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Comment by nexthash | Hacker News Reader

This line of computers is really a testament to the ingenuity of people from the Soviet Bloc at a time when resources were few. There's so many stories of them harnessing the limited computing/calculator power they had to play games, run simulations, and more. This era minted a generation of techies that formed the foundation of the tech industry there today. Here's some examples of the clever tricks these hackers did to push their machines to the limit:

https://hackaday.com/2014/12/15/home-computers-behind-the-ir...

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/gaming-iron-curtain

https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/silicon-revolution/ho...

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This [1] was my first programmable calculator and what this Wikipedia article writes about games and "errorology" was really true.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronika_B3-34

They literally cloned the Apple II, I think you’re giving them a little too much credit.

With the resources they had (almost nothing) in the stilted, moribund economy of the Soviet Bloc, cloning the Apple II is quite an incredible technical achievement.

It was an eminently cloneable (and already old) computer, evolved from a hobbyist design. With state-level support, this is not by any means an 'incredible technical achievement' even for a small COMECON country (which had already produced things like IBM/360 clones, etc).

Yeah, if you have the fab, circuit board manufacturing plant, and assembly plant then it is. Keep in mind that you are economically isolated from the rest of the world, forcing you to do things like copy designs to save time and limited resources for building the machines.

I mean, I lived there, I have some idea. Cloning this thing in the 80s was a no big deal. These places were neither as resource poor, isolated or technologically backwards as you seem to think.

Not really, they put together readily available ICs on a standard board.

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