realoldguy23 wrote:Jo22 wrote:Of course they did use DOS software before, but plain CP437 textmode software such as Norton Commander, Turbo Pascal or dBase
(- […]
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Of course they did use DOS software before, but plain CP437 textmode software such as Norton Commander, Turbo Pascal or dBase
(-NC apparently was very popular over there; it was claimed that no russian/eastern DOS user ever saw DOS without NC-)
did run on various DOS compatibles all over the world. Be it something like a Sirius 1, PC-9801,
Robotron 1750, an Apple II with 8086 card or a BBC Master 512 with 80186 board and DOS Plus.
FYI: I grew up in East Germany (GDR, DDR, whatever you want to call it) and was 20 and already a student of computer science when the wall broke down.
Cool, that means your youth was not entirely lost at that point. 😉
Some friends of our family are from GDR, as well. It's interesting to learn from all these little cultural differences every time.
realoldguy23 wrote:
DOS and PC clones didn't really play a role in the communist block. Everything was based on our own Z80 clones (U880). Our PCs were running mostly a CP/M compatible rip off called SCP. The main business computer was the PC1715 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_1715 that was exactly like this. I used Turbo Pascal 3.0 (?) on it to learn programming still in 1990, after the wall was already open.
I guess that computers itself weren't popular for personal use there. If you weren't a ham or student, I suppose,
there was little reason to own such a monstrosity. Okay, games maybe. Kids were all the same around the world in that respect (was the MSX ever popular there ?).
By they way, wasn't KC85 software aired over the radio in GDR at some point, because there was no other way of spreading software
(cassettes were still a luxury, too ?) and GDR's education ministry had no real intentions to support computer use beyond academic use (which excluded young people, pupils, etc).
realoldguy23 wrote:
The 16bit technology started to take off in the GDR (who was considered the technological leader among the socialist countries) in the late 80's. Unfortunately they decided to stay with Zilog and cloned the Z8000 CPU line (U8000). The Soviet Union had already created a clone of the i8086 that they called K1810WM86, but this was so scarcely available that I saw the PCs https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_7100, https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/EC_1834 build with it only once or twice during communist times. The first "PC"s they built with it were highly incompatible with IBM PCs. (The EC1834 was bit better.) But this didn't really matter since they were so rare anyway.
No wonder. From what I read, the EC1834 and A1700 series were bureau computers costing 50.000 Eastern Marks each.
Anyway, I wasn't making a statement about a private person's computer. The Z80 systems were still strong all over the world by that time.
The question rather was why the created the K1810WM86 in first place. Making a replica of another x86 chip was comparable difficult.
Since systems had not to be IBM PC compatible, the 80186 (or V30) must have been an option, too.
The transistor count of an 80186 was 55,000 vs the 29,000 of the 8086. In comparison to the 286, it was still low (134,000).
Also, it was a more or less complete mircocontroller. Using that as a base could havve helped to cope with the slimited resources of the GDR.
- Again, that's just a Gedankenexperiment. Political steered decisions not included. 😉
realoldguy23 wrote:
A typical engineer didn't care about Norton Commander or DOS. He worked usually on a K1520 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikrorechnersystem_K_1520 system (again based on Z80/U880) which was used to write software, program EPROMS, control machines, etc. It could run CP/M or other more specialized OS'es.
Thanks. I know of the importance of U880 based system. What I was refering to was an issue of CHIP, from circa ~1987-1990.
Speaking of the GDR, there's a German site called robotrontechnik.de which says:
Dienstprogramm Norton-Commander: Dieser Dateimanager war ein beliebtes, vielseitiges Programm amerikanischer
Herkunft, das auf den Rechnern A7150 und EC1834 unter dem Betriebssystem DCP genutzt wurde.
Der Start des Norton-Commanders erfolgte mit dem Kommando nc.
realoldguy23 wrote:
One more thing: Of course you wouldn't go to a Gulag or Siberia if you wanted to bring a PC/AT to GDR. It was more the other way around. There was a US embargo on all hi-tech, especially on computers and their parts. We couldn't travel to the West to grab such things in the first place anyway. And we wouldn't have had the money.
Exactly. That's why I discussed eastern clones of the 808x chips only, but not a complete systems.
The question was as to why they developed their own systems around the 8088/86 from 1976, when they
could have used more advanced designs right from the start when they -quite late- started with 16-Bit computers.
The Z80 was an allstar, even in the west. That they cloned it years after its introduction made a lot of sense.
As Scali wrote earlier, the Z80 was a very advanced 8-Bit design.
The embargo didn't inlude other eastern places, such as China/Asia/Japan which had access to a variety of good/better chips.
That's why I was wondering if getting hold of a microfilm copy of an eastern chip's die or sample would have been a wiser alternative to
focus on western tech. From what I saw in an old video of an old computer show, sellers sold these chips (Z80, etc) on theirs stands
in the open on street.
realoldguy23 wrote:
An uncle of mine had a Commodore C128 and this was absolutely top of the line for a private person.
A yes, I had one of these, too. The C64 was also a popular present by the relatives from the west, I heard.
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