factory to factory, though...

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

_Unplug the set and drape the cord over the front_ ...I stayed at a hotel here in the UK that had a rule like that in place, too. Which is strange, because I don't recall any signs that the owners were Soviet expats... (It was a British brand of television though, so perhaps this was just regarded good practice. We were still having a national energy crisis at the time, so every little helped. 🙃)

@electricspeedkiller8950

Ай бұрын

Just don't run the TV for so long mate, it's not too hard. It's socks but it's preferable to fires.

@dieseldragon6756

29 күн бұрын

@@electricspeedkiller8950 If I had access to a Soviet television set, I think it'd work out to be a cheaper way of heating my UK flat than the „efficient“ heating „system“ that's provided by my landlord... 📺🇬🇧🔥😉 (Aye; Some of us are housed in flats designed to be resistively heated, built close to the start of the UKs nuclear energy boom (British made reactor, 'nuff said! ☢🇬🇧💥😋) and entirely unsuitable for gas heating. Wouldn't be such a problem if baseload electricity wasn't being charged through the roof because of a very small (But well-heeled 💰) percentage who use it to charge their EVs... 🥶)

Most people doesn't seem to realize how hard it is to make a working printer, so I think taking a printer as an example is a bit unfair.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

True. However, the problem is, there existed much better made examples of this very model of a printer. The point is not the printer, but production approach.

@Krasnoye158

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily agree on that, and thank you for replying!

Okay, I feel a bit more settled now. Thanks for that Alex, and yeah, I'd love to see more of the timer device - it didn't look too bad to me... Cheers mate and thanks again.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

this weekend - wait for the video with the clock!

Turns out this printer was inside of chernobyl

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

If jokes apart, I am not sure those variations of 6337 were used in the Zone, but many broken A3 versions it is possible to find at Jupiter plant in Pripyat. And some are still running at offices of Chernobyl town.

@ElonMusk-hx8yw

Ай бұрын

😂bruhh

@Stoney3K

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily I'm guessing the plant itself had a few of those big line printers connected to the mainframe. Any chance of some info on those beasts?

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

@Stoney3K yes, we will have an episode about ES mainframes and we will talk there about then

Probably still a better printer than modern HP inkjet printers. At least you can (or at least could have back then) used the ink it came with in the box without having to sign up for an f-ing subscription service. (Can you tell I hate HP)

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Well, this is an argument I cannot argue with. Though, we have a modern Epson LX-something, same thing, but with USB, it is just awesome.

@robertkalinic335

Ай бұрын

Seems like they could use some KGB input on how to make proper printers.

@t0b0

Ай бұрын

Brother, the only printers you can rely on.

East German stuff was indeed often behind it's time. But the quality was good.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I agree.

Probably printing using the P.I.Z.D.E.T.S protocol. 🙂

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

AAAAAAA

I used to have a TV. A Soviet-made color TV - Rubin 714. It broke down again and the service guy came. As usual, I went to the kitchen to make him coffee (he looked very tired), when I came back I found him in exactly the same position as you: with his head resting on his open hand - he was looking inside this TV and deep in thought. Worried I asked him: something difficult, complicated? No - he replied - it's enough to replace these three lamps, it takes a minute, typical fault. But I still wonder: how to the hell do the Soviets fly into space...

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Rubins often werr also flammable...

@andrzej3511

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily But these were Rubins 711 and spontaneous combustion actually often occurred in this excellent construction, the likes of which the world has never seen! In 714 this defect was removed, they "only" broke down. A dozen or so times during the warranty period, and the CRT tube (cost: half the price of a new TV set!) died before two years had passed. Lost maney... So the considerations of the serviceman were absolutely justified!

@paul_ko

Күн бұрын

@@andrzej3511 Soviet military-grade (and space flight) electronics were top tier. You might want to check out the "BS-155A soviet autopilot teardown" video by msylvain59 here on KZread. Absolutely mind-boggling, but beautiful piece of tech

I would have said the Gamacentrum 01 which is a Czechoslovakian printer made in the town of České Budějovice (yes, the home of the original Budweiser brewery). It is an exceedingly simple printer, with two solenoids which serve as the hammers. designed to print on carbon paper. It would have been very difficult to write software to print for it as it had no CPU as far as I know. At least it was decently built.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

But, they had original Budweiser!

