
The underground story of Cobra, the 1980s’ illicit handmade computer - gk1
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/the-underground-story-of-cobra-the-1980s-illicit-handmade-computer/
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GlenTheMachine
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
That sounds awesome. Would make for a good series of blog posts, or a book!

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c-smile
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)

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markshead
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
Cool site.

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acqq
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
[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.

~~~
int_19h
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".

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xellisx
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
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))

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mpd
> “People don’t care about optimizing the code anymore”

Rest assured that some still care.

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YeGoblynQueenne
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?

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mmihai
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
Thanks for clarifying. I hope you had a great time in my country :)

