1976 · East Bloc 8-Bit Microprocessor · Work 897 of 1,871
A director's anteroom in a radio factory in Erfurt in spring, on the pale wall an upright white display board thirty-two centimetres high behind clear acrylic in a narrow grey-blue aluminium frame, on it two round silicon discs, one smooth and almost black, one grey-green with a fine square grid, six tiny scattered chip squares, two pairs of gold metal strips with fan-shaped fingers, a strip carrying three small black packages, one more near the bottom, every label field blank white and the top of the board bare, a woman in a dark green two-piece suit seen from directly behind straightening the frame, a vase of red carnations.
What it was used for
The U808 was an 8-bit microprocessor made in Erfurt. From 1977 Robotron built the ZE1 microcomputer and the K1510 microcomputer system around it. According to the support association of the Technische Sammlungen Dresden, the K1510 and K1520 systems worked in bank terminals and in ticket and enquiry terminals of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, among other places. In office machinery the chip ran the KFA 1711 small invoicing machine of VEB Büromaschinenwerk Sömmerda, which entered series production in 1978 and was, in the words of the Elektromuseum, "erstmalig mit dem Mikroprozessor U808D ausgestattet" - fitted with the U808D microprocessor for the first time.
What was new
What stood out was not the design but the manufacturing. In his chronology Heiko Weckbrodt lists the U808 as "8 Bit, Nachbau des Intel 8008 von 1972" - an 8-bit copy of the 1972 Intel 8008. It allowed the GDR to put a processor from its own plants into equipment instead of importing one. The barb lies in the gap: the model was 4 to 5 years old when the copy was presented, and that gap travelled on inside the systems built around it, the ZE1 and the K1510.
What the sources leave open: The support association gives no date for the U808 itself but names 1977 for ZE1 and K1510; Weckbrodt places the presentation in 1976/77. That the U808 is a copy of the 8008 rests here on Weckbrodt's chronology alone. None of the sources consulted gives unit numbers, prices or clock speed.