Cool ! I will check your links after dinner and chores. Always liked history, here in my country they are trying to delete and re-write some of it 🙁

Thanks for that, rasz_pl .

Fresh out of university, in the early to mid 70s, my mother worked as an analyst at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadeusz_Sendzimir_Steelworks . At the time, that factory operated a Bull Gamma 10 ( http://www.histoireinform.com/Histoire/+infos2/chr4infc.htm ) and was in the process of having some ICL system installed .

It would also be nice to know more about computing in Poland between the mid 70s and the mid 80s (commercial/industrial and personal), IMHO.

I think pirated VHS tapes (1980-2000) were also a "sell magnet" back then and one reason why these markets do not exist today.
+ Finnish people used to go to Estonia to buy VHS and later pirated CD music, movie, games.
Adult VHS tapes were popular.

But all together times of product development R&D were taking big leaps then and massive amount of money was poured to development.

Today we see no high progress just same mobile phones issued again and again that look just like exact copies of each other.
We live boring times now.
Nothing new happens.

user33331 wrote on 2022-07-21, 05:26:

I think pirated VHS tapes (1980-2000) were also a "sell magnet" back then and one reason why these markets do not exist today.

There were 6 7 major open air markets running every weekend in Warsaw before 2000.

• 1986-20xx Computer trade fair (Giełda Komputerowa "Grzybowska/na Batorego"). As can bee seen on pictures hiding in the main post under "33 hi resolution pictures taken during recording of above material" button it was strictly computers, peripherals and software. Software obviously 100% pirated because outdated 1930 copyright law in theory made it "legal". Finally amended in 1994 forcing pirates to sell from under the table and actually fear frequent Police crackdowns.
• 1983-1990 Skra Stadium. Black market for everything that could be smuggled during vacation trip to Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece or USSR. Place to sell that gift aunt from USA send you. Clothes, music, jewelry, bikes etc https://www-vogue-pl.translate.goog/a/w-glowa … en&_x_tr_pto=sc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxDyTiDqcog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL2EMUQX-dg
• 1989-2007 10th-Anniversary Stadium, so called "Jarmark Europa". Fall or iron curtain meant flood of eastern vendors smuggling from Russia and Asia. Everything legal and illegal. Adibas sneakers, Somy walkmans, original Siberian underpants, vodka with a chance of methanol, furs of any kind especially illegal ones, fireworks, pirated tapes/cd/vhs, guns, chance to get shot when Chechen mafia was fighting with Azer/Russian one over control 😀
  "Europe fair. Vodka and guns next to socks and videotapes" https://sport.onet.pl/pilka-nozna/jarmark-eur … arszawy/706dczd
  https://www-wprost-pl.translate.goog/tygodnik … en&_x_tr_pto=sc
  "You want to buy weapons (including Israeli Uzi, German MP-5s, American Federal Parker and Russian anti-tank grenade launchers), order a murder, arrange for illegal immigrants to be smuggled to the West or rob a truck, arrange a wholesale drug delivery, and finally buy a pirated music CD or computer software or counterfeit clothing? Go to Warsaw's Dziesięciolecia Stadium. It is the largest criminal holding in Europe - a legal branch of the Polish and international underground."
  2007 documentary right before the closure https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hABhcIUI2_A
• 1989-2022 Wolumen Electronic market. A Polish mini SEG market. Resistors, capacitors, transistors, chips, motors, connectors, cables, speakers, Audio/Video/telecommunication gear, spare parts, soldering equipment, measurement devices, electronics chemistry. At its worse also pirated music/movies, stolen car stereos and phones, tools to crack sattv, wireless bugs, military grade NVGs and pretty much any illegal electronics. Nowadays its cleaned and houses ~50-100 permanent electronic shops. http://www.wolumen.com.pl/index.php?page=infogielda https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wolumen+53, … 59!4d20.9393039
• 197x-2022 antiques Flea Market "Bazar Na Kole". "flea market merchandises ranging from kitchen appliances, and old paintings, to coins, silverware, vinyl records, stamps, watches, clocks, furniture, pottery, glass, silver, paintings, advertising pre-war posters, early 19th century postcards, prewar bathroom fixtures, sculpture, rusted WW1 Prussian helmets, ammo boxes, shell casings, and thousands of other things found in the county’s basements, what distinguishes the Kolo flea market from other flea markets like in Paris or London, is furniture."
  https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review … ral_Poland.html https://m.facebook.com/bazarnakole/photos/
• 198x-2022 Car market 'gielda samochodowa Slomczyn'. At one time the biggest car lot in the world with ~10000 cars traded daily. If in nineties a car got stolen in Europe, it would likely end up here 😀 https://35mm.online/vod/kroniki/polska-kronika-filmowa-94-45 Nowadays faded away to almost nothing. Most of the land got converted to a rallycross track, then to a proper race track http://autodromslomczyn.pl
• 1989-2001-2010 Bazaar under Palace of Culture. 2000-5000 permanent stalls and shops with clothing/shoes right smack in the center of capital city 😀 Reduced to less than 1000 in one temporary building after 2001, finally kicked out completely in 2010.
  Click for images

