things worked when there was the state behind it.. Regardless of efficiency.
cm601 CPU was exact copy of motorola-6800 (with ~10% yield - doesn't matter).
Pravetz-82 was Apple-][, with M6502 imported.
There was even some DEC micro-VAX being copied, EC-1055 AFAIR.
Then came the PC... and things went more software-ish.
There was "mikro monitor 1.0" which was.. MS windows 2.0 but all in cyrillics and encodings (none in original). Xerox Ventura 2 was also copied and rev.engineered.
"docs 1.0/2.x" was (pre-MS and MS) Word. Lots of other stuff. Rev.engineered and fixed/enhanced to support cyrillics or else.<p>Then one day it wasn't anymore.<p>Actually all that, let's call it borrowing, laid a perfect ground for all future versions of those products/companies - with plenty of educated and demanding users thereof.<p>(btw rev.engineering was good fun.. but that's a forgotten land now)
Before the 90s, Bulgaria was manufacturing almost everything, it had its problems, but it functioned from what we've been told. Afterwards every single factory was shuttered, sold to individuals for the equivalent of a dollar. After the borders were opened up, we experienced a huge outflow and all the smart people left.<p>We are now a fast shrinking country, poor and even today the political scene is a joke.
Asionometry has a brilliant piece on the topic: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-UVPw1c_So" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-UVPw1c_So</a>
This is also directly available from MIT Press as Open Access: <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5598/Balkan-CyberiaCold-War-Computing-Bulgarian" rel="nofollow">https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5598/Balkan-Cyberi...</a>
A thread from a couple of years ago on a related topic<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26107924">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26107924</a><p>And a small historical bit of snark that's probably in the book (which I haven't had a chance to read yet):<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26108958">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26108958</a>
For anyone who's in Sofia, there is a meetup with Victor Petrov this Saturday:<p><a href="https://axle.events/events/prezentaciya-na-balkan-cyberia-c71c9" rel="nofollow">https://axle.events/events/prezentaciya-na-balkan-cyberia-c7...</a>
In case anyone doesn't know - Bulgaria is the most beautiful country in Europe and is rich with cultural history. Ruins and artefacts everywhere. Please come and check it out - Sofia is amazing this time of year.
Really cool to see other attempts at historically understanding Warsaw Pact and fUSSR tech industries.<p>Every other treatment I've ever seen for describing the Soviet computing and internet development has always just been a lazy "well it wasn't innovative like silicon valley" which, while not necessarily wrong, sounds more like awkward and insecure attempt at justifying our own processes, and also isn't all that descriptive or useful.<p>This isn't surprising because we still have a very heavy Cold War stink on history to do with the USSR and just continue to discover we were wrong about certain aspects of that experiment or didnt quite fully understand it without heavy ideological bias.
Anyone remembers The Dark Avenger :) - lol, another fellow bulgarian!<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Avenger" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Avenger</a>
One of the first Sovirt Union's general purpose computers, the MESM[1], was built in some pre-revolutionary mansion outside Kiev.<p>Romania also had significant semiconductor industry and DDR too, such as Kombinat Mikroelektronik "Karl Marx" Erfurt.<p>I'm disappointed the article is so eager to tag late communist Bulgaria "repressive". The same myopic vision where Bulgaria can be of no significance, but also where socialist regime can manifest with nothing but repression.<p>1. <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESM" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MESM</a>
<i>> On the ruins of Bulgaria’s communist utopian cyber-economy, the most prolific and feared virus writer of all, named the Dark Avenger, emerged to wreak havoc on the world’s computers at the moment Francis Fukuyama had proclaimed the end of history. Was it really?</i><p>Oh, yes, kind of:<p><i>> “The [US] capitalists behaved like socialists while the [Soviet] socialists behaved like capitalists.” In other words, the United States’ internet precursor ARPANET was achieved through strong government support and subsidies, whereas the Soviet attempts were torpedoed by the “self-interest” of its bureaucrats and experts. The Bulgarian case is different because it did succeed—partly due to the fact that Petrov’s protagonists were able to outplay the capitalists at their own game. They copied the code and then rewrote it.</i><p>It is the end of history predicted by Karl Marx, but it had played in a different way that he thought. It played in a way Fukuyama described in retrospect. Capitalism is no longer "pure" capitalism, and communism is no longer "pure" communism. The thesis and the antithesis mated and gave rise to something in between. Or rather they morphed both, but the transformation of capitalism was more successful. Though China probably wouldn't agree with this last statement.<p>But looking at USA it use a lot of government funds spent on different projects with a goal to spur up progress. ARPANET is just one example, the other one is Apollo project or commercialization of space which is going on right now. And we can see in China a free market or at least market that is much more free than in USSR.<p>It seems it is not the end of history, it is more like an end of history. But I agree with Erik Hoel[1] it is no good in trying to apply Hegel to history, but his models are good to talk about politics.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-end-of-online-history" rel="nofollow">https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/the-end-of-online-...</a>