I failed to understand the point: there were ZX Spectrum clones, there was a clone called HC, and the article is about an illegal clone Cobra. Some of the people building Cobras even used the cases of HC. So what were the functional differences? Except for knowing you've made your own machine, was there some other advantage of Cobra over the HC or some other clone? Were all illegal for home use?
Both were unlicensed clones.
HC's were made by a company to sell to business. Cobras were designed by a university and built by the same company as the HC's for school and possibly business use.
The computer in the story is an unlicensed copy of the school's unlicensed Speccy clone. I don't know if the university was cracking down because they were losing sales, or if the government was cracking down on non-business use, or if it was just the cops busting people with stolen computer parts.
I don't know much about socialist Romania, but if they were like USSR, the crime would be 1) stealing the parts to make the computers, and 2) actually selling them. The Soviet criminal code actually had an article in it titled "Private business activity and commercial brokerage".
According to the article it was illegal to purchase the ‘legal’ clones for personal use. They were for business use only and cost the equivalent of over a year’s salary.
These illegal clones were ‘only’ 5-6 months salary, mostly built from ‘faulty’ parts smuggled from the factories.
The guy in the first picture, Mihai Moldovanu is wearing a tee with a Greek flag. Does anyone know what the connection is? Did Romanians go to Greece to study computers, in the '80s or something like that?
I am from Greece and this shirt seems like one of thousands sold in Athens & Greek islands. But still seems strange that this guy choose this shirt to be photographed with.
At the same time these guys were building illicit computers in their dorm rooms, I and my buddies were building illicit robots in ours. We weren't in danger from the secret police, of course, so I don't mean to directly compare the experience. But we were at a religious university that simply didn't have the ability to think broadly enough to allow for the possibility that students might have interests outside the established course work, and certainly frowned on the use of power tools in church-owned dorms. We ignored the rules, quite openly, made burn marks on the desks and left pounds of aluminum shavings in the carpets, and definitely felt rebellious doing it.
In any case: the article says that these guys feel like they didn't really accomplish anything, because while they were bootlegging Sinclair Spectrum clones, Apple, on the other side of the world, was reinventing the entire computer industry. I have to disagree. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey - and these guys had quite a journey. Maybe they didn't contribute decisively to bringing down Communism; but if that's your success metric, then I think almost everybody fails.
In my case, that first robot that we built - which sucked - led to a second one, that didn't. And that led to a graduate research assistantship at a different university that was more welcoming of student initiative - and that led, eventually, to a career in space robotics.
It's been quite a ride, and it isn't over. And I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
I don't think it was illegal to assemble computers at that time there. I did something like this in USSR at that time and don't think that it was too different in Romania.
And actually from the same parts - I see couple of chips there marked "сделано в СССР" (made in USSR).
USSR produced clone of i8080. Z80 clones were produced GDR (East Germany) and USSR too. The only problem was to buy those chips. You could buy them only on black market realistically speaking. Only that was kind of illegal.
Something I've always wondered, but really haven't dug too deep into is, did these clones do any tricks that would be considered better than what they were based on? That goes with the clone CPUs also. Did they have any undocumented features, that would make it "better"?
(1) the East-German produced Z80 clone U880 apparently fixed a mask layout bug, the bug only affected the undocumented instruction set of the chip, which was most likely the reason why it wasn't fixed by Zilog before
(2) the KC Compact (an East German Amstrad CPC clone) was using 'standard chips' available in the Eastern Bloc countries to emulate the integrated gate array of the original, this made the interrupt system more programmable than in the original, which in theory would have enabled some more interesting "graphics demo effects" (http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html)
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 52.2 ms ] threadBoth were unlicensed clones. HC's were made by a company to sell to business. Cobras were designed by a university and built by the same company as the HC's for school and possibly business use.
The computer in the story is an unlicensed copy of the school's unlicensed Speccy clone. I don't know if the university was cracking down because they were losing sales, or if the government was cracking down on non-business use, or if it was just the cops busting people with stolen computer parts.
These illegal clones were ‘only’ 5-6 months salary, mostly built from ‘faulty’ parts smuggled from the factories.
http://nand2tetris.org/
At the same time these guys were building illicit computers in their dorm rooms, I and my buddies were building illicit robots in ours. We weren't in danger from the secret police, of course, so I don't mean to directly compare the experience. But we were at a religious university that simply didn't have the ability to think broadly enough to allow for the possibility that students might have interests outside the established course work, and certainly frowned on the use of power tools in church-owned dorms. We ignored the rules, quite openly, made burn marks on the desks and left pounds of aluminum shavings in the carpets, and definitely felt rebellious doing it.
In any case: the article says that these guys feel like they didn't really accomplish anything, because while they were bootlegging Sinclair Spectrum clones, Apple, on the other side of the world, was reinventing the entire computer industry. I have to disagree. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey - and these guys had quite a journey. Maybe they didn't contribute decisively to bringing down Communism; but if that's your success metric, then I think almost everybody fails.
In my case, that first robot that we built - which sucked - led to a second one, that didn't. And that led to a graduate research assistantship at a different university that was more welcoming of student initiative - and that led, eventually, to a career in space robotics.
It's been quite a ride, and it isn't over. And I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
Rest assured that some still care.
And actually from the same parts - I see couple of chips there marked "сделано в СССР" (made in USSR).
USSR produced clone of i8080. Z80 clones were produced GDR (East Germany) and USSR too. The only problem was to buy those chips. You could buy them only on black market realistically speaking. Only that was kind of illegal.
Interesting that schematics of such hobby computers was published in state magazine "Radio", like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-86RK
(1) the East-German produced Z80 clone U880 apparently fixed a mask layout bug, the bug only affected the undocumented instruction set of the chip, which was most likely the reason why it wasn't fixed by Zilog before
(2) the KC Compact (an East German Amstrad CPC clone) was using 'standard chips' available in the Eastern Bloc countries to emulate the integrated gate array of the original, this made the interrupt system more programmable than in the original, which in theory would have enabled some more interesting "graphics demo effects" (http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html)
(3) some of the countless ZX Spectrum clones had slightly better graphics capabilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones)