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My first computer was a home computer from Bulgaria called Pravetz 8D. It’s amazing that it never occurred to me until now to look it up on the web and sure eno

My first computer was a home computer from Bulgaria called Pravetz 8D. It’s amazing that it never occurred to me until now to look it up on the web and sure enough there is a Wikipedia page about them. If not for that thing, I wouldn’t be a software engineer today.

ReptileMan 7y ago
I remember that nightmare ... the software was recorded on tapes.
- phillc73 7y ago
  Just like a Commodore 64.
- use-net 7y ago
  dude, Wozniak in 1984 talked about how even Apple Inc. did only have audio cassette tapes to copy more tapes to sell their Apple I and Apple // computer software on - before eventually they had enough money to buy a floppy disc drive. Their chief financial officer was kinda elated about his tape based home finance software predating Excel.
- laumars 7y ago
  That was the norm for 8bit micro computers of that era. It did have some accidental benefits too because some radio stations would air software for people to record
malkia 7y ago
Bulgarian here. My best friend had this one, it was an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric based computer clone, and fun to use :) - all you need is a TV. My father bought me Pravetz 8C (An Apple ][ /e, or was it /c) clone with 128KB RAM! (pr#8 hi-res mode) + floppy. It was more expensive than buying a good russian car back then, and I'm thankful for what he did for me! We had few magazines, books to learn from, and were typing like crazy hex codes to get TETRIS, or someother game on. For a long time, I thought it was the "Merchant" that made Karateka, only later to understand that was one of the earliest cracking groups (some of them later turned into demo groups), and that's how we got most of the software in. Years before communism fell, our biggest hard-drive maker, started making their "own" games - which were complete rip offs of other western games, and "cyrilized" to the bone (like "Karateka" again). Another friend of mine's mom was working in a company, back then durign communism and all they did was byte-code replace english into russian in lots of DOS apps - like PC Tools. Hence the weird abbreviation, as often russian would not fit. Really, it was direct hex-editing! All, in all, I'm somehow thankful to the regime (ahem...) for giving me "free" of a lot, here in the US, is paid. Especially the programming clubs, courses, etc. Obviously that whole scheme did not scale :) but it was good times (while I was kid).
- npace12 7y ago
  I lived in the town (Stara Zagora) where that hard drive maker (DZU) was and knew a lot of people who worked there. In the 90s, They had an entire shift basically dedicated to piracy. Every single CD that was released in the world was immediately copied in crazy quantities and distributed. My room was full of CDs and my mom was so mad :)

ReptileMan 7y ago

I remember that nightmare ... the software was recorded on tapes.

phillc73 7y ago
Just like a Commodore 64.
use-net 7y ago
dude, Wozniak in 1984 talked about how even Apple Inc. did only have audio cassette tapes to copy more tapes to sell their Apple I and Apple // computer software on - before eventually they had enough money to buy a floppy disc drive. Their chief financial officer was kinda elated about his tape based home finance software predating Excel.
laumars 7y ago
That was the norm for 8bit micro computers of that era. It did have some accidental benefits too because some radio stations would air software for people to record

malkia 7y ago

Bulgarian here. My best friend had this one, it was an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oric based computer clone, and fun to use :) - all you need is a TV. My father bought me Pravetz 8C (An Apple ][ /e, or was it /c) clone with 128KB RAM! (pr#8 hi-res mode) + floppy. It was more expensive than buying a good russian car back then, and I'm thankful for what he did for me! We had few magazines, books to learn from, and were typing like crazy hex codes to get TETRIS, or someother game on. For a long time, I thought it was the "Merchant" that made Karateka, only later to understand that was one of the earliest cracking groups (some of them later turned into demo groups), and that's how we got most of the software in. Years before communism fell, our biggest hard-drive maker, started making their "own" games - which were complete rip offs of other western games, and "cyrilized" to the bone (like "Karateka" again). Another friend of mine's mom was working in a company, back then durign communism and all they did was byte-code replace english into russian in lots of DOS apps - like PC Tools. Hence the weird abbreviation, as often russian would not fit. Really, it was direct hex-editing! All, in all, I'm somehow thankful to the regime (ahem...) for giving me "free" of a lot, here in the US, is paid. Especially the programming clubs, courses, etc. Obviously that whole scheme did not scale :) but it was good times (while I was kid).

npace12 7y ago
I lived in the town (Stara Zagora) where that hard drive maker (DZU) was and knew a lot of people who worked there. In the 90s, They had an entire shift basically dedicated to piracy. Every single CD that was released in the world was immediately copied in crazy quantities and distributed. My room was full of CDs and my mom was so mad :)