As it was in Leningrad - 1992-1993. Getting to know the Amiga

 1992-1993. Getting to know the Amiga

I found an interesting computer store on the ground floor
bookstore "Subscription Editions" on Liteiny Prospekt. B
A room of approximately 8 by 10 meters accommodates three departments. B
the first of them sells all sorts of Spectrum-compatible computers
and games on cassettes. I don’t remember on floppy disks, although floppy drives
sold as a finished product already with a power supply in one
body. You can also buy some books on the topic there.
Spectrum, but they will appear there much later.

In the second section there are Amigas. Or rather, one single model
Amiga 500+. At that time I knew nothing at all about Amigas and
I just look with interest, as if at another incomprehensible computer.
The demo Amiga is connected to a color video monitor.
The monitor is sometimes placed on the counter, and sometimes it is on a shelf behind
the seller's back. Demos are launched on the Amiga. I remember Technological
Death, State of The Art, where the aunt is dancing in the background. How cool
it looks like. They also launch toys on the Amiga. From games to me
Settlers, Walker and Cannon Fodder are memorable. In the first
stunning sounds of the surrounding world (birds chirping, the sound of an ax
and construction), and the second, when loading from the drive, displays
some kind of animation on the screen. I am imbued with respect for the Amiga -
she is so powerful and interesting. In addition to the Amiga itself, there you can
buy andvideo monitor for her, and mice/joysticks and games on
floppy disks. I think I'll buy one for myself someday when I
I’ll go to work and I’ll have a lot of money.

The third and largest department sold IBM PC-compatible
computers. Depending on the size of the wallet you can buy
ready-made computer with a processor from 286 to 486. But
the latter costs as much as an entire apartment, and people mostly bought
386th cars. Ready-made configurations with monitors cost
counter in front of the sellers and their monitors turned towards the hall.
You can go to the keyboard and click the buttons while the seller
looks the other way. I do this often. First I look
the seller does it, and when he leaves, I try to repeat it
actions. Norton Commander is loaded on computers, and I have
why poke :) This is how I worked on a PC for the first time. Sometimes they launch
games. I remember Goblins. There's a funny intro to the game. At the table
A family of goblins is sitting, and an evil sorcerer is poking needles at a doll.
voodoo depicting the head of the goblin family, he screams and his
flattens. It was very funny. I remember that the first time the game
launched, but besides music there are no other sounds. Seller
explains to someone that if you add memory, voices will appear.
After that, he opens the system unit and pushes it into it (in
sound card) some strips with microcircuits. Then again
launches the game, and sounds and voices actually appear there.
I have oneonce I managed to play goblins a little on the second
game screen. The game is fun, but very difficult. Sometimes instead
games launch music demo. She draws on the screen
all sorts of sinusoids to music, i.e. visualizes the form
reproduced sound. A killer techno track is playing. In the program
There are several of them, but they don’t let you listen to them all. Before sale in
it is mandatory to load the hard drive check program
disk. She can spend hours scanning the disk looking for errors, and
the poor buyer has to endure all this. On some
monitors, a beautiful screensaver is launched, which displays
The screen has stunning color patterns, like a kaleidoscope. Patterns
colors flow smoothly. I really like watching this.
In addition to computers, the same department sells multimedia sets
from Creative. The set includes a sound card, CD-ROM drive and
some simple sound speakers. These sets are called
Creative Sound Blaster Discovery. All this costs a lot of money and
I can't afford it. And I really want...

In the same department, among the pussies, there was a lone Apple Macintosh.
Now it is unclear how this model ended up there, because it is very
It’s ancient and has probably been out of production for a long time. I
I don’t remember practically anything about Mac, except that he
made a "boom" sound when the floppy disk popped out. This one's on me
the computer made no impression at all and called
only bewilderment - a mouse withone button, the screen is black and white and
the size of a pack of cigarettes, and there is no button on the muzzle to pull it out
floppy disk Who needs such a horror story? However, with the mouse I
walked around the counter a little. But the only "Mac model"
which I really wanted was an Apple IIc that I learned about
from the color magazine "Computer Science in US Life" with the same name
exhibition that took place in our city in the late eighties. B
In one of the articles, Isaac Asimov talked about his acquaintance and
experience with Macintosh. And in the photo in the article it’s just
An Apple IIc was shown with an external disk drive and printer.