@viznut

Ай бұрын

This sounds very much like the original ZX Printer that was designed to be as cheap as possible. Special heat paper, no smart chips, the I/O interface is like "set this bit to power the motor, set this bit when the stylus is supposed to draw black pixels"

Love this video! I've seen crap like this before, my friend's mum made a trip to Leningrad and brought home a toy that looked like it was made with an axe. The paper it was wrapped in looked like it was already used and flushed down the toilet. Symptoms of a very sick system? All the best to you!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

At the same time, when there were no other options, some metal toy car or a toy bunny of blue-green-red mixture plastic byproduct of defence "postbox" could be very much beloved thing. And it is very sad, in fact, I passed that in my childhood.

@jouniinvelez7469

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily I got to go to the soviet Space 2000 exhibition around 1980 as a small boy in Dipoli near Helsinki and got a small model car of a russian taxi, still have it, it's well made.

heat and age caused the product print label to get hot, and the glue ran because it was stored on it's side.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

From what I know, all its life it was stored horizontally, and that label was very much from its beginning like this.

I'm fascinated by the Soviet era and the electronics of the time. These videos are so insightful! Especially the "double standards"!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

Ah, the joys of precision mfg. I wonder what the yield was on this run lol

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Let's not talk about painful subjects.

@TerryLondon

Ай бұрын

I expect the yield being 150%, on paper. And the schools and other low grade institutions received the printer only on paper, as half of the production were sold "under the shelves". Soviet way of black market organized by department store workers.

Well... No one makes a good printer because to enter the market you have to navigate through an minefield of patents. What if, due being soviet hence likely no patents, an actually working printer could be derived from this design?

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

AFAIK, they cloned Epson FX80

I am old enough to remember the joys poorly-made of Soviet-built electronics. Like quirky TVs that suddenly start working properly after you give them a couple of good whacks with your fist (likely due dry soldering joints). Not all stuff was that bad though. My first ever TV (a model of Šilelis) lasted for many years without problems. We replaced it only when the CRT tube wore out and got really dim.

@cazb73

Ай бұрын

Soviet color TVs sold in Czechoslovakia in half of the eighties were equiped with "delta" type CRT. Uncle had one, and its purple - green output was terrible. I learned to make fine tune of its circuits on highschool and was surprised, how perfect colors would be possible. If the home electronic servicemen weren't rare as gold few years before.

In Soviet Union, printer jams YOU!

I've been interested by the USSR-made calculators onj ebay. They're sometimes RPN which makes them interesting but they look half-finished, as though there are parts missing.

Hmm.... I grew up at the time of this printer, I think. In the "West". My father did some programming on a cheap sinclair computer, later he got an old Alphatronic computer that was already ancient in 1980 when he got it. We had two games, Black Jack and Hangman, that my father had done himself from the ground up. And it did butterlfly calculations up to 16 digits length, because he hated it, when teachers used them to punish my misbehavior. In 1985 we got a 286 AT computer that was epic! Full fledged mochrome graphics! We gave an abosulte shit about the quality of the plastic mouldings and the stickers on it. Could it do great things? If that printer you showed here would have worked and have been affordable, we would have loved it. At that time, my brother had a tiny thermopaper printer that only worked with his sharp pocket PC. The Kyocera 8-Dot matrix printer we got in 1988 and used up to 1990 produced horrible, barely readable results. But I could control every single hammer pixel on it with my grapics program (DR Halo, came with the A4 Tech mouse). And still this was upperclass stuff! We had friends coming to our house, just to get there hands on our computer hardware and play with it! If a printer had worked ok, and could have been accompanied by an affordable PC, those friends would have taken that russian printer any day! Such moulding problems were pretty common for many toys in the West as well. Yes, today that looks comical, and the japan plastic industry of that age was insanely good. But if that printer would have cost half the money and worked, we would have bought it anyways.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I mean, I saw the same 6337 made much better. They had often big problems with firmware though. But this very one is a... masterpiece.

