I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers.

In Poland, for example, there were the 8-bit Meritums [1], the Elwro 800 Juniors [2], the Bosman 8s [3], the Mazovia PC clones [4] complete with their own Polish characters encoding that has the peculiarity of containing one character that had never existed in Unicode [5], to name but a few, not to mention the Odra mainframes [6].

[1]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritum_(komputer)#/media/File... [2]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior#/media/File:E... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79YSyyV9f2Y [4]: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_(komputer)#/media/File... [5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazovia_encoding [6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odra_(computer)

> I'd wager a guess that most of the countries in the Eastern Block did have their own computers.

There's this beauty from Sweden:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABC80

I'm guessing a lot of countries overall had their own computers, not just eastern block. We don't usually hear much about them because we base our computer history mostly on the canon of the US.

I was surprised to read in "The Architecture of Open Source Applications" that my former university's computer science department made a very prominent sendmail version back in the day (IDA sendmail) and that this was noteworthy in that context.

This field has been international for a very long time.

You are aware that Sweden was not a member of the "Eastern Block"?

That was exactly my point. Most likely every country (overall) had their own computer. It wasn't an "Eastern block thing". The degree of separation was obviously higher, but not all "western" manufacturers were American.

(Also: danskjävel...)

I get it now. The context was ambiguous, though, so I don't quite get the downvote.

Yes, we danskjävels made som as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnecentralen

> I get it now. The context was ambiguous, though, so I don't quite get the downvote.

I can't even downvote, so it wasn't me. I edited my original post to be less ambiguous. Sorry.

> Yes, we danskjävels made som as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnecentralen

There's something really beautiful about that setup. I like the splash of color in select areas and the keyboard looks amazing.

Acorn Electron, BBC Micro, Archimedes ...

Polish semiconductor company CEMI also made 8080 clone, MCY7880. die shot: http://obrazki.elektroda.pl/9525059000_1368820494.jpg

Amazingly there is a TV program from 1983 showing manufacturing process of this very CPU :o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHl6m93Hay0#t=24 From die shots and this program (showing different masks) it appears Polish version was almost a straight copy of the Intel, with small modifications (different feature sizes, additional debug pads).

Elwro, Polish calculator manufacturer, designed accounting system (Elwro 500/513/523) based on MCY7880, with 8-512KB ram, two 8 inch floppies, printer and a monitor made out of modified 12 inch _camping TV_ (Neptun 150) :))), all running CP/M 2.2 (pirated and translated to Polish).

http://www.elwro.zafriko.pl/kat/mikrokomputery/elwro_500

google translated journal of one of the engineers: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://w...

Yields were terrible, not surprising when you watch this clip and see chemical baths done manually by flipping wafers in liquids like fries at a fast food restaurant :) Popularity of this computer system forced CEMI to import KR580VM80A from USSR, and encapsulate them with CEMI logo (to save face I guess). Few people decapped MCY7880, and you mostly find russian dies inside.

Communists had 1 positive obsession: exact sciences. See all that focus on math, physics, etc.

They probably thought they could solve all the world's problems as equations, with the head of state as the "master variable manipulator".

This was a necessary instrument for the arms race.

Of course. Someone in the Politburo read 1984.

Here's one build-it-yourself from Yugoslavia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_%28computer%29

I heard it said that this was because of Ceausescu's regime's fixation on surveillance and intelligence. So they allocated top resources to information technology, resulting in an unusually IT-capable population.

Yep, we're one of the top countries when it comes to engineers per capita, must've gotten that from the soviets :-).

Too bad there's not enough resources to do much in the country, so everyone is fleeing it (not for long though, I hope)...

I'd say that retention is a lot better in the IT sector, definitely a lot better than in the 90s or early 00s.

Plus what I understand a good mathematics school. That helps as well.