6 ms·

The underground story of Cobra, the 1980s’ illicit handmade computer

104 points by gk1 9y ago

acqq 9y ago
I failed to understand the point: there were ZX Spectrum clones, there was a clone called HC, and the article is about an illegal clone Cobra. Some of the people building Cobras even used the cases of HC. So what were the functional differences? Except for knowing you've made your own machine, was there some other advantage of Cobra over the HC or some other clone? Were all illegal for home use?
- qbrass 9y ago
  http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ro.html http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ro.html Both were unlicensed clones. HC's were made by a company to sell to business. Cobras were designed by a university and built by the same company as the HC's for school and possibly business use. The computer in the story is an unlicensed copy of the school's unlicensed Speccy clone. I don't know if the university was cracking down because they were losing sales, or if the government was cracking down on non-business use, or if it was just the cops busting people with stolen computer parts.
  - acqq 9y ago
    Thanks for the linked page, to me it explains the context much better than the article.
  - int_19h 9y ago
    I don't know much about socialist Romania, but if they were like USSR, the crime would be 1) stealing the parts to make the computers, and 2) actually selling them. The Soviet criminal code actually had an article in it titled "Private business activity and commercial brokerage".
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sitharus 9y ago
  According to the article it was illegal to purchase the ‘legal’ clones for personal use. They were for business use only and cost the equivalent of over a year’s salary. These illegal clones were ‘only’ 5-6 months salary, mostly built from ‘faulty’ parts smuggled from the factories.
  - colejohnson66 9y ago
    Why the quotes around faulty?
    - dehugger 9y ago
      Because they were not actually faulty, that was the excuse used to smuggle them.
    - jacquesm 9y ago
      Toss them in the bin marked with 'x', go round back after work to fish them back of that bin and take them home.
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
The guy in the first picture, Mihai Moldovanu is wearing a tee with a Greek flag. Does anyone know what the connection is? Did Romanians go to Greece to study computers, in the '80s or something like that?
- ido 9y ago
  I don't think we can safely assume the shirt he is wearing in the modern photo has any connection to the story.
- paxpelus 9y ago
  I am from Greece and this shirt seems like one of thousands sold in Athens & Greek islands. But still seems strange that this guy choose this shirt to be photographed with.
  - pcardoso 9y ago
    Don't read too much into it. I love to travel and I usually get a t-shirt from wherever I go, then use them until they wear out. :)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- dep_b 9y ago
  Greece is like 2hrs flying from Romania so pretty to easy to go to holidays to. And awesome.
- mmihai 9y ago
  There is no connection. It's a tee that i bought from Greece in vacation. And i like to buy and wear tee shirts from countries i visit.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. I hope you had a great time in my country :)
markshead 9y ago
If the idea of building a computer and understanding what every part does sounds interesting, I'd highly recommend checking this out: http://nand2tetris.org/ http://nand2tetris.org/
- hellonewworld 9y ago
  Cool site.
GlenTheMachine 9y ago
This is an awesome story. It almost made me cry. At the same time these guys were building illicit computers in their dorm rooms, I and my buddies were building illicit robots in ours. We weren't in danger from the secret police, of course, so I don't mean to directly compare the experience. But we were at a religious university that simply didn't have the ability to think broadly enough to allow for the possibility that students might have interests outside the established course work, and certainly frowned on the use of power tools in church-owned dorms. We ignored the rules, quite openly, made burn marks on the desks and left pounds of aluminum shavings in the carpets, and definitely felt rebellious doing it. In any case: the article says that these guys feel like they didn't really accomplish anything, because while they were bootlegging Sinclair Spectrum clones, Apple, on the other side of the world, was reinventing the entire computer industry. I have to disagree. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey - and these guys had quite a journey. Maybe they didn't contribute decisively to bringing down Communism; but if that's your success metric, then I think almost everybody fails. In my case, that first robot that we built - which sucked - led to a second one, that didn't. And that led to a graduate research assistantship at a different university that was more welcoming of student initiative - and that led, eventually, to a career in space robotics. It's been quite a ride, and it isn't over. And I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
- better_ra 9y ago
  That sounds awesome. Would make for a good series of blog posts, or a book!
mpd 9y ago
> “People don’t care about optimizing the code anymore” Rest assured that some still care.
c-smile 9y ago
I don't think it was illegal to assemble computers at that time there. I did something like this in USSR at that time and don't think that it was too different in Romania. And actually from the same parts - I see couple of chips there marked "сделано в СССР" (made in USSR). USSR produced clone of i8080. Z80 clones were produced GDR (East Germany) and USSR too. The only problem was to buy those chips. You could buy them only on black market realistically speaking. Only that was kind of illegal. Interesting that schematics of such hobby computers was published in state magazine "Radio", like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-86RK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-86RK
xellisx 9y ago
Something I've always wondered, but really haven't dug too deep into is, did these clones do any tricks that would be considered better than what they were based on? That goes with the clone CPUs also. Did they have any undocumented features, that would make it "better"?
- flohofwoe 9y ago
  Some cases I know of: (1) the East-German produced Z80 clone U880 apparently fixed a mask layout bug, the bug only affected the undocumented instruction set of the chip, which was most likely the reason why it wasn't fixed by Zilog before (2) the KC Compact (an East German Amstrad CPC clone) was using 'standard chips' available in the Eastern Bloc countries to emulate the integrated gate array of the original, this made the interrupt system more programmable than in the original, which in theory would have enabled some more interesting "graphics demo effects" (http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html) (3) some of the countless ZX Spectrum clones had slightly better graphics capabilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones)