The first store in the city was created on the basis of this store.
specialized computer store "Kay", which later
became a large retail chain. The sales people at Kay were just
sellers from subscription publications. And "Kay" itself opened in just
a few meters from the old store.

 1992-1994. UKSC school class

At school, my friend and classmate Anton and I often
We are trampling under the door of the computer science office on the second floor. That's all
because they hide a whole class of computers from us behind the door,
united into one network. These were Electronics MS-0511 or UKNTs.
The class consisted of about 10 student cars with
black and white monitors and one teacher's car with color
monitor and two disk drives. Booted from one drivesystem, and the second drive was used to save programs
over the network from student machines. But I will find out about this later. In the meantime
Antonich and I are at recess, if we have the next chemistry lesson,
physics or mathematics, we look into the classroom through the open door.
Sometimes, if we skipped physical education, we also went to the office
computer science and already pressed their ear to the door during lessons.
We listened to what the teacher was saying and peeked through the crack
door ajar. We really want to work on these
computers, but computer science in our school is taught only with
tenth grade, and we only have a couple more years to go
peek.

At the same time, on the basis of a parallel eighth grade, a
experimental "A" class with a physics and mathematics focus. B
they gather all the best from the other classes, and from them
computer science will be read two years earlier. How I envy them.
One of the students in class "A" writes a game during class, like
guns. The screen is displayed randomly, but with smooth
curves, relief and gun placement. Cannons can turn
barrel and shoot at each other. The projectile flies according to physics,
the strength and direction of the wind are taken into account, as well as the initial
speed. When a projectile hits, a filled circle is drawn, but
it looks like an oval. Then the circle is painted in the background color,
erasing fragments of the relief behind him. Sometimes Anton and I manage
Play this game a little during recess.Once, Antonich and I were caught at the door by a teacher.
computer science and offered to work with her on programming
after school. We simply do not believe in such happiness and, of course,
We immediately agree to come to class. We came after school and
We sat down at one of the computers near the window. The teacher gave us
a large book with examples of programs in BASIC and asked
select any one, type it and try to run it, and if
the program will not start, then wait for it to return, and
she will correct the program. And she herself went somewhere. We leafed through the book
They chose something and began to type. However, the program does not
started up, and we began to wait for the teacher. But by her return
we have already managed to erase the program and even fall out of
BASIC.

I don’t remember how this lesson ended, but for some reason more
We didn’t have such classes. And when I moved to tenth grade and
I could already study at the UKSC officially, it turned out that this was for me
no longer needed. During this time, I managed to independently study
only BASIC, but also Turbo Pascal. That year he came to our school
modern progressive computer science teacher, and at the first
same lesson, he singled me out from all the students and said that I could
don’t go to class, because I don’t learn anything new in class
I'll find out. So I did. However, I attended one class where
studied some kind of graphic editor in practice, received for
task for a comic deuce, which is nothad no impact on
final top five for the year. And the next time I came to
computer science only at the final exam in the eleventh grade.
I chose this exam for myself as an absolute
freebie. What’s interesting is that as soon as computer science came to me,
so there were changes in the school curriculum and computer science became
to study almost everything from the seventh grade, and not just
physics mats.

 1994-1995. Business club

Starting from the ninth grade, once every two weeks we were sent
from school instead of lessons to the Training and Production Plant
(Criminal Procedure Code), almost for the whole day. Our Criminal Procedure Code was on the street
Konstantin Zaslonov, where it smelled of chocolate and all sorts of
goodies. Nearby there was a confectionery factory named after
Krupskaya. It was assumed that the CPC classes would help us
decide on your future profession. Perhaps for some it is the same
it was, but not for me. In the ninth grade at the CPC we
dismantled street lighting lamps into their component parts, and also
glued folders. The teacher taught us the rules
electrical safety, periodically slipping for some reason under your
table Then I found out that under the table he was drinking a bottle
alcohol. I didn’t like such activities, and although for our work
They paid me, I skipped almost all of them.

