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I don't think the number is too small. These components were super-expensive, not too available and USSR was in a very, very bad shape in the 80s. Note that the Eastern Bloc countries had it better than USSR at that time - better quality of life, better economy, some even produced computer parts locally and were able to hold onto them instead of being forced to send them to the USSR (Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia, for example).

I'd be surprised if there were more than 10k computers in the entire Eastern Bloc in 1986. Even pocket calculators were an expensive luxury item, and people were hacking them to have at least some kind of computer.

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I don't know the statistics, I was a kid in the GDR in the 1980s. At least in the late 1980s until the end of the GDR we had plenty of 8 bit computers, both GDR made (Z80 CPU clone based KC 85 line [0], or PC 1715 [1] as IBM clone, also see [2] for a full list. The KC line more serious - not so great for gaming, great for work including text processing - and for those purposes more capable than C64) and western made (Commodore up to 16 bit Amiga and also Atari were easily available from private sellers, offers in the respective electronics magazines' sections with private sales offers, albeit at HUGE prices, for an East German salary).

Since I was at school I don't know how many there were in industry, but there were a lot of even TV broadcasts showing how to use locally made IBM PC clones for work stuff. I had no idea how anything worked in the early 1980s, hadn't seen anything, but by the end I think there were quite a lot of them. GDR even produced its own RAM chips, although there were a few jokes because we were quite behind what the rest of the world could make.

No argument that we were significantly behind, by several generations and a huge amount of equipment overall. After reunification there was a gigantic flood of modern electronic equipment for labs and industry, a hundred times more and better than what we had in terms of both sophistication and capabilities. I mean, we had things like oscillographs, but very few - after reunification you order them very cheaply even for private use - and a few generations behind what the new equipment could do. Similar with computers, we still mostly had 8 bit and very few very expensive 16 bit units.

[0] https://www.robotrontechnik.de/index.htm?/html/computer/kc_m...

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_1715

[2] Computers in the GDR https://www.elektromuseum.de/wissen-computer-ddr.html

The GDR was the most developed of the Eastern Bloc countries, by a large factor. Roughly 2x the GDP per capita of the USSR. The GDR dominated the Eastern Bloc computer industry and were usually ahead of the USSR in terms of IC manufacturing.

I was a Czechoslovak kid, I was 8 years old in 1986.

Western electronics was expensive and rare. Industrial computers (mainframes) existed, but only specialists would come into contact with them.

Local industry tried to produce some clones of Western Sinclairs, Amigas etc., like Didaktik Gama [0]. But 1986 was too early to actually meet those "in the wild" among non-elite people. My first classmate had a Didaktik in 1988. We were all curious about it.

There also were computer fan clubs, where curious young guys would meet around those few computers that they could get access to.

[0] https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didaktik_Gama

I was in Prague in 1995. I worked for a little while helping to set up the Terminal Bar. While there there were a few Czech guys using Czech websites.

I remember one of them was some sort of social media on a webpage. They could chat via the webpage.

That was a very early (earliest I had seen) implementation of chat / social media on a website.

Good work Czechs!

That was probably XChat or Mamedia.

Where was this Terminal Bar in Prague located exactly, if you remember?

You should go to meet Adam Dingle... he works as a teacher at Charles University. I'm sure he would be very interested to meet you and hear more about these days. He is also quite an interesting software guy. He's a friend... tell him Matt sent you.

There were numerous spectrum clones as well built from local parts. My dad built one himself, actually made a business out of selling these in 87-88. As far as i know there were plenty of them in my small town back in Lithuania.

Bigger machines, PC clones were definitely a rarity.

>Note that the Eastern Bloc countries had it better than USSR at that time

Poland was absolutely not - notice that collapse of communist Poland is what pushed a lot of those "revolutions" over the edge.

Yet even Poland's "educational" computer Elwro 800 Junior [0] was created in 4500 units in 1986.

The first truly widespread "computing device" was Pegasus console - clone of NES. [1]

[0] https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwro_800_Junior

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(console)

I was a kid from a small town in '80s Poland (the poorest part of it). The local secondary school had a whole Elwro-equipped classroom. Many of my friends had 8-bit computers: the first one I encountered in 1986 was a ZX Spectrum, owned by my friend whose father worked in UK. I recall visiting classmates between 1986-89 and playing for hours on their Spectrums, C64s and Ataris (800XL, 65XE). The local community centre had Atari 520ST (or maybe two?) and it was available for the local kids to play with. I estimate that in '89 my town of 5k had at least 20 computers.

Pegasus arrived in 1991 but many of the 8-bit owners already upgraded to Amigas, which were really common in my area.

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