Soviet-Empire.com U.S.S.R. and communism historical discussion.
14 Feb 2014, 23:00
http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ussr.html
Anyone, who lived in the USSR or Eastern Europe (up to 1991-ish) own a home computer? If so, what were you experiences and memories of the computer you had?
The 1st computer I had was an acorn electron and yeah, that was not a soviet system, but I used it to play computer games. They took ages to load and were mostly crap, but at the time we thought they were amazing.
As for the software for soviet computers, the games, what were they like? Similar to ours? Shoot-em ups, maze games, text/graphic adventures, puzzles etc. Or did they have an ideological message that supported the soviet way of life.
I am intrigued because I'm old enough to remember the home computer boom of the early 80's in the UK, when you had dozens of competiting home systems here, I can remember at least a dozen, though the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 were the market leaders. All that competition does not mean we necessarily had better systems and games in the West as there was limit to what these computers could do.
I have heard that out of the Easter Bloc countries it was Yugoslavia that had the best models with the Galaksija
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... Yugoslavia
But it probably helped that they were non-alinged and were not restricted in the use of foreign help in developing their computer industry.
Anyone, who lived in the USSR or Eastern Europe (up to 1991-ish) own a home computer? If so, what were you experiences and memories of the computer you had?
The 1st computer I had was an acorn electron and yeah, that was not a soviet system, but I used it to play computer games. They took ages to load and were mostly crap, but at the time we thought they were amazing.
As for the software for soviet computers, the games, what were they like? Similar to ours? Shoot-em ups, maze games, text/graphic adventures, puzzles etc. Or did they have an ideological message that supported the soviet way of life.
I am intrigued because I'm old enough to remember the home computer boom of the early 80's in the UK, when you had dozens of competiting home systems here, I can remember at least a dozen, though the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 were the market leaders. All that competition does not mean we necessarily had better systems and games in the West as there was limit to what these computers could do.
I have heard that out of the Easter Bloc countries it was Yugoslavia that had the best models with the Galaksija
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... Yugoslavia
But it probably helped that they were non-alinged and were not restricted in the use of foreign help in developing their computer industry.
15 Feb 2014, 01:30
I owned this one since Oct 1988 (http://www.classiccomputer.de/ams/scheuropc.htm). I bought it in one of the export-import companies in SR Slovenia (SFR Yugoslavia). My friends owned ZX Spectrum 16k's and 48k's as well as Commodore 64k's in the first half of 1980s, but I preferred to wait and bought a XT compatible machine instead. It gave me a headstart with all the software (back then it was Microsoft Works 1.0 as a prequel to today's MS Office) designed for "serious" purposes (spreadsheets, databases).
Nobody I knew in SR Slovenia owned a Galaksija even though it was very popular among computer enthusiasts of southern republics, mainly SR Bosnia & Hercegovina and SR Serbia.
The majority of other software for my Schneider Euro PC XT 8086 was purchased through pirates from SR Croatia and SR Bosnia and Hercegovina. I have no idea where they got that software (such as Framework 1.0 etc), especially because the BBS system wasn't in full swing yet in SFR Yugoslavia back in 1988, 1989.
Among the PC platform, one should not forget to mention Iskra Delta computer (http://racunalniski-muzej.si/?page_id=253 and http://racunalniski-muzej.si/gallery/ma ... ewsIndex=1) - it had a really heavy keyboard with which one could really hit&kill someone...
Nobody I knew in SR Slovenia owned a Galaksija even though it was very popular among computer enthusiasts of southern republics, mainly SR Bosnia & Hercegovina and SR Serbia.
The majority of other software for my Schneider Euro PC XT 8086 was purchased through pirates from SR Croatia and SR Bosnia and Hercegovina. I have no idea where they got that software (such as Framework 1.0 etc), especially because the BBS system wasn't in full swing yet in SFR Yugoslavia back in 1988, 1989.
Among the PC platform, one should not forget to mention Iskra Delta computer (http://racunalniski-muzej.si/?page_id=253 and http://racunalniski-muzej.si/gallery/ma ... ewsIndex=1) - it had a really heavy keyboard with which one could really hit&kill someone...
16 May 2014, 19:08
From my reading, it seems that you mostly bought kits and built your own. There were copies of the Spectrum (apparently with some upgrades, you can find videos on youtube) and other machines could be had in foreign import shops, at least in Poland and East Germany.
There were import restrictions on some computer processors (like Motorola 68K)
There were import restrictions on some computer processors (like Motorola 68K)