But already in the tenth grade, a completely new thing opened up at the CPCdirection - Business club. That's where I signed up when they started
first lessons. The classes were taught by young, decently dressed
teachers demanded the same from us. We were taught the basics
entrepreneurship and market economy, prepared us
future businessmen. We were taught business etiquette, and
When discussing some issues, we had to turn to each other
to a friend only as “dear colleague.” For example, opponent
expresses something, and you say to him: “Dear colleague, allow me
disagree with you" and then you begin to screw up your
understanding the issue. But this is in theory, but in practice I just
I sat quietly in the corner so that I couldn’t even be seen.

The classes were interesting, and we were considered the elite of the CPC. For us
a psychological relief room was organized, where
in a calm and cozy atmosphere you could chat over a cup
tea and cookies with a psychologist. But the most interesting thing for me was
brand new, just created, class of personal computers,
which was given to us by our sponsor - Computerland.

The computer class was not very big, but modern.
There were only five or six computers there. For each computer
we sat down two at a time, but there were a lot of people, and so we had to
study them every other time, in groups. We were trained
use application programs, graphic editors,
design of posters. During the Norton Commander classes I already
wasprepared in advance. Cause I remembered which buttons to press
since the days of the “Subscription Editions” store. Therefore I was considered
the most intelligent in our group.

I remember in one of the classes we were given the task to draw something
anything in the CPen graphic editor. My partner and I have no way
could come up with something to draw, and I brazenly stole and developed
the idea of the girls sitting at the nearby computer. They were drawing
The moon as seen from space. I turned the moon into an unknown one
planet, and where the neighbors had craters, I drew volcanoes with
lava flowing out of them. There were stars around, meteorites were flying and
all sorts of things. What's interesting is when the teacher came up
evaluate the resulting works, he considered that the original was just
here, and the neighbors blatantly tore everything up and remade it. Therefore we
received excellent.

There were few classes due to the rotation of groups, and therefore I no longer
I remember what else was there. The Business Club classes were designed for
two years, and at the end of the first year there was an exam for which I even
I prepared seriously and was very worried, but I still didn’t pass
I went because, according to rumors, there are no CPC classes in the next class
provided for in the school curriculum. And so it was.

 1994. The first Pentagon and the first Scorpio

In September 1994, my friend Slavka and I went to the radio market
Juno, buy Slavka Scorpion ZS 256. About the existence of thisWe knew the models from books published by St. Petersburg. There on the last
pages usually contained an advertising page for Zonov.
Therefore, when we were going to buy, we knew why we needed it
necessary. Intelligence reported that the "left" Scorpio in the body from
A Corvette with a Soviet (sort of) disk drive costs 225 thousand rubles.
I don’t remember how long Slavka saved this money, but as soon as he
collected the entire amount, we immediately went shopping.

But we were unlucky. We ran into a go-stop in the form of
pseudo-inspectors on the tram taking us from Avtovo metro station to
Juno market. We, of course, decided to save on travel, and we
dropped off one stop short of the market. It would be nice to just
They dropped me off and also fined me. I was scared to give away money
since getting a wad of money in front of these gopniks’ noses was
would be dangerous. I didn’t have any money for a fine at all, both for me and
Slavka paid for himself, pulling one bill out of his pocket.
Having lost part of the money, we were left with a choice - to return
go home and save again, or buy something else. But so to us
I wanted to see the demos that we took the Pentagon in the same
building, and in the same stall, but for 180 thousand rubles.

At first we watched demos. Slavka got them somewhere
floppy disks. All sorts of Lyra-2, then Insult and others. Then we
We started coding a little. Or rather, it was mainly me who coded, and Slava
drew and wrote poetry. We made a small one on Laser Basiccartoon based on Slavka's poems. He wrote obscene poems and
vulgar, and I will not cite them as an example. And under
influenced by the demos, they began to make their own.