  1991
  1993
  1993
  1994
  1999
  2000
  2009 all relocated to one building

A lot of older people fetishizes living under Iron Curtain. It was a time you had to fight for everything, hunt, make deals, trades, smuggle and cheat. Almost everything was illegal so the state could charge anyone with something at any time, life in constant fear. Private ownership of typewriters, fax machines, radio transmitters and computers was illegal without special permissions (>3 year prison term). CIA was smuggling those to Poland with the help of Church https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/18/world/reag … -on-poland.html
>The report in Time adds many new details, particularly the role of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Roman Catholic Church in opening networks across which telephones, fax machines, printing presses, photocopiers, computers and intelligence information moved to Solidarity.

Personal possession anecdote from book "High-tech za żelazną kurtyną. Elektronika, komputery i systemy sterowania w PRL" (978-83-8098-094-5)

>In 1984, "Informatyka" magazine, involved in the dissemination of these machines, reported on the adventures of Mr. Przemysław, who received in April [...] a package from his brother in Toronto, containing the VIC-20 microcomputer, power supply, cassette recorder, a set of cassettes for television games and English language learning and connecting cables. The Customs Office in Gdynia refused to issue an import license, stating that it could issue [...] only if the computer was necessary for the citizen's professional or scientific work

It slowly got better in second half of the 80s. COCOM relaxed import sanctions in 1984 on low end 8bit gaming machines:

"New Media Behind the Iron Curtain: Cultural History of Video, Microcomputers and Satellite Television in Communist Poland" https://research.utu.fi/converis/getfile?id=5 … 894&portal=true

>The breakthrough in the domestication of computers in Poland took place
in the mid-1980s, most likely between 1984 and 1986. In the global context, this
might have been relatively late, but in the context of the Eastern bloc it seems that
Poland was within the norm. There are two main reasons behind this chronology: one international, one local. Firstly, on an international level, the embargo on 8-bit technology was relaxed in 1984. Computers had been at the heart of the
CoCom debate since the mid-1970s, but – as Mastanduno reports – it was not
until July 1984 that the embargo on the most popular 8-bit microcomputers was
removed, even though at the same time new restrictions were introduced regarding various telecommunications software and solutions.

In 1985 you could finally legally buy 8bit Atari in Pewex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pewex Internal Export Company (WTF is "internal export" haha) - chain of shops exclusively accepting $western currency$. Personal ownership of western currency was illegal, but regime was running low on foreign cash to repay international loans so they came up with this brilliant plan of opening shops where you could spend your smuggled black market money semi officially. So you went to PEWEX and dropped ~$130 for Atari 65XE with tape recorder no questions asked.

>Secondly, on a local level, as Kluska reports, in the autumn of 1984, the “[Polish] customs office
ceased to make it difficult for citizens to import microcomputer equipment.”

This is the environment in which computer trade fair Grzybowska was created in 1986.

Did the weapons come from: Yugoslav wars 1991-2001 or Chechen wars ?
- These weapons have circulated a lot I heard they reuse these in Ukraine.

That Belarus-Serbia zone continues to be a weapon hot spot for many decades.
Must be piles and piles of weapons for sell.

Others like EU-countries have had very strict gun laws for around +100 of years now and going today more and more stricter.
During black gun powder days earlier than 1890 it probably was legal to own a gun in EU countries.

user33331 wrote on 2022-07-22, 05:17:

Others like EU-countries have had very strict gun laws for around +100 of years now and going today more and more stricter.
During black gun powder days earlier than 1890 it probably was legal to own a gun in EU countries.

Its 100% legal to own, make and trade pre 1885 separate-loading ammunition guns and replicas in Poland. You can roll down the street with double Colt Navy 1851, in your belt or concealed, all legal. Not that anyone would need to, joining EU really calmed things down. Now biggest crimes are perpetrated by corporations and government, just like the rest of Europe 😀

No more grifting, wheeling and dealing. You dont have to know someone who knows someone to buy gas or get a hospital bed. No need to stockpile toilet paper (in eighties delivery was once a month and instantly sold out). No more saving for 2-3 years to buy a new computer, which was the case up to middle nineties. Basically no more living in modern day Russia.

Yes. "Modern" nitroglycerine(smokeless) gun powder using guns are not allowed inside EU.
Starting from guns such as:
- Mosin–Nagant M1891. (and newer...)
- Gewehr 1888. (and newer...)

You can only own wild west and pirate guns which have so thin barrel that it will explode if you would try to use nitroglycerine(smokeless) gun powder on it.

Meanwhile USA hoards all Europe's historical guns by masses.
Most if not all Europe's WWI and WWII historical guns got exported to USA.

In one of the videos, I saw computers running DiskDupe - the diskette copier/imager everybody seemed to use back then...
In the 90s, there was the period when CD recorders were already available, but still too expensive for average user, so the default removable media was still floppies...

