soviet in title, nothing soviet in article.
Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
41–50 of 85 posts
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a surprising sight to see Western companies showing no interest in 25 million strong economy.
Deals happened, but on a small scale. For instance, East Germany had so called "Intershops" stuffed full with western consumer products (also home computers), but those were sold for hard currency only, and their main purpose was to siphon off the circulating D-Marks which were coming into the country via relatives from West Germany, or to directly sell to western visitors, because some prices were cheaper than in We…
In Yugoslavia, various companies 'produced' computers by essentially relabeling Western equipment, especially during the eighties when I was a child. For instance, the Electronic Industry in Niš (EI Niš) imported Honeywell computers. My father worked on a Honeywell DPS-6 imported from the U.S., which bore EI stickers. Surprisingly, sometimes they didn't even bother applying the EI stickers.
During my time at university we had VAX 11/785, MicroVAX 3100, and by the mid-'90s, we even had an SGI Indigo. Additionally, we had some IBM VM computer, though I can't recall the exact model. There was an IBM 1130 in the seventies.
As far as I can recall, the western parts of Yugoslavia had around 300 VAX machines deployed across various companies. Each republic developed its own computing ecosystem, resulting in a diverse landscape.
While there were some microcomputers in limited production, such as the Orao, Pecom, and Oric Nova, the ZX Spectrum and C-64 enjoyed far more popularity. Later, the Atari ST and Amiga took their place.
In the late eighties, my high school had a collection of original Apple II computers, along with IRIS 8 clones.
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but Yugoslavia wasn't behind the Iron Curtain. It wasn't aligned with the USSR. It wasn't under USSR control (after 1948 [1]). It was officially neutral during the Cold War (Yugoslavia founded the Non-Aligned Movement). Sometimes close to the USA, even receiving American military aid at times. Relevantly for us and this topic, Yugoslavia was not subject to the Western bans on exporting sensitive technology to Co…
Technically, import was legal into all Eastern Bloc countries, it's the export from a western country which was illegal because of the COCOM embargo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul... I actually don't know if Yugoslavia was embargoed too though (technically, Yugoslavia wasn't part of the "Eastern Bloc"). But of course even without embargo the markets were just not interesting for western…
Import was way more complex than that.
At least into Hungary my parents literally needed to smuggle a ZX Spectrum they sourced in Munich from a bargain bin. That was in 1985. I learned programming then and haven't really stopped since :)
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#44It is not correct to refer to it as Soviet-Era. Using the logic from the title, Apple Macintosh is also Soviet-Era. Yugoslavia was never part of Warsaw bloc, it had its own political system and no USSR army on its territory.
'Soviet' is not a name, it is a political term, so I don't see why you cannot apply it to countries with USSR-like regimes, even if they don't carry S in their name. For the curious, it is translated as 'council'.
It still doesn't apply to Yugoslavia.
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#45I can't imagine how slow it is without a graphics chip
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#46It is not correct to refer to it as Soviet-Era. Using the logic from the title, Apple Macintosh is also Soviet-Era. Yugoslavia was never part of Warsaw bloc, it had its own political system and no USSR army on its territory.
Everything East of the Iron Wall (German Divide) was under USSR control.
Ha, good joke. Yugoslavia wanted Stalin dead because Stalin tried to kill Tito twice up to the point of the Yugo Secret Service advicing Stalin that they should stop fucking around, if not they would get rid of Stalin themselves.
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#47It is not correct to refer to it as Soviet-Era. Using the logic from the title, Apple Macintosh is also Soviet-Era. Yugoslavia was never part of Warsaw bloc, it had its own political system and no USSR army on its territory.
'Soviet' is not a name, it is a political term, so I don't see why you cannot apply it to countries with USSR-like regimes, even if they don't carry S in their name. For the curious, it is translated as 'council'.
It's specifically not a USSR-like regime.
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#48It is not correct to refer to it as Soviet-Era. Using the logic from the title, Apple Macintosh is also Soviet-Era. Yugoslavia was never part of Warsaw bloc, it had its own political system and no USSR army on its territory.
'Soviet' is not a name, it is a political term, so I don't see why you cannot apply it to countries with USSR-like regimes, even if they don't carry S in their name. For the curious, it is translated as 'council'.
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Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#49Wow! I can’t believe I never heard of this. Despite being born in Yugoslavia and alive at that time, I’ve never encountered or heard of Galaksija in my life. Sinclair stuff was pretty common: Spectrum and the older zx80, Commodore, even Amiga in the late 80s/early 90s. The only domestic machine I ever encountered was Orao.
We had one at our school but I never got the chance to use it. It was for older kids only and I got assigned to the ZX Spectrum with the others :) Not that I'm complaining.
Re: Galaksija: The Soviet-Era, Z80-based microcomputer
#50It's unclear to me if it was ZX-Spectrum compatible, seems like it wasn't. Which would have severely limited it's usability.
ZX-Spectrum clones were as pervasive as mushrooms after rain in Eastern Europe, Romania had 5 different "brands" of them.
There were also attempts at producing proprietary, non-ZX spectrum compatible, Z80 based computers. They were short lived and failed in the market, like this weirdness: https://retroit.ro/product/amic/
Overall if it didn't run Spectrum games it was fairly useless.