The first demos, of course, were simple - a twitchy running
a line to music stolen from Sound Tracker or jumping
indicator balls accompanied by music. I had already gotten used to it then
interruptions and quite freely wrote all sorts of jokes, like
flipping individual characters on the screen in BASIC, etc. A
the creeping line twitched because there was scrolling
acquaintances. True, then I changed it to a smooth pixel
scrolling, but the letters still appeared from the edge of the screen intact
acquaintance. And one day I come to Slava’s house, and he’s bragging
in front of me with smooth beautiful scrolling. Well, obviously not himself
wrote it. I torture him, where I got him, they say, but he doesn’t confess. And
only a few days later he showed me the treasured ZX Review magazine,
from which he typed the scrolling text. I leafed through the magazine and
I really liked it. I started buying all the issues that
I found it on sale at the Subscription Editions store. And everyone was there
issues starting from 1994, and thick collections of earlier
years

The Pentagon, of course, is good, but I wanted Scorpio. And later
Slavka made a second attempt to buy Scorpio. He's with a friend
went to Juno again and took the Pentagon with him for the exchange. A
returned without Scorpio and without the Pentagon. He didn't confess for a long time,
how soIt worked out, and he confessed only a few years later.
It turns out that we ran into trouble again. Not this time
controllers, but punks who took away the computer and all the money. But
Slava did not despair and again accumulated the required amount in 1995
went to Juno again and this time returned with Scorpio.

Scorpio, of course, was not original and sometimes connected,
managing to erase the zero track on the floppy disk. But there was
cool debugger, and we began to tinker with programs for
studying. Slava made an obscene hack of the Dizzy X game by rewriting
dialogue texts directly in the shadow monitor. It turned out very
funny.

Then we got interested in digital music. In the Instrument editor I
I picked out the notes by ear, and at first we just did alterations
some famous compositions, for example, 2Unlimited, Scooter. A
then remixes of them. They were recorded on cassette tapes in the form of sound.
Moreover, Slava learned to remove the erasing head and apply
one track to another. Then I learned how to capture sound from
tape recorder into memory, make short samples and loops. We them too
then they played it on the Spectrum and added it to the cassette. A
on top of all this, Slava read his obscene poems into the microphone
or told obscene tales based on the album "Kashchei
immortal" of the "Gaza Strip" group or the "Red" group
mold." It turned out very funny.

I remember once I made a fake digital track with a composition
Scooter Move YourAss. In fact, I just output it to the speaker
TV bit received from a tape recorder. And displayed on the screen
stripes for greater significance of the effect. It turned out like this
characteristic digital sound with noise, and Slavka fell for it. I
invited him to his place, downloaded the program from the tape recorder, but
The tape recorder didn't turn off. And after the program I had a recording
this very song, and it was she who sounded through the computer on
TV. Slavka sat with his eyes bulging. He probably realized that he
before me, like before the moon. I don't think I ever explained to him how I
achieved this.

I found a fragment of digitization miraculously preserved on a cassette tape,
which I did on the Spectrum. From those we used in
in his plays with Slavka. I had a lot of different ones.

> Wow, you're so rich! Type on the computer three times a year. 
At my institute I only had a scholarship of 50 or 80 rubles (exactly 
I don’t remember), but my mother didn’t give me any money. And the first salary in 2002 
was 2800 rub. 

Well, Slava lived with his grandparents, who did not live on their pension.
They were doing handicrafts. Grandfather carved beautiful wood
paintings, carved wooden figurines, dolls, and nesting dolls.
Grandmother sewed beautiful outfits for dolls, made dolls for the samovar
and painted nesting dolls. Then they sold it as souvenirs
to visiting foreigners near the Katka Garden next to Nevsky
prospect. They received their salaries in hard currency, and their granddaughter
was in poverty.And besides, he himself worked in the summer in Apraksin
yard as a loader foreman and received 10-15 thousand rubles a day.
I just don’t remember if this was before I bought Scorpio or already
after.