The dealers on the bazaar kept their software collections on CD-Rs, each holding hundreds of floppy images in DiskDupe .DDI format, and wrote them onto the diskettes of their customers.
It was important to use correct version of the program - I think DiskDupe Pro 3 Version 7.0 was OK, but some later versions were unable to open files with Read-Only attribute, and on the CD all files have that attribute.
In the mid-90s, the starting price was 2 PLN/diskette, lower for greater purchases...

Nowadays, I still use that piece of software - for archiving old floppies.
Usually, I make two images of each diskette: raw IMG, and DiskDupe DDI.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-07-20, 23:20:

Private VHS recording. Giełda Komputerowa na Grzybowskiej 16.01.1994. https://archive.org/details/gielda-komputerow … kiej-16.01.1994

This is Adams computer market in Poznan. It's not Grzybowska. It is obvious for anybody who ever attended to Grzybowska computer market. Whoever uploaded it to Internet Archive - took it from my FB Fanpage https://www.facebook.com/GieldanaGrzybowskiej/ where I published it with exclusive author's son permission.

HanJammer wrote on 2023-03-25, 22:00:

Whoever uploaded it to Internet Archive - took it from my FB Fanpage https://www.facebook.com/GieldanaGrzybowskiej/ where I published it with exclusive author's son permission.

Times have changed. People? Not so much. If they can steal it, even merely for "internet fame", they will.

Oh dear... a video about a place to trade pirate software... got pirated 🤣 🤣 🤣

HanJammer wrote on 2023-03-25, 22:00:

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-07-20, 23:20:

Private VHS recording. Giełda Komputerowa na Grzybowskiej 16.01.1994. https://archive.org/details/gielda-komputerow … kiej-16.01.1994

This is Adams computer market in Poznan. It's not Grzybowska. It is obvious for anybody who ever attended to Grzybowska computer market. Whoever uploaded it to Internet Archive - took it from my FB Fanpage https://www.facebook.com/GieldanaGrzybowskiej/ where I published it with exclusive author's son permission.

Someone probably went by the name of fb fanpage? maybe same person posting on wykop https://wykop.pl/link/5556551/gielda-komputer … 6-stycznia-1994
My excuses are 1994 was before my time, I assumed school was renting gym at some point before moving people back to corridors 😀 and even on wykop no one noticed. I started attending Grzybowska around 1996/97 when all hardware vendors relocated to open air area near main street visible on last picture.

rasz_pl wrote on 2023-03-26, 08:34:

Someone probably went by the name of fb fanpage? maybe same person posting on wykop https://wykop.pl/link/5556551/gielda-komputer … 6-stycznia-1994
My excuses are 1994 was before my time, I assumed school was renting gym at some point before moving people back to corridors 😀 and even on wykop no one noticed. I started attending Grzybowska around 1996/97 when all hardware vendors relocated to open air area near main street visible on last picture.

As far as I'm aware they never made the gymnasium available for people selling stuff. Both the open air market and the school was available until very end although later in the school it was just the dressing room with the pirates copying stuff and the people selling hardware and software around the school too (likely reason was that they were moved there from the market by the street, because construction works partially limited space available for them.

Yes, I remember at the end it was just the back parking lot with most vendors running main stalls in the second location behind Stodola student club.

I don't mean to be rude, but.. The video quality doesn't quite do PAL or VHS justice. Lot's of interlacing artifacts, over saturation etc.
My first thought was "was this an AVI file, originally ?" - On the other hand, if it was, it would fit the 1994 days just nicely. 160x120 @15 fps make me feel nostalgic. 😜

Quality of that video is typical period correct consumer VHS camera.

VHS played on a plastic TV of the 2010s, but Lord Smurf of DigitalFAQ will no doubt explain "you" how to spend 2 days reripping and improving it 😜

Jo22 wrote on 2023-03-26, 13:44:

I don't mean to be rude, but.. The video quality doesn't quite do PAL or VHS justice. Lot's of interlacing artifacts, over saturation etc.
My first thought was "was this an AVI file, originally ?" - On the other hand, if it was, it would fit the 1994 days just nicely. 160x120 @15 fps make me feel nostalgic. 😜

It was VHS (actually camera belonged to the girl which plays Putt-Putt in this video). But likely it was cheap camera, recording was on low quality tape then played back on low quality vhs player and captured by some old tv card. Hence quality. VHS cameras were treated as luxury goods in Poland in the 90s - even the cheaper ones were not really that affordable.

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-07-20, 23:20:

Click here to see 33 hi resolution pictures taken during recording of above material[/u][/b][/size] https://www.alamy.com/stock- […]
Show full quote

Click here to see 33 hi resolution pictures taken during recording of above material[/u][/b][/size] https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/grzybowska- … omputerowa.html[/summary]

Thanks a lot! this pictures are pure gold, remember me a lot same time in Argentina (in other side of planet) we have similar streets markets