Resources
My machine unfortunately does not work. I am not going to even attempt repairing it, as I have a very bad experience working with these old Soviet computers – the chips, PCB and assembly are of a very poor quality and have proprietary designations incompatible with anything else.
Documents
[doc_library doc_category=”byte” status=”publish” search_box=”false”]
Internals
Motherboard
Audio module (add-on)
This was a sound card with AY8910 chip, built by somebody called Rezon.
Keyboard
Reassembly
Some Dirt
OMG such a complicated motherboard 😀
Oh, like don’t you know Rezon? Like, he was The.Man in 1994! I’m kidding, but there’s such a FOMO when working with foreign machines like this. Like how fun was working with Z80 Spectrum clones? (there should be a word in English to express this: piracy+clones+still having an excuse for being a good Communist by stickin’ it to the West!) Like Retro-Communist? Same phenomenon with Brazilian Z80 machines and who knows what in different parts of the world. I think TI-99/4a is the only America-only-8-bit machine, nobody else seems to be hacking TMS9900-based microcomputers.
There is at least one person hacking TI-99/4a: https://hackaday.io/project/15430-rc201699-ti-994a-clone-using-tms99105-cpu
This exception kind of confirms your rule.
I don’t understand the phenomenon of why the Soviet union produced so many spectrum clones. In a centrally managed economy it was not driven by the demand.
Yes, well it’s hard to get an answer that doesn’t contain nationalist/local pride claims of being especially clever and/or subversive. The Galaksija in Yugoslavia, Bulgarians with Apple II clones Pravetz/INKO (except Pavetz8D, which was an Oric clone and all over Ebay nowadays. hmmm) of course, Pravetz had blessings of Moscow while Galaksija not so much, but communities all over the Eastern Bloc had some claim to tech, if you want to say it comes from the shortcomings of centrally planned economy you certainly can.
i have a byte however it doesn’t look like that
it looks like this (if the link works also not my pic)
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/ZMsAAOSwrm1nmDv-/s-l1600.webp
I have that one too, in the line to be presented. Not sure if they have anything in common.