Well, at that time I had not yet received scholarships, since I was studying at
school. But my first scholarship in 1997 was 125 rubles. A
in a year 145 rubles. The first salary in 2003 was 8700
rubles

 1995. School IBM PCs

Discos were held at our school several times a year.
Mostly their own students came, but also from neighboring schools.
there were people. There was an entrance fee to the disco. I went a couple of times
friends. The money received from discos was used to purchase
several IBM PC-compatible computers, as explained to me
computer science teacher. I remember at the end of the year he came up to me in
recess time and boasted that today with one of the students
will go get computers for the new class. Said it would be
48bDX2-80, which at that time was just not bad. But I'm done
equally in response said “Wow!”, and the teacher said “Yes. And one of
they will be yours."

On the same day, the computers were delivered and placed on tables
in a small class. In addition to four system units with monitors,
there was one Panasonic dot matrix printer, which we then used
printed out jokes, descriptions of games and exam papers.
One monitor died duringtransportation, but even this could not
darken my joy, and I ran to share the news with
classmate Ilya. It turned out that Ilyukha was already aware, so
how the computer scientist managed to approach him and invite him to his
classes. Besides the two of us, two more people were invited,
whom the computer scientist considered the most big-headed and advanced in
computers.

Once a week we stayed after school and came to our club
programmers. There we theoretically comprehended new technologies, and
in practice they were engaged in lameness. We haven't written any
programs, but they brought in porn games (Tetris, Xonix) with viruses,
of course. Ilyukha brought 3D Studio on floppy disks and for a long, long time it
installed on the computer. Then we quickly
rendered the video. I don't remember exactly what was there, but it seemed
some rotating inscriptions. We put this video on
startup, and after a while the computer science teacher
demanded that the screensaver be removed, since, in his opinion, it was very
rapes the hard drive. He also demanded that everyone there be removed
running kittens and flying guitars from Windows 3.11. And then, he says,
he’s just not comfortable in front of his students, he’s talking about Windows
3.11 and shows, and there is a kitten running across the screen and trying
catch the mouse cursor. I also managed to put it on the screensaver,
which appears when Windows boots, the line "Cracker by
AmoNik".

Ilya and I also installed Norton Utilities under DOS and usingdisk editor from the kit learned to hide their directories from
prying eyes. To do this, we changed the name in the directory descriptor
to two points. In this case, the catalog completely disappeared and no
means was not displayed on the screen. And disk checking programs do not
considered this a mistake. To protect against viruses, we have installed
every computer is an ADInf auditor, and he often helped us out. Them
However, our club was quickly disbanded and classes stopped.
Seeing our tricks with Ilya, the computer science teacher freed us
from attending even classes with an IBM PC in computer science classes.

>What was Ilya's name? 
At our school there was only one pussy, the rest were uknc. On the pussy 
we went to play with Andrei Viktorov after tests 
mathematics (we solved them faster than anyone else). We were just playing in 
goblins, I still have passwords and passages on pieces of paper. 
I didn’t know then that ATM Turbo had the same goblins. Found out 
in 2005, I think. 

Ilya Zagrebelny. But that probably doesn't matter anymore,
at least for him, since he died in a car accident
together with my other classmate Vasya Yudenich and our common
friend Pashka Sidorov.

The only school pissyuk before this was in the principal's office.
It was a real IBM PS/2. I saw him. So horizontal
slim design.

I love goblins very much, but after all these years I have never been able to
pass. In the first part I only reached the third level. But heI have it on my list to pass, so I'll pass it
someday.

Here is the "Subscription Editions" store on the maps:
https://yandex.ru/maps/2/saint-petersburg/?ll=30.347386%2C59.934
194&z=16&l=stv%2Csta&panorama%SBpoint%5D=30.348056%2C59.934439&p
anorama%SBdirection%5D=273.628116%2C4.683952&panorama%SBspan%5D=
118.315608%2C80.000000

Here on the first floor to the right of the wooden door was
computer store with three departments. On the second floor, where
now Coyote Ugly, there was a bookstore. I bought magazines there
ZX Review. And to the left of the front door the first Kay store appeared.
in the country. And in the next store (the door to the right of the subscription
publications) contained a catalog and sold Welcome discs. But it was
already in the second half of the nineties.