Building a Galaksija | Hacker News Reader

Building a Galaksija

blog.vladovince.com

108 pointsbane17 comments

I came across this as an interesting curiosity several years ago. Recently it showed up in a personal reference and I thought it might be of interest to the HN community. Really amazing story behind this and the community that was created around it is fascinating.

Part I (linked): https://blog.vladovince.com/building-a-galaksija-the-1980s-y...

Part II: https://blog.vladovince.com/building-a-galaksija-part-ii-the...

Part III: https://blog.vladovince.com/building-a-galaksija-part-iii-au...

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaksija_(computer)

Internet Archive Magazine Collection: https://archive.org/search?query=galaksija

Emulator: https://github.com/mejs/galaksija

Another: https://github.com/nikp123/Galaksija-Emulator

Libretro core: https://github.com/libretro/galaxy-libretro

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My family lived in Yugoslavia near the Italian border within a zone where people were issued special passports allowing them to go across the border to the west. This was not generally possible, so people took advantage of it and bought (or smuggled to avoid trouble with the customs) many goods which were not available inside the country, like jeans, washing machines, vinyl records, ... My uncle brought both the ZX spectrum and the Commodore back with him on one of such trips. And then during that time our student radio station used to play whole computer programs and games live on air, and everybody could record them to a cassette and load them on their computer, for free!

Thanks for your comment.

Could you elaborate a bit on the “recording and loading cassette” part?

I’m really wondering!

Cassette tapes doubled as music storage and data storage for machines like ZX Spectrum and C64. You could just copy software like you would copy a music cassette. Code via radio would be as easy as playing a song. Another time long gone computer magazines would print code that you could enter yourself! Before that Sussman is reported to meditate on code, and acolytes where supposed to create machines that could run that code.

Here are some details about the ZX Spectrum tape interface:

http://www.zxdesign.info/cassette.shtml

https://sinclair.wiki.zxnet.co.uk/wiki/Spectrum_tape_interfa...

Pretty much all the early 8-bit computers had cassette storage. On the Apple ][ series, the interface to write to the cassette was identical to the speaker interface so you could load audio into memory from a cassette and play it back (at 1-bit resolution) on the internal speaker of the Apple ][. It sounded like crap (although a lot of cassette decks did too) but seemed like magic.

That's interesting - do you have any more info on this special passport zone, or travel to the west being generally not possible?

Yugoslav passports from 40 years ago are widely regarded as being one of the most powerful passports ever, with visa-free travel to almost all Western states [0].

[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/o7mJrRuWOu

I lived in the same area as the GP, and the thing about not being able to go to the west with regular passports is false. In fact people from all over Yugoslavia went shopping to Trieste in Italy.

The special passports did exist however, and were issued to residents of what used to be the Free Territory of Trieste[0], both in Italy and Yugoslavia. They were established by the Udine Agreement of 1955 (although the border was still disputed and finally settled only in 1975 by the Treaty of Osimo[1]).

I can't find many sources about the special passports online. There is a mention here[2].

Their main advantage was the possibility of using secondary border crossings between Italy and Yugoslavia that had less traffic and shorter queues.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Territory_of_Trieste

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Osimo

[2] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/urban-history/articl...

Hi, thanks for clarification, I was not aware that other Yugoslavian residents were able to cross the border as freely as those with the special passport ("Propustnica").

There were similar "passport lite" cross border documents in other parts of Yugoslavia, allowing people living in border regions to easily pass the border but limited to maybe 10-20km in another country. These passes were used by farmers who had pieces of land across the border, or even if land was in the same country the closest road might be through border. I think something like that still exists.

There was a school bus route in Washington that passed through Canada on its way to the school that got really screwed by the post-9/11 stricter border controls.

This year marks 40 years of Galaksija, and the magazine PC Press with the author of the Galaksija Voja Antonic released a reprint of the original special issue which introduced Galaksija. Building kit is also available. More information is available on: https://racunari.com/

That is insanely cool! I've heard countless war stories from older ex-yu people about Galaksija and the early beginnings of the tech scenes on the territories, even about setting up the first proper internet connections and servers with war blasting around them. It's insane when you remember that was all happening not even 30 years ago.

To those who can, I'd suggest donating to the mentioned museum - I've had the blessing to visit it once and it is such a cultural treasure - they don't just collect old machines, they also inspire generations by teaching them coding, electronics and everything in-between.

> … a 1980s Yugoslav 8-bit computer called the Galaksija

More precisely, the magazine that published it was titled "Galaksija" (https://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-11/galaksija-mag...). The computer (and the OS) were simply named after the magazine.

Even more precisely, it was published in the first edition of "Računari u vašoj kući" magazine. That magazine was created as a special edition of Galaksija magazine (so name came from there, that part was right), but from that point on we had both Galaksija, for general science, and Računari for computers.

Cool in general, but... what an ugly botched job.

Should have tested on that spare board and THEN built the final rev.

And hear I was thinking I was the only one in these parts using old lit mags as monitor raisers.

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