I had a Robotron printer in USSR (around 1989). My brother had it originally and then it got passed down to me. I don't remember much about it, except the sound that it made. Back then there was only command line mode to print from. I remember doing my geography homework, by printing a map I made in text mode. Even that was amazing. All tech was cool and magical. I don't care what the devices looked like, as long as they operated, and things were made to last forever, even if they were ugly.

despite its many many many many flaws, it still gives a more positive impression than anything made by HP these days

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

I see HP is really a pain, as many many people told the same.

I wanted to see it plugged in and then melt or explode 😁

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Actually, it does power on, but shows an error.

When they can't even be bothered putting the sticker on properly...you know you're in for some great, high quality hardware

@ChernobylFamily

2 күн бұрын

Indeed.

I can't believe I am binge-watching a Ukrainian YT channel on vintage electronics and having so much fun doing that.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

In fact here is way more than vintage electronics... videos like this are our side interest :)

A couple of years ago I read a book written by an western astronaut who went to the ISS, even there quality is not a priority. He commented about some machine on the russian module that sounded like it was going to shread appart, russian cosmonauts were like: " dont worry about it, thats normal"...

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Well... and then holes in modules appear...

@dieseldragon6756

Ай бұрын

You think that's bad, wait until you get to the British module... 😉 (We've been working on a zero-gravity compatible teapot for years. The present prototype is based around a centrifuge. Unfortunately the parts aren't machined to the finest tolerances, and sudden jams have been known to happen... 🫖🔁😋)

@MichuKaiou

Ай бұрын

Well, given, that Zvezda is Soviet made... It was the replacement module of the MIR core, in case of a launch failure, so production was around the time Chernobyl happened. A lot of the design is still derived from Salyut stations.

@okankyoto

22 күн бұрын

@@MichuKaiou Literally it was going to be the core of MIR-2! Sadly its now quite damaged on the aft docking port and to really fix it they'll need to remove all the interior pieces. Including the permanent computers with displays only used for docking once and then never usable since then...

Possibly the workers who made these printers (and their leaders) were heavy alcohol addicts. This used to be a common problem in the East Bloc.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

My friend Boris does not agree with you.. hiccup....

About the uneven and inconstant housing. All the defect happen because the molding machines where run to fast. The plastic didn't have enough time to equalize, relax and cool down. To make the machines run that fast, the mixer skews ran to fast and the heater where cranked up to the max. This then would produce these uneven colors. Evey thing about this printer said: "Make it faster, we have to get to this months target." Sometimes things of this quality would appear in west Germany, mostly kitchen / household tools. Blender, coffee machine, handheld hover, mixer, etc. They where all strangely labeled and mainly sold by door-to-door salesmen. Horrendes quality and often unsafe. Then they would go to second hand shops i was visiting often as a kid. There was a spike of these things after the reunification. I used most of them as parts for my own constructions, because some parts where really nice. By example the a mixer had a really nicely build gearbox. but everything else was totally crap. That was the case with many of these things. One or two really good parts everything else totally shit.

@ChernobylFamily

15 күн бұрын

Thank you very much for sharing!

I think the best part of THIS video is your cat in the end! 😘 Oh the printer? I forgot about it when I saw the cat! 😁👍

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

The Cat is the producer and the director of all this channel.:)

The thumbnail of this video!! 😂😂

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Sometimes I have a feeling my hand will grow to my face.

The cat tried to protect our eyes!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Purrrr! I tried tu du my bezt. Sorri hard to typ wiz paws

I can't agree with you. This printer is rather an exception. I had several printers from the Soviet period in the early 2000s. I had Mera-Błonie D100 printers. I had Mera-Błonie D100M printers in two versions, in a plastic and metal case. There was a Robotron 6329.01M, unfortunately, with a serial port board. All these printers were copied from the electronics design bureau where my father worked. Together with him, we adapted them to modern IBM PC compatible computers. And they worked perfectly, they were quite well made, made of good materials and practically did not fail. I still have one D100 and one D100M, they didn't require any major repairs, they work like clockwork, just lubricate. As for your sample, only the Oryol factory had such poor quality. Other manufacturers, there were 8 of them, produced in other cases of better quality, including metal ones. And your printer is beaten by life quite enough.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

All equipment you mentioned is from Socialistic bloc, that is a completely different level of quality, about this difference I actually told in the end of this video. I really do not know how big is your personal experience with purely Soviet stuff, though, from my - such "printers" were everywhere...Yes, I saw other versions of 6337, but after all, the core idea is not a printer, and not printers in general, but a massive problem of ignorance and faults in production which in that period was already acknowledged even by authorities.

@licymnius1

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily Yes, I have seen a variety of Soviet equipment of poor quality, especially of the late period. I just mean that not all the equipment was bad, as it may seem from the last words of the video. Something was done quite decently, but something was done with real negligence. Just like in any other country in the world, it's possible. And in the USSR, before the collapse, no one was interested in anything at all. And thanks for your videos, I haven't seen much of the stuff you show anywhere else. Really cool channel!

@dakedakinson64

29 күн бұрын

@@licymnius1 you need to understand Ukrainians hate anything connected with Soviet Union dispite the fact they were part of it and were created by Soviets.

i was looking for a nice video to listen to when i lift. I watched till the end great stuff

@ChernobylFamily

23 күн бұрын

Check our other episodes, there are many many interesting. E.g. those about Chernobyl robots.

@anaturn12

22 күн бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily binging whole channel

I will have to disagree with you a bit. I live in Canada and in the early eighties when I was a teenager I had a Praktica camera and a soviet enlarger. The Praktica had a shutter spring that snapped like a mouse trap, but it never let me down. The enlarger still works. In recent years I have worked with soviet nixie and VFD tubes and they are surprisingly durable. So I have to grudgingly admit that junky clunky soviet engineering wasn't pretty, but it was functional. 😁

@mz4637

Ай бұрын

Why didn't you buy Canadian?

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Right, but it depended on the market segment. Pro equipment was often very ok, but you even would not be allowed to buy it unless you buy for an organization. Remember an awesome 8080 microlab we reviewed? That is the case - it was sold only for organizations, no privates!

@hobbyelectronics6630

Ай бұрын

@@mz4637Please name a Canadian made camera. 😂😂😂

@hobbyelectronics6630

Ай бұрын

@@ChernobylFamily I was a teenager with little money and Praktica was the cheapest 35mm available. I'm sure export items were better quality than what was available domestically.

can we have the clock review? the squeaky buttons sound like someones first project with "print in place" on thingyverse or printables...

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

This weekend it will come...! In fact, the clock is lovely, and its interface gives me a vibe of Star Trek LCARS.

Hello from Bulgaria. Some say that all the reject components were going into devices intended for civilians while everything good was going to the military. Looks like that really was the case. The plastic case could have been made in part from recycled plastic, hence the dirt like appearance and streaks on it. I've seen that on soviet made stuff. I've often came across some very bad things in old soviet equipment, and it doesn't seem like that was caused by the age of it alone. It's weird because in some cases they overdid things, and in others they just made ridiculously bad design decisions. A neighbor of mine told me about their brand new television detonating when they plugged it for the first time in the early 80's. Based on her description I guess the filter capacitors were crap, and she and her now late husband ended up with a smell of capacitor electrolyte and confetti all over their living room. It was a heavy and expensive thing that you needed at least 2 people to move around, and there just doesn't seem to have been any quality control. The thing wasn't even tested before it was put for sale.

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

Thank you for sharing!

While I was growing up here in the US back in the 1980s, the “textbook example” of Soviet manufacturing always presented to us was the time they did an entire production run of women’s shoes with the spike heel attached to the wrong end of the shoe.

@ChernobylFamily

25 күн бұрын

That hurts :))

Love your videos! We'll, that's quite the example you've found there. The military grade stuff is absolutely wonderful in construction and components. But this consumer grade printer is hideous! Thanks for sharing!

@ChernobylFamily

Ай бұрын

This one is quite a late specimen when situation in industry was very very hard. Previous were better. But this does not excuse that it was nevertheless released and packed for sale...

not even our printer