Very cool! My mom and grandma worked at the factory that produced these consoles. (BINOM factory in the city of Ordzhonikidze) Fun fact - since the economy in the USSR was planned, I never saw these consoles for sale in our city! And the only thing I had from this console in my childhood was a metal badge with a rooster (you can see it at 4:00 seconds, in the center of the console). It's a GOST sign(soviet government standard) but stylized for a child product ))
In Canada most of electronic devices made before the 90's had the schematics either in the user's manual or often inside the back cover. TV's, radios, even refrigerators had them. It's sad that it's no longer the case.
Damn, they really took the right to repair serious there back then. Now a lot of stuff we have to try finding usually paying at a 3rd party company or are completely secret with randomware all-in-one chips.
I love repairs and I love Soviet electronics! And I really appreciate well-made videos combining the two :) Looking forward to future ventures of yours!
Finally an original tech-electronics geek! No sponsors or ads. This is by far one of the most underrated channels on youtube. First stumbled upon your channel when i was bored in the control room at the factory where i work in the very far north of sweden. The day after we were like 8-9 men both operators, instrument technician and electrician watching your videos on the main screen at 3 in the morning while working a nightshift. Such addictive videos and content. Can’t wait to see the improved version of your robot.
This was very satisfying to watch you repair 👍 It seems to be a copy of the standard 80's z80 based Pong console. It really does show how far behind the Soviets were though. That's a very chunky 1970's style single sided PCB.
I absolutely love all the old Soviet electronics stuff, and when I was living in Moscow I spent many hours looking in wonder at all the stuff for sale on Avito. My wife, who grew up with it, isn't quite so keen...
This was amazing to see. When I was a kid during the soviet union, I had a great toy which had a small magnetic car going around a circular metallic racetrack and it was controlled by an attached steering wheel. Would love to see that toy again!
The pong and shooting game graphics looks identical to the General Instruments AY-3-8500 TV games chip. That was used widely in many pong type consoles in the late '70s. I guess the Soviets might have cloned it for this console. The original GI chip also had a football and a squash type game as well.
That is amazing. I've seen plenty of soviet computers, but it continually shocks me that they were so far behind on something they had 15 years to copy. It's pretty amazing to realize how screwed they are today, with no internal designs whatsoever.
They were in space ten years before us though and we were inspired by their lead. The satellites we are relying on as you read this comment were conceived by the Soviets. Thank you!
@@NoreenHoltzen a) The soviets got their rocketry expertise from the same place we did: Germany. b) You don't generally use a satellite when reading the internet unless you live in the middle of nowhere. c) Communications satellites were the brainchild of Arthur C. Clarke... who was most assuredly not a soviet.
The reason why there are names or scrawled letters/numbers on the boards is that the people who solder the boards are piece workers. as much as you did, you earned as much. This is the easiest way to prove that you made the board in order to get money for it. It seems to me that this is still the case with piecework work
Love the moment when it suddenly works! And then edge of my seat whilst waiting for you to flick the switch to try a game!! LOL :) Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing.
It's an incredibly rare first generation soviet console. Saw it just a couple of times in the beginning of the 80th. It's a surprise that your unit was produced in 1990. I have two questions about it: does it have a direct western analog? And is it emulated somehow?
The western analog would have been an early Atari system, I believe. But even Atari was smart enough to embrace a cartridge system. Thanks so much for watching!
Nice! I wish more people were trying to save these devices. Too many people are destroying them for one dollar’s worth of gold in the components. It’s very sad.
Fun video. I built a myself a "Leningrad" ZX Spectrum clone a couple of years ago. The USSR has a great history of clone systems using some really clever engineering. The home made PCBs and covered wire jumpers speak of a time when quality of workmanship was valued more than churning stuff out. Just one question, is the unit a SECAM system or PAL?
My understanding of Soviet television is that SECAM was the format standard, though on some of my other Soviet CRTs I've used a PAL signal and it seemed to work fine. I agree with you 100% about the quality of Soviet electronics engineering. It's sad so many of these devices are disappearing from the world. Thanks so much for watching!