104 points by gk1 9y ago

acqq 9y ago

I failed to understand the point: there were ZX Spectrum clones, there was a clone called HC, and the article is about an illegal clone Cobra. Some of the people building Cobras even used the cases of HC. So what were the functional differences? Except for knowing you've made your own machine, was there some other advantage of Cobra over the HC or some other clone? Were all illegal for home use?

qbrass 9y ago
http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ro.html http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ro.html Both were unlicensed clones. HC's were made by a company to sell to business. Cobras were designed by a university and built by the same company as the HC's for school and possibly business use. The computer in the story is an unlicensed copy of the school's unlicensed Speccy clone. I don't know if the university was cracking down because they were losing sales, or if the government was cracking down on non-business use, or if it was just the cops busting people with stolen computer parts.
- acqq 9y ago
  Thanks for the linked page, to me it explains the context much better than the article.
- int_19h 9y ago
  I don't know much about socialist Romania, but if they were like USSR, the crime would be 1) stealing the parts to make the computers, and 2) actually selling them. The Soviet criminal code actually had an article in it titled "Private business activity and commercial brokerage".
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sitharus 9y ago
According to the article it was illegal to purchase the ‘legal’ clones for personal use. They were for business use only and cost the equivalent of over a year’s salary. These illegal clones were ‘only’ 5-6 months salary, mostly built from ‘faulty’ parts smuggled from the factories.
- colejohnson66 9y ago
  Why the quotes around faulty?
  - dehugger 9y ago
    Because they were not actually faulty, that was the excuse used to smuggle them.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    Toss them in the bin marked with 'x', go round back after work to fish them back of that bin and take them home.

YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago

The guy in the first picture, Mihai Moldovanu is wearing a tee with a Greek flag. Does anyone know what the connection is? Did Romanians go to Greece to study computers, in the '80s or something like that?

ido 9y ago
I don't think we can safely assume the shirt he is wearing in the modern photo has any connection to the story.
paxpelus 9y ago
I am from Greece and this shirt seems like one of thousands sold in Athens & Greek islands. But still seems strange that this guy choose this shirt to be photographed with.
- pcardoso 9y ago
  Don't read too much into it. I love to travel and I usually get a t-shirt from wherever I go, then use them until they wear out. :)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
dep_b 9y ago
Greece is like 2hrs flying from Romania so pretty to easy to go to holidays to. And awesome.
mmihai 9y ago
There is no connection. It's a tee that i bought from Greece in vacation. And i like to buy and wear tee shirts from countries i visit.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I hope you had a great time in my country :)

markshead 9y ago

If the idea of building a computer and understanding what every part does sounds interesting, I'd highly recommend checking this out: http://nand2tetris.org/ http://nand2tetris.org/

hellonewworld 9y ago
Cool site.

GlenTheMachine 9y ago

This is an awesome story. It almost made me cry. At the same time these guys were building illicit computers in their dorm rooms, I and my buddies were building illicit robots in ours. We weren't in danger from the secret police, of course, so I don't mean to directly compare the experience. But we were at a religious university that simply didn't have the ability to think broadly enough to allow for the possibility that students might have interests outside the established course work, and certainly frowned on the use of power tools in church-owned dorms. We ignored the rules, quite openly, made burn marks on the desks and left pounds of aluminum shavings in the carpets, and definitely felt rebellious doing it. In any case: the article says that these guys feel like they didn't really accomplish anything, because while they were bootlegging Sinclair Spectrum clones, Apple, on the other side of the world, was reinventing the entire computer industry. I have to disagree. It's not about the destination, it's about the journey - and these guys had quite a journey. Maybe they didn't contribute decisively to bringing down Communism; but if that's your success metric, then I think almost everybody fails. In my case, that first robot that we built - which sucked - led to a second one, that didn't. And that led to a graduate research assistantship at a different university that was more welcoming of student initiative - and that led, eventually, to a career in space robotics. It's been quite a ride, and it isn't over. And I wouldn't trade a minute of it.

better_ra 9y ago
That sounds awesome. Would make for a good series of blog posts, or a book!

mpd 9y ago

> “People don’t care about optimizing the code anymore” Rest assured that some still care.

c-smile 9y ago

I don't think it was illegal to assemble computers at that time there. I did something like this in USSR at that time and don't think that it was too different in Romania. And actually from the same parts - I see couple of chips there marked "сделано в СССР" (made in USSR). USSR produced clone of i8080. Z80 clones were produced GDR (East Germany) and USSR too. The only problem was to buy those chips. You could buy them only on black market realistically speaking. Only that was kind of illegal. Interesting that schematics of such hobby computers was published in state magazine "Radio", like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-86RK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio-86RK

xellisx 9y ago

Something I've always wondered, but really haven't dug too deep into is, did these clones do any tricks that would be considered better than what they were based on? That goes with the clone CPUs also. Did they have any undocumented features, that would make it "better"?

flohofwoe 9y ago
Some cases I know of: (1) the East-German produced Z80 clone U880 apparently fixed a mask layout bug, the bug only affected the undocumented instruction set of the chip, which was most likely the reason why it wasn't fixed by Zilog before (2) the KC Compact (an East German Amstrad CPC clone) was using 'standard chips' available in the Eastern Bloc countries to emulate the integrated gate array of the original, this made the interrupt system more programmable than in the original, which in theory would have enabled some more interesting "graphics demo effects" (http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html http://cpctech.cpc-live.com/docs/kcc/kccdif.html) (3) some of the countless ZX Spectrum clones had slightly better graphics capabilities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones)