Not many computers manufactured in my country so I guess they all foreign. I have one Finnish built PC with Pinus brand, but all the parts inside are still foreign so not sure if that counts as non-foreign.

Yeah, watch those voltages. I blew up an imported PSU because I forgot to toggle the voltage switch before connecting it to the mains.

Most of mine are foreign. Of US, UK or Asian origin. With the occasional local x86 clone.

I live in Japan, so local for me but...
Sharp X68000 XVI
Fujitsu FM Towns UX20
Fujitsu FM Towns Fresh
Panasonic MSX Turbo-R A1ST
PC-9801 BX2

Foreign computers don't interest me except maybe an MSX, but I've never put any effort into getting one.
I do take interest in some Japanese game consoles and games, and have a few mainstream ones (nothing rare).

Not really, they rarely work and most of them are proprietary so not much chance of a successful repair.
They are also severely overpriced because "vintage" and "foreign". I just don't see the point in spending $1000 on a single computer when I can buy 20-30 for that price.

Unless you're from Taiwan or China, the chance any computer is completely 'native' is minuscule. Crack open any of those boxes proclaiming "made in the USA" and you'll find piles of sub-assemblies from elsewhere. Sort of reminds me of "Make America Great Again" caps... made in China 😜

Where computers actually come from is a fascinating story to investigate though. Take Packard Bell. In the mid 1990s, while they were still being sold in the US, it was acquired by NEC (a Japanese company), but design was moved to their Angers plant in France. Most of their ATX-era boxes were ODM manufactured by Mitac in Taiwan. At some point PB stopped selling their systems in the US, but outside of that market nothing much changed. Then Acer (another Taiwanese company) bought the brand from NEC. Design & marketing moved from NEC's Angers plant to the existing support center in Wijchen in the Netherlands.

This is in no way exceptional, you can follow any other brand in the same way. Most of it rotates around big Taiwanese (or these days: Chinese) ODM houses. We live in a globalized world and our tech is equally global and already was at the dawn of the PC era. Take an IBM 5150 apart and even though the box was actually made in the US, there are parts from all over the place in there. So tell me: which computer isn't "foreign"? Possibly only some former USSR systems built with locally cloned parts could even hope to qualify.

I mean, I'd love to own something really out there and obscure like a PC98 or X68000.

But the cost to use ratio is really what puts a dent in it. Id be in those for more then my other setups and it's not like parts are easily available on eBay if something breaks.

Otherwise the only "Foreign" computer I'v ever drooled over to own one day would be an Amiga. That's a possibility.

I think Amiga was pretty much international? I know they were exceptionally common in the UK and Europe, I've seen them for sale in Japan(not often, but BEEP had a few last year) and Commodore was an American company so I'd assume they were fairly common there?

dionb wrote on 2020-07-04, 13:05:

Sort of reminds me of "Make America Great Again" caps... made in China 😜

I'm not sure what company you're referring to, but there's lots of caps with random names made in China. They print something on the sleeve and sell them in the gray market for a while, and then change the name.

So tell me: which computer isn't "foreign"?

A computer that was marketed in your country, so it's not an exotic thing to find where you are.

I'd love to get my hands on some machines that were common overseas like a PC-98 or Tandy. Sadly prices and compatibility are a bit of an issue.

Comecon computers are awesome if you can find one in working condition. The problem is that not many of these were made (<5-10.000/series), they were often unreliable and the lack of spare parts was a huge problem even back then. As soon as the Comecon region went belly-up people got rid of these obsolete computers and bought better ones from Western companies.
Getting a single working Iskra-1030 is harder than getting the entire IBM PS/2 line.