The Video Sport itself is most likely CCIR, i.e. plain old 50Hz, 625 line, grayscale video without color encoding scheme at all. Built a "Leningrad" some 6 years ago myself, then proceeded to upgrade it with a sound chip, 256k RAM, PS/2 keyboard and a divMMC interface - pretty sure I added a couple more layers to that poor board with just wiring :)
@@ZXRulezzz Thanks for the info, those are some great upgrades you've done to your Leningrad. I myself have built an audio board for mine and it works great (really makes a difference on the games that were written for it) and I ordered the parts to upgrade it to 128K about 2 years ago, but have yet to get around to it ;) I have one question for you though, the Leningrad you have it it the first version (with no edge connector) or the Leningrad 2 with an edge connector? The reason I ask is that I too wanted to use a divMMC with mine but was unsure if it were compatible. There were minor changes between the two versions but if you managed I guess it should work for me too. I could always wire it direct to the processor and other points on the board I suppose. Again many thanks ;)
@@8bitsinthebasement It's Leningrad 1 w/o the edge connector. I managed to put all those upgrades right on the board by using a small old Altera FPGA in its "prototyping area"; it performs most of extra hardware fucntions and control logic. (of course I had to port divMMC to it and code the rest) That said, I don't see what would stop one from attaching a separate divMMC unit to any Leningrad, apart from possible wiring mess :)
I was immediately taken aback when you opened the case and first got a look at the insides, the tinned circuits on the back look beautiful, and then just the whole hand made quality and look of the unit, it's definitely a thing of beauty, and it tells stories. I LOVE that you get a schematic with your electronics, so if you're qualified and so inclined to do so YOU can diagnose and fix them when it's needed, and now look at the state of things such as people like Rossman having to fight for Right To Repair, DRM in general 😔 I'm so glad I came across your channel, and going back through your older videos seeing how quickly and incredibly well you've been bumping up production quality and raising the bar each time, it's really impressive and inspiring to see 😃 Do you have a Discord or Similar? Would be a great place for a community to build and hang out. 😀 Have a great day man, all the best from the UK 👍
This channel's videos seem very similar to documentaries that I used to watch. Is this channel backed by an oldschool station or do you just have a background in TV? Your videos look very professional.
@@ThomasBurns That is awesome. Keep up the quality storytelling. Your style certainly stands out on RU-vid and will likely attract interest even form people who would have typically skipped over an engineering related channel.
This ain't an Atari clone, it's Pong-style console (e.g. Magnavox Odyssey, Nintendo Color TV Game etc) Atari wasn't cloned in USSR, its clone "Rambo TV game console" appeared in 1990s only (in parallel with Famicom clones knows as Pegasus/Dendy/Subor/Lifa/Simbas/dozens others names)
also such consoles in theory would make any soviet radio amateur, the schematic was described in the "Young Technician" magazine (Oct 1989). But the main issue was to find out К145ИК17 IC (clone of AY-3-8500). There ICs always were sold with the hard shortages in USSR. If you hadn't some relatives/buddies working on the factories producing them you had almost 0% changes to obtain some of rare chips.
Nice find! These are becoming more and more rare these days. You’ll need to fish around for the channel-I don’t know of the specific frequency needed. If you can’t find it, it may be that the console isn’t producing signal, which was my problem. :)
@@ThomasBurns thank you!! i was told id have to buy an RF modulator but the ones ive found online are pretty pricey for a decent one. good to know i wouldn’t have to buy one haha. i’ll probably have to pull apart my console then and clean it up
Very interesting! We had this sort of game around the late 70's in the UK. I remember my parents being excited to get one. Was it really so much later that it appeared in Russia? Or was this particular one just made later. интересный канал!
Thank you! I believe they first appeared in the USSR in the mid to late 1980s. So yes, a few years behind the UK and US. What’s interesting is that the gaming options never really developed much last what we see here.
ב''ה, too much informational absurdity but I seem to remember something from one of the Soyuz clock videos about Soviet electrolytics using an opposite striping pattern to common "Western" Taiwan/HK/China etc. parts. Where polarity is marked with symbols and you're sure of the ground plane this probably is no issue but something to confirm for longevity.
Really great project. A good introduction to electronics with the schematic. Like today, the Russians were way ahead of their time. Except: The 100 Best PC Games of the Early '90s ... in 10 Minutes! (1990-1992): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8Uj4ENO0XpE.html
I don't believe this was released in 1990? Even for the Soviet Union (WHICH ENDED IN 89?!), this would have been embarrassingly anachronistic in 90, like really really obviously embarrassing, I have to think the date is wrong and it was actually released in 1980?
Why are your eyes so Black? It is like I'm looking into the endless abyss of space or something..... Really liked the video, it's awesome that they included Schematics back the in day, that should be made into Law for ALL electronics! I want my Schematics! Copyright & Patents can eat dirt!
схема почти гениальная. Голова К145ИК17 - Это клон, без сомнения. Русские не заморачивались такими бездялушками, просто копировали. Интересное развитие оригинально чипа от TI: AY-3-8500 (-1) (К145ИК17) 1976 4 Ball & Paddle games and 2 shooting games AY-3-8550 (-1) 1976 Improved AY-3-8500 with horizontal player motion AY-3-8601 (-1) 1976 Square Off: Combat Squares, Racing Squares, Shooting Squares, 2 Jungle Games AY-3-8602 (-1) 1976 Volleyball Plus: Volleyball, Protection, Hazard (supposedly unreleased) AY-3-8605 (-1) 1977 3 submarine war games AY-3-8700 (-1) 1976 Tank battle game AY-3-8765 (-1) 1976 4 motor-cycle games: Skill cycle, Cycle race... AY-3-8800 (-1) 1976 4 games: Black Jack, Draw Poker, Acey/Ducey and WAR AY-3-8888 (-1) 1976 2 Vegas games: Black Jack and Slot Machine AY-3-8889 (-1) 1976 Tic-Tac-Toe and LEM (Lunar Landing Module)
