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Computer export to the Eastern bloc under CoCom embargo


carlsson

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I got involved in a discussion on Facebook about how it worked with export of computers to the former Eastern European countries, both including and excluding Soviet Union.

 

To begin with, there was the CoCom embargo (c:a 1950-1994) which had 17 members in form of Western countries. Certain countries like Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland and Austria seem to not have been part of this, but computer manufacturers in these countries using parts from any of the member countries were affected in second line regarding not being able to export.

 

The Wikipedia article about computers in the Soviet Bloc however mentions that the availability varied from country to country. I also found an article about home computers behind the iron curtain, from what I can tell written from a Czechoslovakian perspective.

 

I visited the Commodore 1985 Strategic plan (IIRC it was published in late 1985, perhaps September-October) and it states that by then Commodore UK successfully exported e.g. Commodore 16 to the Eastern European countries, which kind of goes against the CoCom embargo. It made me dig a bit deeper.

 

I found an article by Sylvia R. Gill which on page 19 writes:

 

In December 1984 COCOM relaxed its controls on computer exports. The Commerce Department issued new regulations on April 26, 1985, that reflected new COCOM policy. The regulations eliminated validated license requirements for certain low-level computers with processing data rates (PDRs) of less than two Megabits per second and total internal storage of 1.1 Megabits or less and related peripherals. Although exports of computers and related equipment generally re-quire validated licenses, personal computers such as Apple II, Commodore 64, and Radio Shack Model 100, which were no longer state-of-the-art, were excepted.

 

This means that e.g. Commodore (and perhaps Atari too) must have been waiting with the finger on the button to start selling their computers to the East, once the license requirements were lifted. It doesn't seem like a total embargo on computers, but probably more difficult, expensive and limited to export before then. As far as I can tell, 1.1 Megabits is about 140 kilobytes which would allow home computers with up to 128 kB RAM, as long as they were slow enough.

 

Now the tern processing data rate, PDR is rarely seen. At first I only found one reference to an unavailable document on how to calculate it, but then I came across the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (published October 1990, so a number of years after the limits were restricted).

 

https://books.google.se/books?id=u6pUtPVG-WgC&pg=RA19-PT1&lpg=RA19-PT1#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

It turns out the PDR is a highly synthetic benchmark, possibly invented by the U.S. Department of Commerce, or at least they were the ones responsible for publishing it.

 

There are fractions of 0.85 times the number of bits in an addition instruction, 0.40 times the number of bits in the operand etc, added together and then divided by 0.85 times the execution time. There are definitions how to count number of bits and how to count execution time, which makes my head spin.

 

Now the question is which computers or CPUs would yield a PDR below 2 megabit per second. We see examples of Apple II, C64 and TRS-80 Model 100 above. Probably newer computers like IBM AT with its 286 and the almost new Apple Macintosh still were considered state of the art and could not be exported as easily. Does anyone want to dig into the numbers above and make some calculations? :-D

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In Poland, it was not possible to buy a computer in a normal shop up till some point in the late Eighties/early Nineties (I don't remember exactly).

 

There was a chain of shops called "Pewex" though,  which was officaly sanctioned and allowed people to buy stuff using foreign currencies. They usually had stock otherwise unavailable elsewhere, eg whiskey, Lego / Matchbox toys, etc. At some point they started selling 8- bit Ataris. I used to go there and stare at the likes of Rescue on Fractulas. Around 1989 my aunt bought me a C64 in one of them.

 

But this trade was a drop in the bucket: majority of micros would be brought by people from Germany and other countries, and traded via ads and second hand markets.

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Yeah, the Hackaday article by Martin Malý from Czechoslovakia mentions unofficial importing, sometimes as much as 1000 units per shipment. If an Atari 800XL or a ZX Spectrum cost equivalent to one month's salary or could not be bought in the local currency, it might explain why normal shops didn't carry them, even after the embargo was lifted.

 

Still we know about the Commodore 16, the Atari 800XE, for that matter the Sord M5 etc which are some examples of home computers from abroad which had a certain following, not only from private import, smuggling and second hand sales. Thus I found the reference to the embargo relaxations interesting and which practical implications those had. Perhaps the CoCom members, likely lead by the US, realized that micros were trickling into the Eastern bloc anyway and by easing the regulations, the actual manufacturers (Apple, Atari, Commodore and so on) could make some money in those countries instead of other middlemen would take any profits.

 

Something else that strikes me is that Commodore quite early on were working with several Hungarian game developers for the C64. Certainly they could have come across these groups and set them up with equipment even if the computers in general were difficult to import (and expensive to customers, in particular since a C64 cost $595 even in the US at first which must have been several months worth of salary in e.g. Hungary).

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Commodore had a good relationship with Hungary. There were plans for Commodore to import the BRG 3" floppy design which fell through. AFAIK, the primary use of the BRG design was with Grundy Newbrains sold in Africa; the drive didn't even manage much sales in other Comecon nations. 

 

http://www.os2museum.com/wp/how-not-to-buy-a-computer/ was a view on how to import computers into Chzechslovakia in 1989. Note it mentions the removal on tariffs on computer imports; seem to be a change on both sides as the selling of unwanted inventory was matched by a demand to get more technology. Some of the changes were a bit unexpected. The official East German publications about Basicode mentioned the Dutch radio broadcast times and frequencies to get more software which was very different from the enforced jamming of the 70s. 

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It's an amusing article, but it describes some rather extreme cases. Majority of people would know perfectly well what to buy and ask for. Unlike now, back then microcomputing and  gaming were domains of some super-serious nerds, so in-depth research was paramount. It was my life back then, and I knew all the brands, but have never ever seen anything else in the wild than the C64/Atari 800/ZX triumwirate, with a random CPC/PC here and there.

 

The other factor was software availability: you'd want a machine which your mates had, or which had presence in pirate computer fairs because otherwise it'd be useless, like that Dragon from the article. There were no shops, and even if there were, you wouldn't be able to afford any games (I struggled with being able to purchase tapes, later disks, for pirated stuff, nevermind paying for originals).

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