3 ms·

The 1mbit of the GDR was one factor of what brought the GDR down https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics_industry_in_East_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

• formerly_proven 2y ago
  They also managed to almost fully clone a MicroVAX II in 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_K_1820 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotron_K_1820 Fundamentally the Soviets doctrine of only cloning meant they were fucked to begin with. MVII started development in 1982, came out in 1985, K1820 could only start by 1986 and was finished by 1990.
  • flohofwoe 2y ago
    The alternative (of an entirely incompatible hardware evolution) would have been much more suicidal though. The whole point of computer hardware is to run software (and mostly quite boring office or some process-controller software). And by cloning the hardware you save the software development cost (e.g. most East German productivity software were pirated copies with the trademark strings sloppily replaced).
    • InDubioProRubio 2y ago
      And highly hierarchical systems suck at developing software, as they go waterfall by default and in case of a fault do not retract.
• ant6n 2y ago
  From the article: the costs to produce ram chips were about ten times higher than in the West. The GDR apparently put a lot of resources into it’s coop industry (hey, better than nuclear weapons I guess). Being bankrupt was one factor in allowing the wall to fall peacefully.